Fixing Your Own Car
Posted: Sunday, December 11, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
When we were kids, my brother got things like Mister Machine or an Erector Set for Christmas. I got stuff like King Zor the Dinosaur (a dragon like monster that motored around and you shot at his tail with a dart gun), or a Battle of the Alamo set of plastic solders. His toys led him to be mechanically inclined and not afraid of machines. I turned out to be a pretty good shot with a gun, learned a lot about military history and am always ready to step forward if there are any dragons that need slaying or dinosaurs that need shot.
Of course, the machine almost all of us can’t avoid is the automobile. It’s not like a washing machine, though. You don’t have to be real smart to learn how to use a car (boy, could I give you examples to prove that). Like a lot of people, I know all you really need to know: turn on the key and it starts, step on the right pedal and it goes, step on the left pedal and it stops, if you’re lucky. I had to learn some other things to stay safe; like, turn it off and put it in gear if you stop on a hill, and get out (that was a close one). You learn most things about cars at the ‘school of hard knocks.’ For example: if you’re driving along and there is a hard knocking sound coming from under the car, step on the left pedal. Things could be getting ready to fall off, believe me.
Once, I had an experience with my four-wheel-drive out in Wyoming that made me think maybe I was a better mechanic than I'd thought I was, for a little while, anyway. I was driving way out into the middle of nowhere. Nowhere means something in Wyoming. It’s over twice the size of Pennsylvania with less than 5% of the population. I drove about 15 miles north of Sinclair then off into the hog-backs ridges another ten miles or so on rarely used dirt roads. I was combining a fossil and rabbit hunting trip. It wasn’t until later, that the locals warned me that nobody ever goes back in there, and if I got stuck, I was on my own.
Well, I got stuck; not in the mud or a ditch or anything. My truck broke down. Well, it didn’t exactly break down. I broke it. I decided to drive over a rock that had slid down the hill onto the narrow road, rather than try to turn around. I was going too fast. There was a big noise then, a littlw way down the road, my engine started to overheat. I turned it off right away. I learned to always do that after my wife had to have the engine on her car rebuilt.
I opened the hood. Everything looked the same as it looked the last time I had it open, when the oil light went on back in the spring. Then I noticed something funny. My battery was hanging by wires down next to the fan blade. It took me a while to figure it out. I was proud when I did. I deduced that, when I hit the rock my battery mount broke. The battery fell down and broke my fan belt. The fan belt turned the water pump, so it over heated. Ha! I knew more about cars than I thought I did. “What now, though?” I thought. It would be dark before I could walk back to town—no, it would be two days later, actually.
I kept a box of emergency junk in the back of the pick-up like the locals told me too. I re-secured the battery with a bungee cord. There was no fan belt, though. First I tried one of the big rubber bands they give you to tighten tire chains. It worked! The engine cooled down and I got a couple hundred yards down the road before there was a funny ‘whomping’ sound and it started to overheat again. The rubber band had slipped off and the fan cut it into pieces.
I rooted through the emergency box again and found a spool of twine. It was thin but pretty strong. I threaded it around the pullies and used the knot I use to tie my canoe my caoe onto my roof. It worked! I made it all the way back to the paved road. But, when I headed for town it started to overheat again. Like an experienced auto mechanic, I figured that out too. I was going too fast and the twine got hot and broke. I put another piece on and took my time.
I was feeling pretty good about myself by the time I pulled into the garage in Sinclair. I was just going to buy a new fan belt and put it on, all by myself. Then I'd be off on my confident way. I had the tools. I had the skills. Be damned, Mister Machine....They didn’t have a fan belt in my size. I had to get one that was too long. I had to be real careful on the interstate, couldn’t go too fast or it would fly off, and I was out of twine. It slipped a lot and the engine got pretty warm before I got home, but I made it.
I told everybody I knew about my emergency car repairs. I was proud and happy. Maybe I wasn’t so inept after all. But, that was before the hard knocking sound, when all that expensive stuff fell off and blew out my tires when I drove over it. It was even before the lawnmower caught fire, spread to the forsythia bush and scorched the side of the house. I soon changed my mind. They wouldn’t have Triple A cards if they didn’t want us to use them. There wouldn’t be a million garages if we were supposed to fix our own cars.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Laughing out loud...funny.
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