Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Some of the stuff from last week |7:16 PM| My new roommate and I have already begun a kind of Inspector Clouseau/Cato Fong ongoing gun battle thoughout the house. Luckily for me his nerf shotgun takes forever to reload, and luckily for him my revolver makes a very distinct noise when I load it.
I've never seen the Diet Coke on corroded battery leads trick done before, but it was great and terrible to behold.
ChrisH's car had died suddenly in his parking garage, and that just wasn't going to stand. Chris, Cass, and I went out with jumper cables and socket wrenches in hand to see if we could muddle it back into working order. When we saw the 1 inch thick cubes of corrosion and battery acid on the terminals, they wandered off to go seize some of Chris's company's free diet coke supplies. I checked a few fuses just to be safe, and loosed/tightened the battery leads.
Among the many little tricks I've picked up about amature car repair, one of the most helpful was a trick I learned myself, on how to fish lost components out of an engine compartment. I was checking the fuses on his car, when I dropped the starter fuse directly into the engine. I heard the clink, clink of plastic on metal but not the knock of it hitting asphalt. Fuck. I tried the usual trick of rocking the car on its shocks, trying to dislodge the missing component, with no luck.
It was only a matter of time before those two got back, and the last thing I wanted to explain is how I lost part of their car inside another part of their car. Now for the neato trick. I needed some long chunk of metal to push the fuse off of its resting place, which isn't something I carry around. Most car radio antennas unscrew easily from their mounting point. (If you have a power antenna you're SOL). With said antenna I was able to dislodge the fuse. In some cases, if you've lost a metal component and have a magnet handy, you can put the antenna near the missing piece, then attach the magnet, and pull the component out.
While I hope the readers of this information never need to use it, such a trick may come in handy.
Once the diet coke was poured onto the horribly corroded leads, I was able to re-tighten them, and jump the car. Success! Hooray!
Speaking of Cass, we were at Half Price books a couple of days ago looking for books on starting businesses. We happened to discuss old science fiction/fantasy novels we'd read years ago, and I mentioned liking "Hyperion" a great deal. We found a a copy of it#, notable because on the last page a woman had written "Let's stay together" and signed it (Tina? Gina?).
Something tells me her book related gambit did not work, as the book had been sold at much less than half price.
(1) comments
Some of the stuff from last week |7:16 PM| My new roommate and I have already begun a kind of Inspector Clouseau/Cato Fong ongoing gun battle thoughout the house. Luckily for me his nerf shotgun takes forever to reload, and luckily for him my revolver makes a very distinct noise when I load it.
I've never seen the Diet Coke on corroded battery leads trick done before, but it was great and terrible to behold.
ChrisH's car had died suddenly in his parking garage, and that just wasn't going to stand. Chris, Cass, and I went out with jumper cables and socket wrenches in hand to see if we could muddle it back into working order. When we saw the 1 inch thick cubes of corrosion and battery acid on the terminals, they wandered off to go seize some of Chris's company's free diet coke supplies. I checked a few fuses just to be safe, and loosed/tightened the battery leads.
Among the many little tricks I've picked up about amature car repair, one of the most helpful was a trick I learned myself, on how to fish lost components out of an engine compartment. I was checking the fuses on his car, when I dropped the starter fuse directly into the engine. I heard the clink, clink of plastic on metal but not the knock of it hitting asphalt. Fuck. I tried the usual trick of rocking the car on its shocks, trying to dislodge the missing component, with no luck.
It was only a matter of time before those two got back, and the last thing I wanted to explain is how I lost part of their car inside another part of their car. Now for the neato trick. I needed some long chunk of metal to push the fuse off of its resting place, which isn't something I carry around. Most car radio antennas unscrew easily from their mounting point. (If you have a power antenna you're SOL). With said antenna I was able to dislodge the fuse. In some cases, if you've lost a metal component and have a magnet handy, you can put the antenna near the missing piece, then attach the magnet, and pull the component out.
While I hope the readers of this information never need to use it, such a trick may come in handy.
Once the diet coke was poured onto the horribly corroded leads, I was able to re-tighten them, and jump the car. Success! Hooray!
Speaking of Cass, we were at Half Price books a couple of days ago looking for books on starting businesses. We happened to discuss old science fiction/fantasy novels we'd read years ago, and I mentioned liking "Hyperion" a great deal. We found a a copy of it#, notable because on the last page a woman had written "Let's stay together" and signed it (Tina? Gina?).
Something tells me her book related gambit did not work, as the book had been sold at much less than half price.
(1) comments
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