Truck Breaks and Junkyard Adventures.

So the next part of our ongoing saga of fixing the damn truck breaks sometime in my lifetime involved bleeding the breaks. Did I say bleeding the breaks? I meant failure. First off this was like the first warm day we have had in weeks. However the first warm day in weeks does not mean that all the snow had melted so my first task was shoveling snow out from around the truck in the areas we might need to lay down on.

 

Yay.

Second task involved Scott filling up the master cylinder with break fluid and having me very gently pump the breaks so we could test that break hub thing that was a right bitch to get on. So I did that and then of course it leaked like a motherfucker and I had to stop and then Scott crawled under the damn truck and poked at it and then swore a whole bunch. Because of course the lines from the master cylinder would be the ones leaking. You know the lines that get break fluid to the breaks? Those lines? Yeah they were leaking. I realize to the uninitiated this is all gibberish so here have a picture.

 

So then we pull the line off and clean it up and try to put it back on. Which went about as well as you would expect. At one point both me and Scott were under the truck, facing different directions with him holding the line and me trying to thread the bolt on. Of course this didn't work at all ever and finally he tried to rebend the line and then knocked the other top line from the master cylinder off and then we swore a whole lot. Of course at this point I suggested just using JB weld to stick the damn bolts in PERMANENTLY and Scott was all like that just might work but we both kinda knew it wasn't going to work. There was only one option.

We were going to have to pull the damn break hub thing off again.

So Scott pulled the damn stupid motherfucking break hub thing off and in the cold clammy light of a winters day we could clearly see that the top holes, the ones we had been struggling with, were completely bare of threads. It was never going to work. No matter how hard we had fought and swore and cursed and begged the cold uncaring gods of auto repair, it was never going to work. We were going to have to find another break hub thing. Which of course is a part they no longer make anymore.

Which meant we were going to a junkyard.

So we grabbed our shit and some tools and I put medicated goop in the cats eyeballs and then we got in the car and drove. The first scrapyard we stopped at had a nice neat office and was staffed by a nice blond women who had clearly never left the eighties. There was a plastic sign on the counter saying not to place auto parts on it which kind of confused me because I was never really under the impression that junkyards were all that picky about there counters but whatever the fuck. So I just held the part up where she could see it like some sort of fucked up metal peace offering and we asked about it while the damn thing peed break fluid down my arm. So then she was all like, anything that old we just scrap and gave us the name of another place we could try and then we got back in the car and I spotted the greatest thing ever on the way out.

The greatest thing ever.

 Our next stop was an auto parts store where we learned that the part that I was calling the break hub thing and Scott was calling the break distributer was actually called the break proportioner.

Annnd also they didn't have one.

The last place we stopped at was a true to life scrapyard made entirely of mud. We pulled up to a gray dim looking metal building that was your typical half garage half office. Upon entering we were greeted by a vague older looking man. You know the kind of guy who gives you the impression there is no mental activity going on behind those eyes. “You got any cans?” He asked in a wheezy voice. I glance behind me at my 1999 canless Toyota Avalon. Which was the only vehicle in the parking lot. I looked around to make sure I hadn't been sucked into Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Scott explained that we needed a part. The guy explained we would have to go back into the office. In the office we were greeted by a dark haired women sitting behind a desk talking to a older guy who apparently had nothing better to do then sit in a scrapyard office and talk up a receptionist. In the back another older looking women was washing down tables. For some bizarre reason the whole place smelled like cookies.

“You gonna help them customers!?” Shouted the lady from the back, still washing down shit.

So we explain what we need to the two people sitting at the desk who look like we are interruptions into their flirting/drug dealing and then they tell us to go out back and look for Gary. We go out back. Out back turned out to be a wasteland of muddy cars. Many of which had been crushed and flattened into huge pancake like stacks that rose up around the borders of the wasteland like a very ineffective fence. Mud and snow mixed together under the tires of huge car moving machinery. We stopped next to a green building that smelled like pure ethanol and watched the giant car magnet thing move car frames around like they were made of tinfoil.

Finally a guy driving a huge piece of machinery pulled up beside us and yelled something out the window I couldn't hear and then Scott held up the part like it was a magic talisman and they mined something about Chevy and then he yelled some directions over the engine and we were off. What followed next was the most surreal adventure ever. One isle over I could hear the giant car magnet dropping shit while we wound our way through cars that looked like they had been flung down from on high by an giant car magnet. The first truck we checked was completely on it's side, wheels and bed long gone. Even though it had the part, the break proportioner was too rusted and shot to use.

We picked our way out of there and into the nest row over. Which is when I discovered that the “snow” was merely a thin blanket of white over a foot deep hole and I had to do that thing where you jerk forward and then grab you own shoe to keep the earth from ripping it off.

I was pretty over the junkyard by that point. Of course the next truck's break proportioner was shot too. Defeated, unwilling to try another avenue and possibly lose a shoe for good this time we trudged back to the office. Once inside we explained that we didn't find one while the lady in the back shouted more advice about customer service. We smiled and backed out the door, back past the wandering can man and got into our car, still holding the greasy useless break proportioner.

We never did fine Gary.

Drum Brakes are Terrible. Terrible I Tell You.

A few days ago Scott decided that he wanted to get ready to bleed the breaks on the truck since we had already given our blood sweat and tears to replace the break lines. So he got ready to go out into winter while I made a few excuses to stay inside until the last possible second. Luckily for my staying inside as long as possible plan, Scott came back inside about twenty minutes later and announced that he had snapped off one of the bleeder valves and the rest of them were stuck.

Now for those of you who don't understand what all that gibberish underneath your car is, bleeder valves are these little thingamajigs that when unscrewed a little bit shoot break fluid out of them like a leaky sink. Which allows you to get the air out of the break system. Because if you don't get all the air out of the break lines you'll die.

So no pressure or anything.

So of course when you snap the fucking thing off two things happen. One break fluid oozes out and two, you get fucked. I mean like really fucked.

Not just regular fucked.

Because that thing that the bleeder valve connects too, now you have to replace that too. Because nothing is ever easy. Anyway, instead of bleeding the break, we now had to put the truck up on blocks like this is the country and pull the break assembly apart.

Oh joy of joys.

So we trooped outside and I gathered up cinder blocks and bits of boards and other shit that one needs to properly place a vehicle up on blocks in the lawn while Scott broke the tire loose and jacked the truck up. Mainly because I can't be trusted with Jacks. Things happened man. Things happened. Things.

Anyway we pull the tire off and find that the bleeder valves on an 85 Chevy are on the caliper. Which if you recall is the part I think I could replace in my sleep if I had too. Pleased we pulled the calipers off the two front tires like the caliper wizards we are. I decided not to compose a spur of the moment song about Caliper Wizards because Scott does not understand my innate musical talent* and we moved on to the back tires.

Which is when Scott told me that the rear tires have drum breaks and everything went to hell from there. This was my first time seeing drum breaks. They sucked. Like really. Like someone who loves Steampunk had decided to make some fucking breaks. So the break part, the break pad if you will sits inside this fucking circle and when you hit the breaks the pad shoves into the inside of the circle and stops the truck. Or something like that. I am not really sure. What I am sure about is that getting all those bits apart is super shitty.

Like really shitty.

So we pull the large circle thing off, and then we discover the pad bits are held on with springs. Springs that wanted to stay where they are thank you very much. So we fought the damn springs off and then tried to get the thing the bleeder valve was on removed and then we came to the conclusion that that thing was part of the axle somehow.

Which if you are following along at home, means we are like, what are we up to now? Double fucked? Triple fucked? I'm not really sure how fucks compile. I mean this was never really covered in math class. Although it damn well should have been.

Back to the point, it was getting kinda dark because winter plus mountains plus living under a ridge equals a four thirty sunset so we gave up, pushed the tires under the truck cleaned up our tools and went to go eat meat from the crazy meat van.

Hooker Meat. **

*This is a lie. I have no musical ability whatsoever. At all. None. Zippo. Nada. Nothing. Just to clear that up.

** Probably.

Truck Break Lines Day Two, a More Sober Account.

Luckily on day two of trying to fix the damn break lines my body seemed to be adjusting to the medication a bit better and I know longer felt high as a goddamned kite. Which was almost disappointing because in the cold harsh light of almost sobriety rerunning break lines sucked all the ass.

So to recap my former really, really drugged up on prescription drugs I have to take because my stomach is an asshole account of the first day, we ran all the break lines leading to the front tires to this hub thing that sits bolted to the bottom of the frame of the truck and we ran the two main lines from the hub thing to the reservoir that holds the break fluid. So the break fluid gets to go on a super awesome fun water ride down to the hub where it get sent out to each tire on a slightly less magical adventure. You know, in case my loose rambling drugged up previous account didn't cover any of this.

It totally didn't cover any of this.

I could go back and edit it to make more sense, but that would ruin the memories. The drug memories that is.

Anyway today's super special mission was to run the lines to the back tires. So two lines needed to follow the frame of the truck from the front hub to the back hub, and then two more lines from the back hub to the tires. Don't worry if that doesn't make any sense, because after what I went through I think the best option is that if your break lines fail you should just buy another car.

So first off we get out the lines going to the back and then we get them all set to go and then I crawl under the truck to the back hub and Scott tries to feed the line in from the front. Except there's this bit where the lines have to go around the frame and some other bullshit I don't understand. And of course since we bought pre-bent lines they have all sorts of zig zags in them all ready.

So basically it was like trying to shove a coat hanger that has been through a grain thresher through a keyhole. Except the keyhole has a ninety degree turn in it.

It was awful is what I am trying to get at here.

Of course at one point we got the whole thing hopelessly stuck to a point where we couldn't go forward or back so we put a coupler there and Scott had to deal with all the excess on his end because we are not super mechanics here and hopefully everything will work and we won't go careening over a cliff because my state doesn't believe in guard rails.

So the next step was trying to get the rear lines on from the hub to the tire parts. The problem here was that the bolts were so rusted that I had to scrape rust off to get the wrench on and then when I did get the wrench on the damn thing it didn't move at all whatsoever. Of course Scott was still struggling to attach shit to the front hub so I was on my own.

What followed was a montage of both of us laying under the truck on plywood grunting and whimpering as we fought those motherfucking ass break lines into place with our blood sweat and tears.

In the end I still has to get Scott to undo the bolts for me. Which pretty much set a president for the rest of the day while Scott did all the hard shit and I handed him tools because for whatever reason I could NOT get any of the rustastic bolts off and I couldn't get any of the new ones in.

Which pretty much destroyed any lingering glory from that wheel strut job we did last winter. Not that I am bitter or anything. Although I suppose I could just blame this attempt on the drugs.

So about this point we work our way back up to the front hub. You know the one we sweated and bleed all over the first day to attach the front lines too? Well it turns out we can't get the last line off of it. We tried everything we could think of and even debated taking a torch to it but Scott vetoed that plan because it was right next to the fuel line and Scott hates being set on fire by a seemingly unending spray of gasoline.

So after some cursing and a cup of tea, we decided we are going to have to remove that hub piece I don't really know the name of and possibly replace it.

Which would totally negate all our efforts from yesterday.

So Scott pulls it off and then takes it up to the sheds and manages to remove the stuck line and then we wrestle the damn thing in place and reconnect the lines which sucked all the ass and took like an hour of our lives.

And by 'we' I mean 'Scott.'

I mostly got him tools and then crouched right in front of him to keep the sun out of his face because by this time it was trying to set on us and finally, finally the damn thing was all together and then we decided to bleed the breaks later.

So then we threw the tools in the truck cab and went back up to the house and had dinner which I can't taste at all because this is seriously the most fucked up stomach medication in the world and I had to keep asking Scott if dinner was good and he kept telling me it was and now I have to go take a shower and maybe eat some chocolate.

You know, to see if I can taste it.

Purely in the interest of science, you understand.

Purely.

The Truck was a Lie.

So, remember when I said that we had fixed the headlights on the truck? Well, that was a lie. We put the truck back together, chatting happily because now we had a truck that worked and everything. So we cleaned up our work area and put the tools away and threw out the broken and damaged stuff. Scott gave the truck an affectionate pat jumped in and turned the key and nothing fucking happened.

Shitfuckmotherfuckers.

He got out of the truck. We both stared at it. We were going to have to take the steering column off again. Scott went to take out all the tools we would need, but I walked to the edge of the driveway. It was a perfect day outside. Big fat puffy clouds were chasing each other through the sky on a gentle breeze and a few early autumn leaves were drifting down into the yard. The chickens were picking happily through the grass. I stared at that idyllic country vista, the deep shade of the forest and the waving meadow, and contemplated setting the truck on fire.

I decided against it.

So once again we ripped the steering column off the truck and played around with the ignition switch thing. It was not fun. I don't even have any idea what the problem was. All I know is that when we took it apart and put it back together the damn thing worked. Problem solved!

Except now the headlights were flickering.

Ha ha ha haaaa!

Ha.

At that moment we embarked upon a great quest to discover why this was happening. And by 'we' I mean 'Scott.' He tested things and pulled wires and by passed stuff and called my uncle and cursed and cut himself and tried very hard not to get electrocuted. It turns out that the teenager that had the truck before us had wired up his running lights in some weird ass manner so that it was drawing too much power from the wrong damn thing. Luckily it wasn't too hard to fix and then we had working headlights again. Wonderful working headlights.

Except then the back up lights cut out.

At this point my uncle really did suggest setting the truck on fire for the insurance money.*

We decided against it. We had come too far to turn back now. What followed Scott's moments of grim determination was even more hours of testing and cursing and frustration at the cold uncaring universe that had brought him to this point. The words 'bypass' and 'switch' were uttered many times. So were the words 'what the fuck?'

But he fixed it.

I still have no idea how. It involved lots of wires. So he put the truck back together, everything back together and tested it. It all worked. The engine started, the headlights came on, the running lights came on and the back up lights came on. It was time to go to the inspection station. It was time.

Scott walked up to me to kiss me goodbye with his both his fingers crossed. It couldn't have been a more dramatic kiss then if he was about to shipped off to the beaches of Normandy. I crossed my fingers to. Halfway back to the truck he turned around and I lifted my crossed fingers up to show him I was still hoping and he crossed his and held them up like a salute and for a moment we just stood there starting at each other across the lawn like something momentous was about to happen.

Then one of our neighbors drove by and I felt retarded.

I couldn't concentrate so I just sort of ended up drifting about the house and reading random books until I heard the truck pull into the driveway.

It had passed.

It had only taken us a week, a full week to rip it apart and put it back together, to scavenge parts off another truck and drag my uncle into it, a week of driving around to different auto parts stores and cursing and yelling and stress.

But it's over now.

It's over.

Until next year, anyway.

*He wasn't actually serious. I least I think he wasn't.

Wiring Harness are the Devil.

Yes. We did it. And by we a mean mostly Scott. And my Uncle. I just handed them tools and cleaned grounds and provided an extra pair of hands*.

The first day was spent removing the old wiring harness and putting in the new. That was exciting. I will point out that Scott's idea of labeling every single wire was the best idea ever in the whole history of ever. There was no guessing. However I have to point out that without my Uncle we wouldn't have known what half those fuckers were in the first place.

I will also take this moment to point out that disassembling the steering column is probably a form of torture in several less civilized parts of the world. Even worse, of course, was putting the damn thing back together.

Let me explain.

There is this, trapezoid thing that makes the car start when you turn the key. No I don't know what it's called. It has no name. It deserves no name. It sits on the steering column and connects to this line that runs from the key. So when you turn the key it flips a switch in this box and the car starts. Except it's a sweet bitch to get in.

Which we did at least four times.

I put it in and took it out, Scott put it in and took it out, and it wouldn't work. We poked at it and tested the wires and criticized each others putting-the-damn-thing-in-technique. Every time we would take it out Scott would grab it and do arcane things to the switch while muttering. By the end of it he was hunched over the switch like Golum, muttering the dark litany “ accessories, lock, start, run.”

It took us a while to realize that that it was wired backwards.

Because that's what you get when you use second hand wiring harnesses. So we pushed and shoved and cursed and still managed to get the wheel back on slightly crooked but fuck it who cares, until at last we had everything wired up. Everything was where it should be. Most of the crazy wiring from the former owner was gone, replaced by this new beautiful and clean wiring harness. Flushed with success we connected the battery and flipped the lights on.

Nothing happened.

Well fuck. We tried everything. We replaced the switch, we replaced a bulb. We cleaned the grounds and traced wires and did unfathomable things with the one working multimeter we could find. Which in a stroke of luck I still can't comprehend, was made specifically for automotive use. Scott bypassed things and stuff and poked at wires and got zapped and swore and still the lights remained dead.

So we called my uncle.

And being the saint he is, the next day he came over with a bunch of his tools and together we begin again. It became rapidly apparent that having my Uncle, the ex auto mechanic, was like suddenly being given a cheat code to your fucking car. He pointed out things that we needed, things that we did not need, and things we could do to make it run better. I mostly watched while they tested things and cleaned switches and cut apart the old wiring harness and were dismayed by things and occasionally I would bring them sockets. After some struggling and cursing and despair and some “holy crap why is this HAPPENING!?” We found the problem in one blinding beautiful moment of understanding that was as clear and clean as water from a deep, cool, well.

It was a bad bright switch.

You know, that thing that I did not even know that cars had. That thing. It was bad. So then we had to drive around to all the auto parts stores in town. There are four in our tiny, tiny ass town and none of them had the part. So we undertook the great journey to the other town where we pulled into the store and saw that what looked like redneck town had set up a shanty village in the grassy area before the auto parts store only to realize it was a massive yard sale. It was ceramic ducks and baby clothes and Nascar blankets as far as the eye could see. No I didn't get any pictures. I might not have come back out alive.

But they had the part!

We drove home like the motherfucking champions that we were and installed the part. With me standing in front of the truck Scott installed the damn thing and flipped on the switch.

The lights came on.

You would think that seeing the giant square lights of on old truck flare into their typical reedy life from deep within the grill would not be a very inspiring sight. But it was. It was like when you see rain coming from a long way off over the earth and you stand and wait for the wall of cold droplets to hit you and the rain comes over you like a sheet and you feel a joy mixed with awe at the sheer endless scale of the world. It was like the moment when you watch the sun come up in the mountains or over a lake and the sky gets lighter and lighter and a tightness forms in your gut for reasons you don't understand and then the first edge of the sun comes over the world and you feel a chilly sense of wonder and think how small and yet wonderful this whole thing called life really is.

That is what I felt when those headlights came on.

Pure.

Undiluted.

Joy.

It is these moments we keep close, gentle readers.

It is these moments.

*A very invaluable service when the two mechanics are doing some sort of twisted car yoga under the dash,

Fixing the Truck.

A while ago we discovered that the headlights on the truck had stopped working. And by discovered, I mean, we left somewhere at dusk and the dark was a whole lot darker then it should have been. So we did what we always do, we poked around the truck until we found what was wrong.

In short, everything.

The previous owner was a young teenage boy. He had, in his infinite wisdom, redone some of the wiring so that he could put in a killer sound system. Did I say some of the wiring? I meant all of it. Let me put it this way, the instrument panel lights were LEDs zip tied to the dash and wired into who knows what, only one thing of the three things that runs to the ground was plugged in, and every time the parking break was set the oil gauge went to zero.

After much mucking about with switches and wires, we came to a conclusion. We were going to have replace the entire dash. Which was going to cost us a lot of money.

But we were in luck. While complaining about our miserable luck to my family, it turns out my uncle has an older truck of near the same make sitting a fucking field somewhere that we were welcome to come rob for parts. Presumably because he loves me. Or maybe he just wanted to see the looks on our faces as we struggled to remove a dash from a car that was filled with dead mice and pine needles.

Either way.

The next day, full of optimism and hope, we loaded up out tools and a camera and drove over to his house. We found the truck sitting in a grassy patch along with about, oh four other vehicles. It was old, rusted and blue and very intent on keeping all it's parts in it thank you very much. So the three of us stayed and fought the dash out of truck. We pulled out all the instruments and components that our truck was lacking. As we were putting our hard won prize in the car my uncle asked if we wanted the wring harness too.

For those of you that don't know, the wiring harness is like the wiring in the walls of your house. It's the bunch of wires and plugs that everything on the dash that you need to work plugs into. So the lamps and TV's and junk in your house is like the dash, and the walls wiring is like the wiring harness.

It's pretty much just as difficult to remove.

So we said no we don't need that, got home and discovered that yes, we did need that.

Let me put it this way. It took us an hour to remove the dash. It took us so long to remove the wiring harness my aunt made us all dinner. Imagine trying to get a bundle of wires out of a big jagged metal tube. Also imagine that the wires are running through and hooking to all sorts of things within the tube. And that the tube is mounted under a table. And you can't cut any of the wires. And you can't see what you are doing. And you have to take a picture of every motherfucking step because if you will not remember the wire orders or what went to what and you will be super fucked. Not even regular fucked. We also labeled every wire too.

Taking a wiring harness out of a vehicle is like trying to take an octopus of a close sided cheese grater with out cutting the octopus.

Of course we still have to get the wiring harness out of our truck, before we can even think about putting the new one in, reassemble the dash, and pray. Oh, and all this has to get done before the it needs to be inspected.

Sweet fucking Jesus.

Pray for us.

Pray for us all.

The Driveway Is A Venus Fly Trap

I got back from work at 5:35 am this morning. I feel like I've been run over by a truck. A big truck. Speaking of trucks guess what happened when I ordered gravel? 

If you guessed the gravel truck got stuck in my driveway, you'd be right. Like really stuck. This was unexpected as it was like 4:30 in the afternoon. The driver got out, and we stood looking at his truck. It had slid off the road, and the right rear wheel was just chilling in the ditch. We tried shoveling gravel under the tires to give him some traction. 

It didn't work. 

 It was getting dark. I offered him some shots, he declined. I kept apologizing for my road that had just eaten one of his trucks. I really had no idea what to talk about in that situation. The weather? 

He called someone, who showed up with a skid steer and a flat bed truck. He made the mistake of pulling in behind the gravel truck, which you should never ever do. Ever. We almost didn't get the flat bed back out again. Then the skid steer got stuck. 

This is sadness, also expensive.

 At that point they told me that would have to come back in the morning with a bulldozer. They climbed into the only vehicle that was not stuck in the mud and drove off. I went inside, intending to have a god damned drink, only to discover that the dog had eaten a shit ton of fresh made-from-scratch- cookies off the table in my absence. 

It was not a good day. 

Of course Scott was in DC though all of this so he missed almost all of the fun, arriving home just in time to see them victoriously dump what was left of the gravel in the lawn. He wasn't here when the fuel oil tank started to go when they were filling it either. I'm beginning to get tired of apologizing to various delivery people for things. 

I had asked the man with a bulldozer what to do about the driveway and he told me that we had to scrape it back down to the clay, add shale, and then add gravel. In a way it's fortune that this happened, because we were both unsure as to how to really go about fixing the damn thing. I was working under the assumption that the previous owners had done that step, but he assured us that, no they hadn't. The road was a lie. 

So all in all, not one of the better days of my life.