5/13/08

My plan for the shop on Sunday was to play with that floor shifter I bought for Mr. Wiggly as well as installing the relay for the horn on Darth Versa. I got to the shop and… no wait, first I went to the car wash. The Colonial Car Wash on Hwy 80, or Spur 580, or Camp Bowie West, or whatever the hell the city is calling that stretch of road now, used to sell Texaco gas. Actually, damned near every full service car wash in town was a Texaco there for a while. It really made it hard to get a good carwash since I steadfastly boycott Texaco. I'll run out of gas and walk to another station before filling up at a Texaco. Here’s the short version of the reason: about twenty years ago, their “Pay at the Pump” credit card readers were more like “Pray at the Pump” since they only worked half the time. It pissed me off one too many times so I cut up my Texaco card and swore I'd never use them again. So, to find a full service car wash that wasn’t run by the Texaco Mafia has always been a real treat. The carwash on 377 in Benbrook, next to the Arby’s, was the first, and for the longest time only, one I had found. I decided to give Colonial one try. They almost blew it. I pulled up and made eye contact with one of the dudes. I made a motion indicating I wanted him to point me to the proper lane. He just stared at me slack jawed. I finally just picked a lane and pulled up. I got out and waited for someone to assist me. Finally a managerial type came up and asked what I'd like. I told him “…middle of the road” and fortunately he knew I meant not the cheapest but not the top of the line either. He printed out a receipt and I went in to pay. I walked back out to watch them vacuum and pull the car around. Slack-jaw did the vacuuming and then tried to move it. I could tell the douche bag had no concept of “Parking Brake” because the ass end of the car squatted down as he let out the clutch and chirped the front tires. He did it twice. TWICE! Just as I was about to walk over and say, “Look, cockbite, release the parking brake,” he pulled it around to the start of the wash line. I muttered something about them blowing their one chance at my repeat business and went in to watch the car go through. They hosed it off with the pressure thingy and removed the antenna then rolled the car onto the tracks. Those machines never put enough rinse water on for my liking. There was, and always is, still soap when the car goes into the drying phase of the wash. It got halfway through the dryer and the line stopped. Finally they got going again and some dude hopped in to pull it to the hand drying line. I watched as the soap remnants began to bake on in the sun and wondered just when they were going to finish wiping the thing down. Finally slack-jaw himself came over and started to work on it. He’d spray it with some blue stuff and then wipe it clean and move on to another section. After he’d cleaned the exterior and interior, he hit the wheels with something and shined up the tires. I have to admit the car did look good when he was done. Oh hell, who am I kidding? The car looked fucking awesome! I tipped slack-jaw and took off down the road. The tire dressing made the tires a bit slippery but it was ok, I wasn’t going to an autocross or anything. I got to the shop and had a look under the hood at locations for the horn relay. I clicked the remote to lock the car but the horns didn’t honk. I figured the honk was just too short to make it all happen so I tried the “Panic” button. The horn honked once but that was it. The lights kept flashing but no more honks. For some reason I decided I didn’t really want to install the relay just then and went in to look at Mr. Wiggly’s shifter. I laid out all the parts and began the assembly process. The instructions were a bit confusing so I had to assemble and disassemble it a few times before fingering it out. Before long it became apparent that there was no way to mount the shifter. Juan was supposed to bolt it to a bracket which then bolted to the transmission but the bolt was woefully too short. “Woefully,” I like that word. Anyhoo, I decided to have a look at the floor of the van for inspiration. I decided that my best bet would be to mount the shifter to the floor and not to the transmission. I went back in and disassembled it one more time. I welded on two of the right angle widgets that came with the kit as mounting tabs and reassembled the shifter. I took the lever out to the van to see where I could mount it. It is going to be pretty far back behind the seats but I think it will work. I had to straighten out the “S” curve on the stick so now it points straight up at about a 45° angle towards the doghouse. I mounted the shifter in the vice and played with running it through the gears for a while. I finally decided I was not going to drill the big assed hole in the floor yet and cleaned up to go home. As I was driving out I tried the horn. It didn’t work. I pulled back up to the shop and thought, “Well, I guess I have to install the relay after all.” I found the horn fuse and, sure enough, it was blown. I looked at the situation for a bit and decided to just replace the 10 amp fuse with a 15 amp for the time being. I really didn’t want to install that relay just then. I closed up and went to the store for a fuse. With the new 15 amp fuse in place the horn worked. I'm not sure if it will hold up for a sustained honk though. It’s a gamble, I know. I went on home and now I'm here at work. And on that note, I think I'll call today’s rant complete.