Vehicle Maintenance

Oil Pressure Sending Unity
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Oil Change
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

It's been busy on the home front. I am finally done with spring football and made it through without too much of a raucous. Unfortunately, on trying to make it to football on time, I went to start the car and was faced with a dead battery. I must have managed to turn on one of the dome lights and not noticed. One of the lights is dead, so i would not have known and it just drained the battery over the course of two days that I didn't use it. Grant and I got it jump started, but I just wanted to run over things to make sure things were A-Ok. I remembered I hadn't changed the oil in about 4 mos, so I decided to change the oil, flush the coolant, pretty much the works. Everything went alright until I went and looked at the oil. It was as thick as molasses and overall looked horrible. The resident mechanic, Grant, said it was due to Penzoil. I didn't want to drive it much in the condition and Jiffy-Lube was closed, so I picked up a filter and Quakerstate(I apparently am a Quakerstate kind of guy now) at Walmart and went to change it. So at about 5 pm yesterday I started the working on it. When I got underneath and started wrenching I realized that I really am not as strong as an airwrench but after 20 min of pulling finally got the oil pan drained. Then came the oil filter, now i have no idea how, but it was on so tight no hand, rubber filter wrench, or other jerry-rigged contraption made a bit of difference. Grant, who was now gone, suggested over the phone to put screw driver through it, and torque it. Still, didn't do the trick, and I now had a mess, and a filter that had no casing. We then went to Paul's Discount (nice classy farming outfit) and got a tractor oil filter wrench, and went to town. That did the trick, but because of the lack of light and size of the wrench, it was discovered the oil pressure sending unit was lost in the battle. Finally at noon today all of the oil changing issues had been solved. So after starting it up I hear a hissing, sucking sound and note that the vacuum hose has been rotted away and air is flowing like a river. So back to Paul's, Auto Zone, and O'Reilley's to find the right hoses, EPV valve, and carb cleaner to get it to work. So this oil change ended up taking 16 hrs and Shellie did have the right to be a little perterbed to be spending her afternoon waiting for me to get everything buckled up, but it's back and better than ever. But I guess now I might have to head to Hy-Vee and pick up some kitty litter to clean up the oil.

Other More Important News

My brother is now back from overseas and is in Texas. His girlfriend, who I don't know if he would be able to do much without, is sending him his cellphone through UPS so he should have it in a couple days. Christy you are a godsend.
I also was able to button up a few more things for the athletic training webpage by getting a few more pictures taken of clinical instructors. Unfortunately, I won't be able to upload them in a while as I do not have administrative clearance, clarence.
Last night, a friend of mine came into town to see his girlfriend, so it was a nice change of pace. We ended up going out and had a couple of refreshments at Joe's Place where a couple of roommates work. All in all, a pretty productive/unproductive weekend, as it depends on who you're asking. My suggestion is to not ask Shellie.