Saturday, March 02, 2013

Reluctant Mechanic

One of the problems with not having money is that you have to spend an awful lot of time doing things that you don't actually know how to do, in order to avoid paying someone else to do them. Case in point: on Wednesday evening, Karen's windshield wipers stopped working.

It made for a very harrowing ride home. My car is currently disabled (it needs a new starter), and Tom's doesn't do particularly well on icy roads, so, leaving the boys with Tom for the day, I rode in with Karen on Thursday to see if I could get her car fixed.

Every place I went was either booked or wanted way too much money to even look at the car, and Karen was due at another store at 1:00 for training. While I was looking for someone to repair the car, I was also looking online for information on how to do the repair myself. Much to my chagrin, I found some.

And so, while Karen was inside the Epping store learning about a new cabinet line, I was outside taking her car apart. Not the whole car, just the part under the windshield. I successfully disassembled the cover over the windshield wiper motor and linkage and diagnosed the problem. I went to the auto parts store nearby and found that the part I need can only be ordered from a dealer.

And the dealer nearest to Epping is in Manchester. Sigh.

So while Karen learned, I did some more reading, and found out that there are some workarounds to using the original part. I couldn't fix the car Thursday, but I could by Friday.

And I did, eventually. And temporarily. With the whole assembly on the kitchen table. Using wire ties. It will all be fine as long as the snow isn't too heavy, until I can get either the original part or a usable substitute. Then I get to pull it all apart again.

Okay, I admit it is kind of satisfying to take something that doesn't work and figure out how to make it work. But honestly, I miss the days when the most important tool in my kit was enough money to pay a good mechanic.

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