Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Keystone Mechanics

Waaay back, four weeks ago in Indianapolis, we received an email message that said (paraphrasing):
Hi - I saw your car in traffic today, and I'm intrigued by the technology. When I got home, I noticed drops of an oily substance on my windshield - do you know what that was?
After checking fluid levels, I wrote back (rather sure of myself) that I had no idea what oily substance our correspondent was referring to. Apparently, I should have looked a little closer...

Last Friday evening, when showing Minnie off to some interested fighter pilots (long story), I noticed that one of the fuel injector lines was leaking pretty badly. A quick glance underneath the car revealed that the underbody of the car is coated in vegetable oil. Oops - looks like we found the "oily substance!"

A comedy of errors now ensues where I find out that the tool designed by Mercedes Benz to fix this problem costs $60, and after much consternation and calling of parts departments, I realize that a 17mm crows foot would do the job just fine, for much less. After working for more than two days to research and obtain the proper tool, the actual repair took literally 3 seconds in the Sears parking lot. Sigh.

3 comments:

  1. You appear to spend a lot of time fixing your car. I don't like fixing things. Nor am I a huge fan of paying others to fix them (obviously, I'd prefer they didn't break in the first place).

    If I get one of these conversions on my car, am I going to have to learn to be an amateur mechanic?

    PS (more posts about the edu stops and tech please - mechanics bore us luddites)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Double D: No, the repairs I'm doing only pertain to the age of the car (she's 24 years old!) and my own stupidity. I have not had to perform any repairs to due to the vegetable oil conversion.

    I hope you enjoy the next few posts - nothing in there but edu and tech!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i know one or two things about crow's feet. in a few years, i'll botox your away! here's a picture of mary in 10 years if she keeps smiling all the time: http://focus.aps.org/story/v11/st7

    p.s. of course i'm joking. jenbahn, a cosmetic dermatologist?! hilarious

    ReplyDelete