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other thoughts

Where I play like a car mechanic

[Yesterday: 3.4, today: rest day]

This morning I woke up and it was so nice and cool outside, about 60 degrees.  I decided to jump on a couple of driveway projects I had been meaning to do.

I went to WalMart and to the auto parts store.  At WalMart is was an ordeal to buy a cheap car stereo, some speakers and an install kit for an 1985 Ford F-150.  My radio had died awhile ago and I’m looking at a 12 hour trip in that truck this weekend.

My son helped me install the door speakers, the old ones were completely shot.  Then I took a bit of a break to cover some work activities before trying to install the radio itself.

The radio was a bit of a bust.  I fudged up a mounting for it and I got some of the wires spliced in.  When I plugged it in I got smoke and a bad smell.  I rechecked all the wires but it all looked good.

After another work break I took that thing back to WalMart and got another unit at the auto parts place.  It was same manufacturer, 7 bucks cheaper, but without the CD player in it.  It went in with the same wiring and worked fine.

All of the modern car radios have “aux” ports for hooking up to a smart phone.  This one also has an SD memory card slot and a USB slot.  So I don’t know why anyone would need a CD player anyway.

My mounting worked OK, and the new speakers sound fine.

That was job #1.

I then got back to my normal work and had a busy day.

In the evening I worked on job #2.  When I was under the thing changing oil over the weekend I greased the ball joints.  One of them had a lot of motion in it.  I sure didn’t like that.  So I picked up a ball joint and a loner “pickle fork” this morning.  We got that done before dark this evening.  We had measured before and after and I’m hoping the alignment will be close.  It sure can’t hurt to not have all of that slop in the system.

I need to take back the loner tool tomorrow.  And that will be the end of the auto mechanic jobs for awhile, I hope.