...it could only happen to me. Folks, I'm a shade tree mechanic. Didn't have much choice in the matter, being a poor boy it was learn to mechanic or walk. Just kind of a cultural fact of life where I come from. I've argued with some stubborn problems over the last fifty some years, but what the little Jeep threw at me over the last couple of weeks had me scratching my head and wondering if I'd somehow gotten on the bad side of the Witch of Wrench. You know the Witch of Wrench, she goes to the same church as the infamous Murphy whose name is tagged to the laws of misfortune.
First, the rack and pinion spit out a seal. Check the oil, top the gas, and fill 'er up with power steering fluid. Drat and damn. Big parts on the bottom of the car. Not cheap parts on the bottom of the car. But, a straight forward job. New rack and pinion, new power steering pump (the old one took some serious abuse, kind of sounded like four or five hyperactive kids with castanets) so a new one of those, and what the whale, those tie rod ends had been under there a long time and they had to come off anyway so why not, change them before they failed. All well and good.
And then the real fun started. Hydraulics and hoses and O rings and lions and tigers and bears and oh my why is it just pouring out oil and all the O rings keep coming back out looking like a tiny bagel sliced for breakfast? Why is it I torque the fitting to factory spec and by the time I get back to it it's finger loose in the hole? (this was where I began to seriously suspect the Witch of Wrench in the game). Well, O rings don't last very long at all when there's a tiny crack in the steel right under where they go, a couple of thousand psi of oil pressure through a tiny crack pretty well cuts like a razor knife, and when it's a re-manufactured pump and the last guy who worked on it over tightened the fitting to the point the threads were deformed they just don't tend to stay tight. Three freakin' gallons of power steering fluid later all the parts and pieces fell into place: a new hose you install by popping off the grill and pulling out the headlight of all things and courtesy of O'Rielly AutoParts most excellent warranty policy another pump and YEA! power steering with no leaks and no noise.
Of course, when you mess with the rack and pinion you're messing with the steering column, that metal rod that begins at the steering wheel and dives down to the bottom of the car. You have to kind of wiggle it to get it off the old rack and onto the new one, and of course the other end of that rod runs through a couple of switches and what nots, and you guessed it: wiggling the rod pissed off the doodaddy that hooks all the switches on the steering wheel to the rest of the wiring. It just sort of went kablooey. No horn, no cruise control, and a lovely warning light with chime advertising the out of commission airbag.
Folks, they are VERY proud of that little widget (officially called the "clock spring connector") being as how it is part of the airbag circuit and all. Oh, joy. Off with the steering wheel, swap out the the spinny thing. Not a bad job, certainly not worth the six hundred bucks the dealerships commonly quote. Eh, go figure. Standard is to double the price if Suzy the Safety Slut had any dealings in the matter. They do go bad and that one lasted eighteen years. Ok, coincidence maybe. All of these things were, are, just what you get into when you keep an old one running. But... the last one was a true one in ten million, you couldn't make it do that again if you tried.
Some months ago the window lift on a back door blew out. You know that awful grinding sound and the window quits moving and if you're lucky it doesn't try and fall into the door where you have to duck tape it up until you've got the time to mess with it. A pretty common problem, one I've dealt with more than once. What was not common was when the little motor finished it's death agony the door was jammed solid shut. No getting it open at all. Well, being as how I was fighting with the machinations of machinery anyway I decided I was tired of having a three door Jeep and tore into the situation to see what had happened.
Luck was with me, on my model you can get the inner panel off the door with the door closed. Didn't even break any plastic. Belly down across the back seat I stared at the situation for a good hour, and in the end decided my repertoire of creative obscenities, educated and evolved as it is by five decades of fixing things, just could not quite describe what I was looking at. The drive cable that goes from the motor to the little screw jack that holds the window had broken off the screw jack leaving behind a good six, eight inches of casing. Of course, without the casing the cable is just on very long set of threads flopping around inside the door. It fell down to the back of the door, caught traction on the door latch and promptly tied itself in a knot around the latch while screwing itself INTO the latch mechanism by way of the child safety lock slot! Solid steel knot holding the door firmly closed with maybe one inch of room to work. Normally I don't hold with using brute force, but... they'd left me no option. It took an angle grinder, two cold chisels and two pair of vise grips to resolve the issue and get the door to open. And the truly amazing thing? Once open, and a couple of tiny bends tapped back close to straight? The damn door latch works just fine right down to the power lock solenoid.
I guess I should take that for a good omen and take it on down the road. For all of our misadventures in maintenance the little Jeep has been a truly noble soldier, and he has one MASSIVE advantage: he's been paid off for fifteen years now.
