Every single day I promise myself that I will put my Accord back together, strain some used motor oil, put strained old oil in my freshly-painted oil pan, and drive it to work to see:
- If the oil pan gasket cured properly and
- Where the heck the ATF is leaking!
Well, I haven't seen clients in-person, so I wouldn't have driven enough to warm up the ATF so it can leak.
I have had a cold since last Tuesday. I had a couple of days where I was really slowed down, but I will do one thing, like run to Walmart, and then need a 4-hour nap.
I didn't do anything yesterday and I needed a nap!
It gets dark and I tell myself that I will just use a light to work on it. It gets colder and colder and I think "Whatever! I need to fix this!"
Then it gets super late and I think that it would be easier once the sun is out.
Perhaps I am back on my old sleep schedule again. I went to bed at a decent time and woke up after 5 hours for no apparent reason. I went back to bed, remembered Mom yelling at me to help her order Omaha Steaks for my sister for Christmas, and then my book on tape stopped, so I got up to restart it and order Christmas meat.
That took half an hour for no reason whatsoever and then they didn't send me a receipt in a timely fashion, so I clicked the button to print the receipt, saved to PDF, removed the junk, and told it to print again.
It actually printed, killing two trees according to my sixth-grade teacher.
Well, Mom always insists that she needs physical copies.
I always reply "No you don't! You just hate trees!"
Of course, she always loses the physical copies.
Not only did I waste trees, electricity, and toner, but Dad's old office printer made old man noises after I once again went back to bed.
I felt like I was doing all right until I sneezed.
Somehow I was wide awake after sneezing.
That's it! I'm fixing my car!
I found the tightening diagram I printed off before the ice age and my smallest torque wrench.
Then I noticed a torque wrench in a bucket with random tools.
Right! My 1/4" torque wrench is longer than my 3/8" one!
I grabbed two 10mm sockets, the little extension, and the 10mm ratchet socket.
Hopefully that was enough to tighten, if not torque, all 18 fasteners.
It was 11° outside. I grabbed the old towel, stared at the ice on the driveway below my car, and realized that it says 8.7 foot-pounds, but my wrench uses inch-pounds. In my head I thought it converted to 104, but torque is important, so I wanted to check it.
Then I thought about the idiot next door idling their Dodge.
I have been driving Mom's car because I cleared off the snow when my brother demanded to go to the store when all of us were sick, but yes, the windows are covered in ice.
So, I really need to scrape that before driving to see my clients.
By the way, yes, 104.4 inch-pounds.
I will have the time after my clients?