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.