So I had a bit of an ordeal today. Nothing really bad, but a series of really annoying things. It all starts Saturday night. I was coming home and stopped to get gas. When I went to start my car, nothing. After a little bit, I finally got it to start. Over the next couple of days, it had some trouble starting, but it was starting. Clearly though, the starter was going bad. Had my cousin the mechanic come over and he verified the starter. I checked the auto parts store and they didnt have the part, but said they could get it. Two days ago I got the part but it was too late for me to replace it so I decide to wait for my day off, today. Which means I took the risk of having a dicey starter but only needed it to work twice more. I got one more start out of it. I ended up getting it towed last night. This one was my own fault. Either way, I now had the time to get it worked on. As stated before, today was the day I had to replace it. Now I live on a hill and there is no flat place for me to jack up the car to get under it. Unfortunately I didnt have a ramp, (well, I had access to a pair of rotted wooden ones, but decided they might crumble under the weight of the car) so I call my dad to take me to the store to get some. This went by without trouble. I get back and set the ramps up. With some help with my dad, we tried to move it on to the ramp, but couldnt. So we called my grandma to help us. We just told her to hit the brakes when we told her. We push and when we yelled BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE! nothing. So the car went over the ramp and landed on top of them. Thankfully, they werent crushed, but they were trapped. We eventually got a jack out and got them dislodged. The next time we got grandpa to help and now we have a car on a ramp. Now to get the starter out. Its only held into place by two bolts. This is where I knew it was going to get tricky. Normally auto shops use pneumatic wrenches to put the bolts on, which means they are on really tight. It probably took me 10-15 to just loosen the first bolt, not get it off, just loosen. The 2nd bolt was a bigger problem. I tried for a good 5-10 minutes and couldnt even budge it. I had really bad leverage to boot. This meant I had to get creative. I tried hitting from the top instead of the bottom, still no dice. The space was also too tight to get a hammer in there. Now I have to get really creative. This is where the 4x4 came into play. I found an old 4x4 board in the backyard that was pretty sturdy. After a couple of minutes of maneuvering it into position, I was able to hammer the wrench and it loosened the bolt. After several more minutes of loosening bolts, like 20 minutes, I finally got the starter out. Relief set in. I was nearly done. I grab the new starter aaaaaaand it looks nothing like the old one. Not only were the teeth much bigger, the mounting brackets were in the wrong place. Back to ye olde auto parts store. Thankfully they were able to swap in out without problem. After getting back to the car, I get down, slap the new starter in and the car starts. It took all of 15 minutes, which included getting back from the store and cleaning up. I started at noon and was finished by 3 pm.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 00:33:57 +0000
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