Brian’s Morning Newsletter for August 20th 2009

Good Morning
The sun crested the ridge and is shining in my window. We added a little curtain just for this time of year because the sun hits me in the face while I work on the computer. The sun shining in the window, on the north side of the house during the Summer, also acts as a season indicator. At this moment, August 20th 6:48 in the morning the sun is about halfway between the farthest north position and the point where it doesn’t shine in my window at all. What’s it mean? Well of course, it is relative to us, but it means Summer is getting away from us.

Twice yesterday I cleaned the grease off my arms and face. In my prime, as a mechanic, I considered getting dirty while working on cars a sign of the non-professional. Oh well what can I say, I’m not a professional anymore. I worked in nice clean dealership shops with painted floors with stripes to designate my work bay from the next mechanic’s bay. Besides, I didn’t work on 25 year old nasty diesel engines which had oil leaks and if I did I always pressured washed the engine before I worked on it. Too bad, so sad, I didn’t think of washing the Trooper the last time I had it in town. Sure, I wish I had thought of it.

I know I ought to take some pictures of this project, nevertheless I didn’t. I’m of the mind at this point who cares about the exact details and procedures of replacing a turbo on what may be the last of its kind?  1986 turbo diesel Trooper.  After a fine lunch of garden salad and cookies I went back to the grease pile and began reinstalling the turbo. Today I will connect the exhaust pipe after I reroute a oil line which got bent squishing the turbo in and out.
Thank goodness I have help

Amelia and Austin

Subject: BMN Blue Monday – booze & auto mechanic don’t mix well

Monday June 18^th 2007

Good morning

I am going to do my best to write cheerily this morning even though I am feeling somewhat less than my usual merry monkey chucking self. Aww, what’s wrong? Did someone have a bad weekend? Maybe it’s a case of the Mondays? No. I had a great weekend, and I don’t get the Monday-blues since I don’t work on Monday. It’s nothing I care to admit, and Nell assures me I should let it go. I spilled twenty gallons of biodiesel along with the wash water. Darn, it hurts just to think about it. And we are just about out of waste vegetable oil, so I absolutely must get the WVO recovery system together now, or I’ll be up against the wall, stopped from making any more biodiesel. Also I need to pay for the methanol, but I can’t find the bill, again. Sigh. The chemical company delivers with payment due in thirty days. I hope it was sixty days. I will pull it all together.

In fact, I wrote to our bank on Saturday explaining that I need them to approve paying for the order to http://utahbiodieselsupply.com even though it is $5.00 above the daily debit card limit. That should come off without a hitch, especially since I am sending an extra $200.00 cash with Nell to deposit this morning. No worries. I was helping Austin install a new CD–MP3 memory stick player like the one we used at Tusas Campo, when I forgot to close the drain on the biodiesel wash tank, and lost a hundred dollars worth of fuel. In retaliation for that blunder I drank a pint of Crown Royal. As recovering alcoholics would warn us if we asked them, this not only solves nothing, but it makes matters much worse. This was the case for me yesterday. Austin asked me to help him with his car stereo as a Fathers Day gift. Crap was it Fathers Day? I hadn’t called my dad or done anything for him. I’m a bad son. I wonder if things started going wrong for me because of my guilt?

Regardless, I slogged ahead. At some point I think it was mid-afternoon, I woke from a nap which the new release movie called Ghost Rider caused for the second time, I woke Austin and Amelia whom the movie apparently had the same affect. Man that was a bad flic. I don’t recommend Ghost Rider, unless of course you want to take a nap. Anyway, I woke Austin at which point I thought he was going to come off the couch and slug me. I forgive him, it was hotter than hell in the house and trying to sleep while that silly movie was playing might cause even the levelest headed person to lose composure.

So we went out to the shop, popped the tops on a couple of Rolling Rock Light beers, or diet beer as I affectionately call them. I must have opened the drain on the wash tank for the biodiesel and walked away from it, completely forgetting about it, By the time I snapped, it was gone except for five gallons!#@ Grumble mumble curse. I went right inside and cried to Nell. At which point she promptly dropped what she was doing and comforted me. I love my wife. So the Rock Green Light beer or RGL as it says on the label seemed palatable, if not good, at least until they warmed up a little in the sun. Even then I was enjoying the beer, abetted by the fact that each one has only 83 calories.

All the while I was not winning the battle of letting my blunder go. That’s when I recalled that I not only bought the RGL (diet beer) but a pint of Crown Royal blended Canadian whiskey as well. Attesting to the shear heat of the day and the fact that we can’t have booze in the house, I cracked open the little bottle, which had been in the hot-box garage all day, at which point it began to re-distill up my nose. Nothing like  pure alcohol vapors wafting in your face on a hot day to bring one to his senses. Not me, I opened the mini fridge I keep in the shop and put the little bottle in the mini freezer compartment. Giggles, the little fridge immediately turned on its compressor, as if a hot bottle of Crown was about all it could handle, during the heat of the day.

Of course, I didn’t wait long before testing the temperature of the little bottle again. Like I said, this was no doubt the beginning of a series of bad moves on my part. I don’t know how hot it was yesterday, but I suspect on a scale of warmish to hotter than hell, it was damn hot. Austin had accomplished his goal and his new  stereo sounded great, I was already not thinking clearly, when I decided that I would take advantage of his offer to help me swap the alternator from the White Isuzu Trooper to the one I am using for work. In hindsight I wish I quit while I was behind.

I had this screwy idea to add a 12 volt DC to 115 volt AC  inverter to my work truck so I could charge the battery on my laptop. I use the laptop and my cell phone all day long while I am working out of my Trooper. It was a good idea, and probably still is, but I had one issue I needed to deal with before I added anything to the Trooper electrical system. I have been disconnecting the battery every night because something inside the alternator is mis-wired and if I don’t disconnect the battery it will be dead by morning. My plan was simple: The white Trooper has a working and properly wired (internally) alternator, I was going to pull it, and open it to see how it was wired, then pull the alternator out of my work Trooper and make it be the same.

I always say, don’t work on machines mad or drunk. I broke both of these simple rules, and quickly paid the price for my poor judgment. I got two bolts off the alternator, but the third and last one was the bugger. I was using the pneumatic ratchet which isn’t real quick, but quicker than turning nuts and bolts by hand. Well, since I wasn’t all there because of my previous involvement with said bottle of whiskey, I not only did not notice the wrench was on the bolt, nor that it had already unscrewed it, to the point that it wedged the air tool in so I could get to the switch to reverse rotation and free the wrench, I was just beginning to lose my own composure. So what does the mechanic with the magic fingers do next? I broke the alternator housing trying to get my friggin wrench out. Just about then Slim shows up to show me that all the work we did on his squirrel damaged Buick paid off and it was now back on the road. Cool, I said now you can help me finish the other bottle of whiskey I’ve had unopened under the seat of my work truck for a month. All the while my son, bless his heart, finished putting the extra bracket he removed to get the wrench out back in place.

When all was said and done, I had the alternator in hand, and finally the sense to quit working on my shit, before I did some serious damage. Still don’t have the inverter installed, but I do have a better understanding of what that silly little project will entail and cost me. Do I really want to pull the alternator out when it is working except for the inconvenience of needing to disconnect the battery at night?

So here I am, beside myself, once again.

Onward through the fog…

Truly,

Brian Rodgers

————- 
Good looking VW on Craigslist Sanata Fe. I wrote and inquired this morning.       

97 VW Passat – $2900 (Santa Fe)

Date: 2009-08-12, 2:09AM MDT

Reply to:

sale-qn8re-1318871234@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

I am the orginal owner of this car and it is mechanicly very sound. It has been very well maintained since day 1. It has about 185,000 miles on it but the engine was repalced at 90,000 by the dealer due to there error. It has brand new tires with less than 500 miles on them and new battery as well. It has a 1.9 liter turbo diesel and a 5 speed manuel transmission so it gets like 40mpg city and 45 highway. It has ice cold AC, heated leather seats, upgraded sound, huge trunk area. There are a few cosmetic issues the paint is faded on the hood, the leather is slightly faded, but all could be fixed easy. I am moving so am forced to sell the car and need to ASAP, NO REASONABLE OFFERED REFUSED.

• Location: Santa Fe
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1318871234