free fixins
so i ducked under the dashboard to check the fuses. shoulda' taken 10 minutes and a trip to radio shack/napa...but instead i ended up spending about four hours under there. of course at some point i wasn't "under the dashboard" under anymore 'cause i'd taken the entire thing apart :)
my a/c kicked out yesterday in traffic. in the rain. that was painful 'cause i couldn't open the windows too much so i just cooked. i knew it was an electrical problem 'cause the heater/fan wouldn't work either. so i checked the fuse today...and it was busted. even more, i found a lot of busted fuses that had been lost under the carpet, all the same rating so they were probably all a/c fuses. i'll try and find out the exact problem later, but i just replaced the fuse for now.
in fixing that, i noticed the a/c head unit wasn't really...secured. it was kind of being held up by the knobs and therefore was really hard to use...sometimes really hard to just TURN OFF. so i yanked that out and fought a mess of wires to find that two of the screw sockets (plastic) had cracked open so the screws had nothing to grab. so i got two larger wood screws and jammed them the hell up in there to secure it, then put glue all over them to give the treads something to hold on to. should hold for quite a while.
then i found that the cable going from the transmission to the spedometer was just stuck through a hole in the metal to the engine compartment. this meant two things...1) i'd discovered why my feet always got so goddamn hot (that engine gets HOT...and with a hole open to the engine, all the heat comes into the cockpit) and 2) the wire would eventually be frayed and fail. soooo i drilled a hole into the plastic floor cover...because the hole that was made for the cable was too small...which is probably why whoever installed the thing just went straight into the metal hole...cut my hand unplugging the cable from the speedometer...threaded it through the new hole, reconnected it, and made a plug around the length of cable that went through the hole to both seal it and protect it from getting cut on the metal. sounds easy, but try doing it almost upside down, contorted in a pretzel and having your hands cramped in a space cluttered with three pedals and a mess of wires...
yeah. fun.
oh...then i had to fix my horn 'cause it shorted. and if you don't know what shorting a horn does...it does this:
*bbbbbbbbbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*
which only stopped after i pounded the shit out of it, ripped the cover off and pounded more....and something sparked and it stopped. i opened it up and the insulators are all cracked, so i hacked it with some electrical tape and it's unposessed now :) goddamn that was irritating...prolly pissed off all my neighbors, too.
oh, and the front right still squeaks. wasn't a belt. must be suspension.
but that cost 239 bucks to get all the parts for (complete front end overhaul)...another 40 bucks for jack stands...which i'll need eventually anyway...and 80 or so for a hydraulic lift...which i'll also always use.
heh, i need to start gettin' PAID.
whew. that was my four hours.
my a/c kicked out yesterday in traffic. in the rain. that was painful 'cause i couldn't open the windows too much so i just cooked. i knew it was an electrical problem 'cause the heater/fan wouldn't work either. so i checked the fuse today...and it was busted. even more, i found a lot of busted fuses that had been lost under the carpet, all the same rating so they were probably all a/c fuses. i'll try and find out the exact problem later, but i just replaced the fuse for now.
in fixing that, i noticed the a/c head unit wasn't really...secured. it was kind of being held up by the knobs and therefore was really hard to use...sometimes really hard to just TURN OFF. so i yanked that out and fought a mess of wires to find that two of the screw sockets (plastic) had cracked open so the screws had nothing to grab. so i got two larger wood screws and jammed them the hell up in there to secure it, then put glue all over them to give the treads something to hold on to. should hold for quite a while.
then i found that the cable going from the transmission to the spedometer was just stuck through a hole in the metal to the engine compartment. this meant two things...1) i'd discovered why my feet always got so goddamn hot (that engine gets HOT...and with a hole open to the engine, all the heat comes into the cockpit) and 2) the wire would eventually be frayed and fail. soooo i drilled a hole into the plastic floor cover...because the hole that was made for the cable was too small...which is probably why whoever installed the thing just went straight into the metal hole...cut my hand unplugging the cable from the speedometer...threaded it through the new hole, reconnected it, and made a plug around the length of cable that went through the hole to both seal it and protect it from getting cut on the metal. sounds easy, but try doing it almost upside down, contorted in a pretzel and having your hands cramped in a space cluttered with three pedals and a mess of wires...
yeah. fun.
oh...then i had to fix my horn 'cause it shorted. and if you don't know what shorting a horn does...it does this:
*bbbbbbbbbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*
which only stopped after i pounded the shit out of it, ripped the cover off and pounded more....and something sparked and it stopped. i opened it up and the insulators are all cracked, so i hacked it with some electrical tape and it's unposessed now :) goddamn that was irritating...prolly pissed off all my neighbors, too.
oh, and the front right still squeaks. wasn't a belt. must be suspension.
but that cost 239 bucks to get all the parts for (complete front end overhaul)...another 40 bucks for jack stands...which i'll need eventually anyway...and 80 or so for a hydraulic lift...which i'll also always use.
heh, i need to start gettin' PAID.
whew. that was my four hours.
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