Monday, December 06, 2004

Busy Weekend

Whew....what a busy weekend. I should have taken the day off of work just to rest from the work I did on Sat and Sun.


My Dad has always been there for me whenever I have needed a helping hand, so naturally when he called asking for some assistance, the thought of turning him down never entered my mind.

So I spent most of the day Saturday cleaning carpets and waxing floors in a medical building. By the time we finished, I was absolutely wiped out. It would have been nice if we would have been able to finish everything on Saturday, but we needed to go back on Sunday for another 4 hours to finish everything up.



As we returned back to his house, he asked if I would help him take a look at his van to see if I can help figure out why it won't start. For many men, this is a question that would not generate an episode of rolling on the floor and laughing; but when you ask me to help you with your car, you must have forgotten that anything more than opening the hood and checking the oil is waaaayyyyy out of my league.

This is a 1984 Ford van - he has recently had to replace the distributor because one of the cams that connected to something had fallen off. Or something like that. Anyways, he was to the point where he could get it to turn over, but was unable to get it to fire. He explained the firing order was 1-5-3-6-2-4 and that he had lined up the distributor to start on the #1 cylinder. Through me asking some rather lame questions, we were able to determine that we were most likely not firing the spark plug on the compression stroke of the piston. So we removed the plug and ensured that the piston was at the top of the cylinder and was on the compression stroke. We then rotated the checked the positioning of the distributor to see if it was lined up on the #1 cylinder and it was not even close. WHOOOOO Although it was disappointing to see that it had not been put together correctly, it was a better feeling to know that the reason it was not working was because of this. So we pulled out the distributor and reset it to the correct location. After dropping the bolt into the engine mounts and having to wake up the neighbor to see if he had a magnet we could use to try and fish it out, we were all set to try and start it.


It started on the first turn.


This was the best that van has EVER sounded. I cannot tell you the strange feeling of accomplishment I felt in working on that vehicle with my father. I was tired, I was hungry, I was dirty, I was freezing - but all of that didn't matter as we looked at each other and knew that we had beaten the machine.



Thanks Dad!!

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