Come Down From There, Senator Byrd

In case you are a black person who drove through my neighborhood at around 5:30 today and saw me outside, dressed in white from head to toe, wearing a pillowcase over my head with two eyeholes cut in it, I would like to offer an explanation.

I know what it looks like.

I was plugging the holes the bee guy completely missed when he was out here the other day, and I don’t have a bee suit, so I had to improvise.

Please do not be alarmed. There is no one else in my organization, and I am not planning to hold any meetings.

Cat 6

I have a Cat 6 socket on the floor of my office. But for months I’ve been using a cable lying on the floor, running to the router. Why? The guy who installed the sockets left a big coil of wire outside on the ground, connected to the system, and lighting strikes about three times an hour here, and at some point, a bolt of lightning managed to shoot current up that coil and into the house. It fried a good deal of cable, including the bit between my router and socket.

I thought I was going to have to go under the house to run the cable and use some kind of special tool to connect the ends, but I decided to try to fish the cable and open the connectors. I taped fishing line to one end of the old cable, pulled it through both holes in the floor, discarded the cable, saved the connectors, and hooked the new cable to them. It turns out you don’t need any special tools for these connectors. They even have helpful decals showing you which color wire goes where.

I am now blogging without a giant cable running through the room. And I didn’t have to call a guy to come out here and charge way too much for a one-hour job.

Tools used:

Klein flat screwdriver
Stanley needlenose pliers, small
Stanley diagonal cutters
flashlight
50# test
duct tape

Knowing how to tie fishing knots is very useful for this kind of thing.

I left maybe ten feet of slack under the house, and I’m going to leave the fish line in place. I am all done letting other people route ethernet stuff.

Those Stanley tools aren’t great, but they’re too good to throw out and replace.

Name Your Amperage

I appreciate the advice on the bare 220 wires I found hanging by my air handler. I would still like to know who left them there, so I can attach them to him at some point in the future.

I was asking whether a 20-amp 220 circuit was useful for anything, and it turns out it would be. Not all 220-volt tools are huge. Someone suggested running a bigger wire with a bigger breaker, but that’s pointless. The whole point of the exercise is to make use of free Romex and a free breaker, which are already in place. Besides, I have a 60-amp circuit and a 40-amp circuit already.

The way things stand now, I can drill one hole, run the wires through it, plop a box on the other side, run a short piece of conduit, and slap on a 20-amp receptacle. That’s a one-hour job, and it will cost nearly nothing. Upgrade to a bigger circuit, and I have to spend more time and money. And I don’t even have a use for the receptacle. Why add it, then? The alternative is to pull out a perfectly good set of wires and disconnect them from the panel.

After all this is done, I get to find out why I have small blackish bees dying in the living room.

Help

I guess I know even less about wiring than I thought.

I found a loose piece of Romex hanging down in my air handler closet. It was live. Tonight I traced it to the circuit panel and tested the voltage. I got 163 volts. I checked another breaker and got 327 volts.

Am I going crazy? I have heard of 110, 220, and 480. I have never heard of these odd new voltages. The weird thing is, it’s on the same panel as a bunch of 110 circuits.

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Turns out I don’t know how to operate a Fluke meter. My meter does not autorange, so you have to have the correct range selected, or it tells you garbage. The actual voltages are 440 and 220.

Some doofus used #12 Romex to run a 220 circuit on a 20-amp breaker, and he left the ground wire dangling inside the panel. So you hook a three-prong receptacle up to this thing, and you think it’s grounded, and then you die, I guess.

Anyway, now I have a nice piece of Romex I can easily use to create a 220 socket in the garage. My question: is 220 with a 20-amp breaker and #12 wire useful for anything? I would think anything that runs on 220 would suck enough juice to pop that breaker.

I Continue Taking Money Out of the Pockets of Fine Contractors

My love for contractors grows every day.

Yesterday I did an obvious repair to an air conditioner condensate drain line. Something that should have been done when it was installed. Today I got up and looked into the air handler closet, and I saw that things were drying up, and I decided to mop the floor with bleach, because it was mildewed.

I vacuumed it out and mopped it. Then I got a flashlight and looked around to see how things stood. And I heard a popping sound and saw a flash.

Guess what? The genius electrical contractors who have worked in that closet left a 220-volt wire hanging down with the end bare! It was touching the floor, which was wet with bleach, and it sparked.

God bless the brilliant contractors. They have outdone themselves this time. I don’t even know which fuse that line goes to. I’m going to have to trace it back and remove it.

This was an electrical Perfect Storm. The wire was bare. It was a 220 line, not 110. It was just the right length to allow the end to touch the floor. And it was in a room where the floor is often wet. I have to congratulate the guy who left it there. He is a marvelous example of his type.

How dare anyone come here and tell me I’m wrong to criticize the practices of the morons who have screwed up this house? How can anyone have the gall to come here and say I’m foolish to do my own work? The pinhead who left that wire exposed could have killed me, and he could have burned the damn house down. If this were not the Sabbath, I’d give a vivid description of what I’d like to do with him and that wire.

I guess I’m cheap and pigheaded for working on my own house, but at least I haven’t left anything behind that could electrocute someone. What if a family with kids bought this house, and one of the kids went in that closet and died? It’s a very real possibility. Forty amps and 220 volts? That could drop you like a bag of wet sand. If that wire landed on a kid and the breaker didn’t trip, his parents would probably learn about the problem by trying to trace the source of the smell of roasting meat.

The up side? The Romex is more than long enough to run through the garage wall. I think I may drill a hole and install a third 220 socket. It would actually be no harder than removing the Romex.

Oh, yeah. I’m the working man’s problem. Don’t blame their irresponsibility, greed, and incompetence. Those things are normal, and we should all tolerate them. I apologize once again for contributing to the downfall of western civilization by taking work away from the inept.

They Fish While I Fix Their Mistakes

I’m having more fun with tools. Today I saw that the air conditioning system had a problem. The air handler was dripping. Every so often, the drain tube fills up with bacterial goo, and you have to blow it out. Naturally, the imbeciles who installed it made no provision for this.

I dragged my butt to Home Depot and got an inline valve, two female fittings, a T, and a hose bibb. I put the hose bibb in the drain tube, using the T to splice it in. I left the spigot facing up, so it would be convenient for attaching a hose. I put two female fittings on the inline valve and stuck it between the hose bibb and the air handler. I bought a cheap hose and spliced a second female end on it.

I connected one end of the hose to the laundry sink, I connected the other to the hose bibb, I opened the bibb valve, and I turned on the water. Then I closed the inline valve, to force the water out through the drain tube. Problem solved. Why the monkeys who installed it couldn’t have done this, I could not tell you.

I still need to put an inline valve on the other side of the bibb, so I can force water back into the air handler, because that end gets clogged, too.

The final solution is going to be a sump pump that shoots this crap out to the location of my choice. I don’t know where to send it, though. I’d like to pump it onto the roof, since there’s access to it from that room. But that would be a little weird, and I’m not sure it would be great for the roof.

There’s a hot water pipe in the little room with the air handler. If I were any kind of man, I’d splice a hose bibb onto that and leave a short hose in place at all times.

I still have other stuff to do in there, to fix the stupid mistakes the monkeys left behind.

But homeowners who do their own repairs are jerks who hate the working man. Remember that.

Reflective of my Healthy Priorities

Here is what I call a productive day of running errands. I went to Home Depot to get stuff to add more shelves to the garage. Then I swung by Publix to get deli cheese to make a pizza.

I felt I had gone long enough without nature’s perfect food. And since I now make better pizza than any restaurant in Miami, there was no point in buying it ready-made. I had two gallon cans of Bonta sauce slowly aging in the cupboard, and as much as I wanted to hoard them, I knew it was time to let one of them go.

Bonta is good sauce. Not my favorite, but good. I don’t think anything can touch Stanislaus Super Dolce. When I finally give up all pretense of willpower, I will sit on the couch eating it out of the can with a cooking spoon. I estimate I’ll be there by mid-2009.

I bought Boar’s Head cheese. Three-fourths of a pound of whole milk, low-moisture mozzarella, and a quarter-pound of aged provolone. Just for fun. Your best bet in a grocery store is the cheese they sell at the deli counter. The other stuff tends to have too much water, or it’s full of cellulose powder, or it just tastes bad. But as I have said, I made a very good pizza with Sargento bagged cheese.

I’m making a fat-free crust, simply because I prefer the texture.

Crap, I’m out of olive oil. I may have to hit the store. I like a little oil in my sauce.

Hope your fifth of July is going well.

Home Depot Fails Again

A while back I broke down and ordered a Ridgid sliding miter saw on the Home Depot site. Chinese tools (i.e. nearly ALL tools) are getting more expensive, and they were offering it at a price over a hundred dollars lower than a Bosch. I have some jobs I need a miter saw for, and as much as I love my Ridgid 10″ non-sliding saw, I have found that it’s just too small for a lot of projects. If you never cut anything wider than a two-by-six, this is your dream saw. Otherwise, grit your teeth and get a slider. Or try to find a way to cut long boards to length on a table saw. I am not willing to fool with that.

The new saw was backordered, and damned if Home Depot didn’t cancel on me. I am so mad. In the stores, the saw costs $50 more. And I have been waiting for it so I could fix more things an idiot contractor ruined. Honestly, you can scream at a lying boob and get nowhere, you can waste your time in small claims court, or you can buy materials and follow behind these pinheads and move on with life. I choose the third option.

I guess I’m going to have to pay the extra money, unless I want the rain to continue pouring through the two-year-old doors Mr. Professional Contracting Genius built.

But homeowners who do their own work are jerks. Remember that. Contractors say so, so it must be true.

Where are the Smelly Protesters?

I am an amazing human being. I built a platform for the pool pump.

I was going to use concrete, but I had a lot of scrap wood lying around, and some of it was pressure-treated, so I figured it would be okay to put it in a humid place where it might get water on it occasionally. I got out the miter saw and the impact driver and the socket set, and before you know it, I had a platform Michael Moore could sit on without crushing it instantly into a quantum singularity.

Note I said “instantly.”

It took me an hour to build the platform, and when I got it out to the pump area, the damn pump was leaking. The “out” fitting was the problem this time. This is another fitting I stupidly used tape on. I had to saw a piece out of a pipe, create a splice out of a male fitting and a female fitting, put the “out” pipe back in with pipe dope, and cement everything together. I hope it doesn’t leak this time. I know I can fix it, but still.

I am now the Apostle of Pipe Dope. That stuff rocks. Explain again why anyone would use Teflon.

The mosquitoes seem really angry. The were forming a cloud over the pump. My guess is, the constant leakage out there found its way into a cavity somewhere, and I have been breeding bugs in it. Now that cavity is drying up. All this time, I blamed the trashy neighbors with the green pool and the crappy cars under stained canvas covers. Oh, well.

I still wish they would move.

A miter saw is an incredible tool. You leave it sitting in the garage on a Workmate, and when you want to saw wood, it’s just THERE. Waiting. And this experience confirmed my indisputable need for a 12″ sliding saw. I had no trouble cutting four-by-fours, but I had to turn the two-by-eight over.

I have decided Ridgid has the optimal 12″ miter saw. It gets reviews nearly as good as Makita and Bosch, and it’s a lot cheaper, and they have that eternal warranty. And my other Ridgid tools seem great. I don’t know how Home Depot ended up with a good product line, but I have no complaints. Today I got an email advertising their weird little 6 1/2″ circular saw, and it looks like that’s a pretty sweet tool, too. It’s very small and light, but you can do a 45-degree bevel in a two-by-whatever.

My 10″ saw gives me a thrill every time I use it. Today I discovered I can get perfect cuts–no fraying–if I saw a little slower than usual.

I wish I could write a book on learning to use tools. Big subject, though. And I’d say something stupid and cause idiots to cut their fingers off.

Pump Fixed?

The saga of the pool pump continues. If this were The Lord of the Rings, right about now, I would be having my finger bitten off by a guy in a diaper.

People were telling me to use various types of unions and whatever to put the pipes together. Instead, I put a female threaded deal on one end, and I screwed a male threaded deal into the pump on the other end. I got a 90-degree elbow and put a short piece of pipe in it. I cemented a threaded male fitting on the pipe. I screwed this mess into the female threaded thing. Then I stuck a short piece of pipe in the male threaded fitting going into the pump, and I cemented the elbow to it. Now if I have a problem, I can cut out the elbow in about one minute and unscrew the other pieces.

Someone told me to use pipe dope instead of Teflon tape. My God, I can’t believe the difference. Why would anyone use tape if they had pipe dope? When you apply this crap, you can plainly see it’s going to lubricate the threads, prevent seizing, permit a tighter joint, and form a better seal. Am I wrong? and it’s easier to handle. Teflon tape folds and twists, and it’s a pain to cut, especially when you have one hand occupied.

I am fairly sure this will work, and if it doesn’t, for three dollars, I bought enough parts to do it all over again.

I saw an incredibly cool coping-saw kind of thing in the pipe aisle at Home Depot, and naturally, I was drawn to it. But I figured I would check the other saws in the tool area. I decided to get a ten-dollar Stanley saw with an ergonomic handle. You put a hacksaw bit in the handle, and the part that sticks out is what you saw with. It’s for tight places. I now think it may have been a dumb buy, since the blade is unsupported. It came with a second blade, sort of like a keyhole saw, but it was worthless for PVC. I got my hacksaw from the garage and went through the pipes in about thirty seconds each.

I have the pump-base concept figured out. The pump sits on a plastic mount that detaches. I’ll take the mount off, build a wooden form of the correct height, and pour concrent into it. I’ll use the mount as a jig to set lag shields into the wet concrete, with bolts already in them. If I put them in with no bolts, they won’t be expanded, and it will be impossible to drive bolts into them when the concrete dries. If it turns out the holes are too big and the shields slip, I have some concrete patching stuff that looks just like concrete. I’ll squirt some in the holes, put the shields in, and start over.

This sure beats waiting for an incompetent pool guy to show up, put the wrong pump in at an inflated price, and do everything badly. The way they always have in the past. The last pump wasn’t grounded. Nice.

I guess PVC is okay, if you’re willing to plan well. The trouble starts when you put things together without considering the hell you may be creating for the next person to work on the system.

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It works. It really works. I turned it on, and nothing bad happened.

Surely I am hallucinating.

This is Breakfast

My cookbook got a link from Protein Wisdom today. Apparently a guy named Dan Collins is blogging over there. I haven’t kept up with Jeff’s business. Hope he’s writing books. Thanks, Dan. And I got a typically flattering link from Cold Fury. Thanks, sort of.

If you want proof that the book works, click the “Death by Fork” link to your left, and your modem will fry as about 10,000 entries spew out in your browsers. But here’s a little evidence that ought to be persuasive. This is breakfast.

I realize this is not a good thing for a fat person–or anyone–to eat for breakfast, but blueberries are only cheap for a short time, and damn it, I wanted cheesecake. It’s as good as it looks. Actually, it’s much better. That’s a big fork and a big saucer, and they make the slice look small. I used a 10″ pan, and that slice is about 2 1/2″ tall. It’s rich and sweet and cold and heavy, the way a cheesecake should be. Light, airy cheesecake is an abomination. I probably took in 800 calories when I ate that slice.

People are suggesting I put flexible unions on the pool pump. I appreciate that. Like I have said, no one in Miami can do anything right. The old pump was installed without unions, and every time it has needed work, PVC doodads have been spliced into the system, so it’s atrocious. I can see why the old timers used cast iron. This job would have been simple with iron pipes. I ought to splice them in now. Maybe I’ll do that. I am really tired of sawing, gluing, resawing, and regluing. And the PVC will be too short to put unions on, once I get done sawing.

A commenter who is apparently a contractor thinks I made a bad choice, doing the work myself. Well, I saved about $150 by bypassing the local blue collar genius who sells these pumps. I saved maybe a hundred bucks on labor. And so far I have spent a whopping $0 on PVC and materials. I had it all before I started. I estimate I will have to spend another five bucks to get the job done. It will be better than anything a professional has done here. In fact, it will solve leak problems a whole slew of greedy slackjaws caused. The only down side is that I have to spend some time working. Well, that’s the nature of life. If you want something, you work.

Some people think I do my own repairs because I’m cheap. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s called “responsibility.” And it’s only part of the reason. The biggest reason is that most tradesmen in Miami are chimpanzees. There is no union. There is no apprentice system. They cause problem after problem because they’re too unskilled or lazy to do things right, and I end up following behind them, doing the work they were supposed to do.

Very often, I am literally unable to find anyone to do a particular job right, at any price. In some parts of the country, you can still hire competent, honest people. Here, much of the time, it’s impossible.

And tradesmen charge too much. I know a plumber who wrote an estimate for three grand to remove forty feet of mostly above-ground cast iron drain pipe and replace it with PVC. Guess what the materials cost. If it’s more than a hundred dollars, I’ll kiss your rear end on national television. And it’s not skilled labor. Some plumbing takes training, but replacing drain lines is simple.

Here’s something tradesmen who aren’t busy enough should think about. Not everyone is supposed to be rich. If you didn’t complete your education and all you can do is lay bricks, you’re not supposed to have a six-figure income and a giant truck with six doors and a custom paint job. Once a homeowner has seen your three-thousand-dollar estimate for half a day’s unskilled work, learning how to do simple plumbing will not intimidate him. If you’re the homeowner, what’s the down side? You spend a hundred bucks on PVC (probably more like thirty), and maybe you spend fifty on a tool rental. So if you screw up, you’re out between $3000 and $3100. If you succeed, you’re out $100 or less. Someone help me understand why that’s not a good bet to make.

If you’re honest and competent and responsible, you’ll probably be busy every day, and you’ll be able to charge twice what the competition does. I haven’t met anyone who fits that description. Generally, my own work–with zero training and very little skill–is far better than what I get from professionals.

Northern Tool has a set of threading dies for $70. That is starting to sound like a very good deal. I have a dry cut saw. I have a vise. I don’t need a snapper. It will be easier to spend the money than suffer in the heat, scraping old PVC with sandpaper. Screw it. I’ll buy the tools. After that, I’ll make a pipe that screws into the pump. Then I’ll make one that screws into a threaded PVC fitting on the other side. I’ll join them to an elbow, after tightening the joints, with PVC cement. In the future, when a pump goes bad, I’ll cut out the elbow, unscrew the dead ends, throw them away, and make new parts in fifteen minutes. I don’t need this BS. I don’t need to spend my days waiting for boobs to show up and wreck things and leave me worse off than I was to begin with. Life is short. Let the plumbers starve. When I work, I do a good job, and I don’t cheat anyone. Why should I expect less from tradesmen?

If I were practicing law right now, I would get about three hundred dollars per hour. Plumbers often charge substantially more than that, when you break down their bills. That’s just stupid.

People have also suggested I cast a block for the pump to sit on, and that I put the bolts for the pump into the wet concrete. The problem I see here is that it will be impossible to take the bolts out and put new ones in. Someone else suggests casting lag shields in the block. But I don’t think they’ll have room to expand when I screw the bolts in. I think the best thing is to cast the block and use a hammer drill to make holes for the shields. It’s not a big deal. I have the drill, the bit, the shields, and the bolts. For that matter, I happen to have a bag of concrete. The only real work will be building the form. Lucky me; I have a table saw and a big piece of scrap wood.

Hey…I could weld a base up and bolt it to the floor. But it’s humid out there. Rust. Oh, well.

Anyway, I don’t regret cutting contractors out of my life whenever possible. It has been nothing but a blessing, and every one of you should be striving to do the same thing.

Still Leaking

I’ll tell you what’s fun. Installing a new pool pump in a room with water on the floor, on a day when the temperature is 94 degrees and the humidity is at 65%. This is one of those jobs where you come in the house and drop your shirt on the floor, and it goes “FWOP.”

I had to take off my sunglasses, because every time I looked down, they filled with sweat.

I got the damn pump in, and I guess I didn’t screw the “in” fitting in hard enough. I was afraid I’d deform the threads. Now it leaks. And because it’s PVC, it can’t be backed out unless I saw up the pipes.

Other than that, it looks like a fine pump. I am going to have to build a platform for it. The old one was sitting on half a cinderblock, and it’s not high enough to reach the new pump. I pulled a Fred Sanford and stuffed boards under it, but that’s not going to work. Maybe the best thing would be to buy a bag of concrete with fiber in it, make a form, and cast a block for the pump to sit on. Easier than sawing up wood, and no rot. And I could drill into it and run bolts down from the pump base. I think it’s bad for the joints when the pump shifts during on/off moments. Bolts are probably a good idea.

Now…pity me…I have to get up and make cheesecake. And I forgot to buy sour cream.

You Take the Bad With the Good

Arrgh.

New pool pump. Guess who is about to install it? Here is some advice. Don’t even think about buying one of these at a bricks and mortar store. Store price? $379, plus tax. Internet? $239, plus very reasonable shipping.

I realize that local store owners have to make money, but it seems like anything related to a swimming pool automatically costs 50% more than it should, just as anything related to a boat or a pet bird costs more. The industry seems to attract small timers who don’t understand that quick nickels are better than slow dollars. I would have been thrilled to buy this locally, even at a small premium, but these people must be smoking crack, charging $379 without even checking to see what Ebay vendors charge.

Got a pool? Guess what? Your pump is probably too big. It turns out that 1.5″ pipe will only allow something like 44 gallons per minute. That usually means a pump with one horsepower or less. Yet many pool doofuses install giant pumps that suck huge amounts of electricity while laboring unsuccessfully to push water through undersized pipes. You waste electricity, and the pump wears out early.

More pool trivia: it’s probably cheaper to run a small pump all day than a big pump for eight hours. This is a very small pump, and I plan to run it 16 hours per day. It should do a better job than the old pump, for less money.

I’m getting incredible comments on the book. Thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping for, but it’s still an experience. I felt in my heart that this book was going to reach people, in a way that the others could not. That’s why I wanted to publish this one first. When you try to break into writing, you have to listen to marketing people and agents and experienced editors, and you can’t discount what they tell you. And in the end, you get to publish what they let you publish. Sometimes that’s a good thing. But I have had tremendous faith in Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook ever since the idea popped into my head. And I couldn’t get it to the market until I published those two other books.

It’s a miracle anyone bought the spam book. You have to wade through endless badly written 419 emails to get to the funny stuff. There was no way to avoid that; it’s the nature of the project. It’s worth it, if you’re a real reader. Most book buyers don’t fit that description. They want a quick scan and instant gratification. It’s not surprising that the caveman book was not a giant hit. The show that was supposed to put wind under its wings was killed by the thought police. And how many people just naturally gravitate to caveman books? Very few. This book, on the other hand, ought to have much more appeal. It’s easy to read, the recipes are actually good, and I think I did a creditable job with the humor.

People are putting up Amazon reviews and sending me emails. I am grateful for all of them. Don’t hesitate to ask for recipe clarification. It’s important to me that people succeed with this stuff. One of my pet peeves with professional cooks is that all they care about is making money; they don’t care whether the food they tell you how to prepare is any good. I care. I want people to cook this stuff and say, “Holy cow, this is unbelievable. That was eleven dollars and one cent well spent.” I don’t have a staff of underpaid minions writing my recipes for me. I don’t take credit for things written by faceless underlings, without checking to see if the recipes are good. Other cookbook writers and food personalities do those things as a matter of course. You can tell when you try their awful recipes.

Don’t forget, I have a P.O. box where you can send copies for autographing. With return postage and a suitable envelope, mind you. I plan to check the box once a week. I tried to get a post office box that was more convenient, but it was impossible. They have removed the parking lot at the Coconut Grove P.O. That means I have to cross US 1 and go through a bunch of lights and park in the hood, so I won’t be going every day.

You can send the other books if you want.

I’m going to try to get that cheesecake made today. I don’t see how I can survive without it.

Keep the comments and emails coming, and if you really want to help, email people and tell them about the book. This is the kind of book people like giving to fat men as a gift; you probably know someone who is perfectly suited to it.

Thanks again. I’m out.

I Have a Million of These

Mr. Tool Idiot has struck again.

I had an electric leaf blower in the garage. It was always in the way. I had a Rubbermaid hook designed to hold up yard tools. I figured it was time to introduce them to each other. The hook wasn’t designed for this thing, but I found a way to make them work together, and I decided to put the hook about nine feet off the ground so I could reach up and hang the blower far out of my way.

No problem. I unfolded my ladder and set it up. I drilled a 1/4″ hole with my wonderful hammer drill. I inserted a plastic anchor and used my Panasonic impact driver to drive a screw into it. I marked the position for the other screw. I swung the hook out of the way. I drilled the hole, seated the anchor, and started driving the screw. And when it got down to the surface of the hook IT POPPED OFF NEARLY FLUSH WITH THE WALL.

Damn, Rubbermaid gave me crappy screws! I’ve never had a screw just pop off like that. A decent screw will strip before it will break. This one was almost like pot metal. And now I had half a millimeter of screw sticking out of the wall, with a plastic anchor preventing me from gripping it.

Vise-Grips were useless. I didn’t know what to do. Finally I remembered…the expensive propane torch one of you numbskulls tempted me into buying. I might be able to melt the anchor, exposing more of the screw, and then maybe I’d be able to get it out with Vise-Grips. And naturally, once I had this idea, I couldn’t find the damn torch. So I got up there and held a Bic lighter up to the screw. And believe it or not, it worked. I was able to grab the screw and back it out, and I replaced it with a better one.

I’m still mad. Things like this just shouldn’t happen.

I can’t remember who it was…that person who, knowing I have no willpower, told me I needed a propane torch. But I owe him. Otherwise I’d be out in the garage, sobbing.

While I was out there I noticed something horrible. A little oil where the T-bird sits. Just enough to be annoying. I hope to God it came out around the oil filter gasket. I can just hear the thief with his name on his shirt now. “That engine’s going to have to come out.”

Vasectomy Scheduled

I hate letting mechanics touch my car. Because I’m cheap? No. Well. Yes. But also because they’re crooks, and when you let them near your car to fix something cheap, like tires that need to be rotated, they will often sabotage something expensive so they can fix that, too. “Look, man, there’s a big slit on your sidewall, almost like some illiterate moron with his name on his shirt put it on a hoist and hit it with a box cutter. Better get you a set of new tires.”

If it were not for this, I would take Kim du Toit’s advice and pay the bastards to do maintenance. If a twenty-dollar job really were a twenty-dollar job, I’d have no problem paying to have it done. The problem is, half the time, a twenty-dollar job is a five-hundred-dollar job.

So anyway, I decided to rotate my tires. And what a nightmare it has been. Why is it that everything I try to do with tools is a CF the first time around?

I bought a low-profile jack and some chocks at Northern Tool. I even talked to T-bird owners and found out how low the pad had to be. Then I tried to put it under the car, and it wouldn’t fit. Why? The pad was fine, but the jack itself was too high. The jacking points on the front of the car are maybe 18″ in from the side of the car, so half of the jack has to go under there. And this car is REALLY low. I didn’t realize until I got down there and looked. It’s scary to stick your arm under there when it’s on a jack.

Great. I drove my ass to Northern Tool again and bought a chintzy jack with an even lower profile. The only one they sold which had any chance of fitting under the car. Then I came back and looked at my blog comments, and people were telling me something that should have been obvious: put boards under the tires to raise the car before jacking it.

ARRGH.

I kept the jack anyway, because 1. new tool! and 2. I didn’t want to “Fred Sanford” the job up any more than necessary.

Tonight I jacked the front right tire up; the jack cleared the body by about 1/8 of an inch. I couldn’t figure out what to put the jackstand under. You will love this. In the sweat and misery of the moment, I put it under the A-arm. There was nothing else down there to put it under. I then took off the tire, using my sweet Ebay impact wrench and ungodly huge compressor.

I jacked up the rear right tire, which was much easier. I took it off. No need for a jackstand; I was only going to be a minute, putting the front tire on the rear hub. I did that, and then I lowered the rear end.

I put the front tire on and tried to jack the car up so I could pull the jackstand out. And you know what happened. When the car went up, the suspension extended. So the A-arm was still resting on the stand. There was no way to pull it out. This was one of the many moments when I have wondered whether it was my civic duty to have myself sterilized.

I stood there and looked at it for quite a while. I didn’t want to use that tiny jack to lift the car until the suspension ran out of travel. Finally, I figured out what to do. I got my big jack and jacked up the A-arm until I could pull the jackstand out. Naturally, I had to remove the tire to do this. Then I put the tire back on, lowered the car, and did the other side. This time I used my brain and put the jackstand under the rear axle.

I love the impact wrench, but I can’t figure out how to use it to tighten lug nuts. It has no torque measurement. I use it to take the lug nuts off, and I use it to tighten them most of the way. But I had to use a tire iron to finish up. It turned out my torque wrench didn’t go high enough, so I overtightened the lug nuts a bit, applying pressure to the iron with my foot. I know what I weigh, and I know how long a tire iron is, so I know I was exceeding the required torque.

I’ll bet there’s some kind of doodad you put on a impact wrench that lets you set the torque. Life would be intolerable if there were not. I’ll also bet mechanics in garages rarely bother to apply the right torque. I’ll bet the average dork in a Goodyear store blasts the nuts on there really hard, to avoid exerting himself to check the torque.

I bought the big jack because I figured bigger was better, and also because I figured I might need it if I helped my dad with his vehicles. Now I have a jack which is totally useless for my own car. Score one for Dad.

Another amusing note: I bought a $20 rubber-covered jack pad for my big jack, from Eastwood. I didn’t want to mar up the frame of my car. I had to saw it down to size with a dry cut saw, and I treated the cut end with truck bed paint to prevent rust. And now it won’t fit the only jack I have which works on my car. After blowing $20, I realized there was an economical alternative. A WASHCLOTH. Man, I feel stupid. I folded a crappy washcloth and put it on the jack, and it worked fine.

I rotated those damn tires, though. I finally did it. After paying the thieves at Maroone Ford $17.95 to not do it and say they had.

That’s the tire-rotation story. I wish to God I knew someone I could trust to do it for twenty bucks.