I can’t even explain how crazy last night was, complete with step-uncles in the tity bar, a drunk female customer slapping me, and other random drama. Instead I’ll tell you this funny tidbit from the end of the night.
There’s a dancer at this club that’s a little crazy. It’s a long story that I won’t go into right now, but she makes it her mission in life to walk all over town and eat out of the trash cans. If she likes you, she’ll bring you food she found in a trash can. She takes it very seriously.
Last night, one am slowness, she was sitting at the bar. I was sitting a little further down the bar with a customer when an innocent young customer-girl came up to trash-lady and asked where the trash can was. She wanted to throw away her gum.
Trash-lady was thrilled. “Oh, I LOVE trash. Trash is my favorite thing. You’ve come to the right person if you want to know about trash! I love trash!”
“Really? So is there a trash can around here?”
“Well, yes, there’s one right over there, but that’s not the best one. The best ones by the door.”
I think the customer girl was waiting for a punch line or something, because she asked: “It’s better?”
“Yeah,” trash lady exclaimed, “I found McDonalds in it yesterday!”
After work my van started making this knocking noise. There had been variations of knocking and rattling for a while, making me really wonder if I didn’t have some CV joints I didn’t know about. Last night it was really bad though. So bad Bro was barking at the tire as we drove down the road.
I had not a clue what it was. Luckily, my mom was coming to town today and my mom is even more mechanical than me. She drove it and didn’t know what it was either, but she thought I should drive it to her husbands shop and leave it there until he came to town this weekend. She even followed me over there before leaving to finish her errands.
I jacked it up and took the offending tire off, but didn’t find anything. I called my mechanic in Montana and he advised checking the opposite tire. Bingo! This rubber sheild thingy had come loose and was rubbing/flapping on the tire! Suddenly my big problem is no problem! But while I had it jacked up I wiggled it and noticed that my idler arm is a tiny bit loose. Or the tie rod. They both move. 🙁
Oh my goodness. And here I get sick by looking at spoiled food. This girl would probably make me vomit.
I just wanted to say that I just found your blog the other day, and really enjoy your writing. Also, please replace the “little rubber shield thing”, because if you don’t you will have trouble with your cvj, sooner if not later. But you probably knew that already.
Last two days of posts really cover a bunch of ground, Tara. Great stuff, from $1000 credit card charges, to Hobo-Machiavelli-meets-Sun Tzu Stripping, to tie rods&idler arms and tits and road hazards … if this blog isn’t One-Stop Shopping for the Renaissance Reader, I don’t know what the hell else could be. Always worth the read 😀 ~ Irishman
it might be the van, my father has an astro and it gives him all kinds of problems, can you get the same mileage out of a conversion van? id try that.. maybe a ford econoline conv. or something… those things seem to last forever
http://www.mobilityvansales.com/handicap-vans-sales/used-vans/USED-1997-FORD-E-150 CONVERSION VAN-HANDICAP-FULL SIZE VAN-FOR-SALE-WASILLA-ALASKA.htm
Loved your post about entitlement …explains a lot about things I’ve run into in my personal and professional life.
As an example of the former, my first wife sure had a strong sense of en”TIT”lement… As we had children I found myself making compromises to accommodate her …the problem was she took each compromise as simply validation of her self-worth and kept raising the ante…ante’d herself right out the door eventually…then wanted back in when her latest love-interest kicked her out…surprised the hell out of her when I said no thanks.
Anyway, none of my business …(as night follow day…when people say that they are going to give you advice anyway)…so sounds like it’s time for a “newer” van, you might consider something foreign like a 2 or 3 year old Toyota etc as the reliability issues you face are less common in something that was built by a company that actually believes they are building vehicles to last. As an example: water pumps rarely go in foreign vehicles as they are A: better designed as they actually try to improve instead of using 40 year old technology and B: are made from better materials.
I had worked for years on family vehicles that always had oil leaks around valve pans…even had one in a brand new Ford…the same week I took delivery of the Ford I did a tune up for a gal I knew who had a 25 year old Benz..no oil leaks…reason: a simple pure rubber O-ring type seal …actually natural rubber…more expensive than normal gaskets…but considering the environmental damage alone…constant oil leaking onto the street…then into streams etc…well worth it…rubber from a tree making it maybe …what…3 times more expensive than synthetic gaskets but lasting probably 10 times as long…and actually doing what it was designed to do…keeping oil in and dust and mositure out.
GM and Ford (and to some extent Chrysler) build as cheaply as possible and then advertise around a “Made in America” mantra. Wave the flag and get the public to buy substandard vehicles. Worked for years …less effective lately.
As an example …body shops will always rebuild a three year old Toyota Camry but almost never the same age equivalent GM…the Toyota still has enough residual value but the GM (even with much less damage)…is considered not worth the trouble.
I drove a Pinto for years and the only parts that worked well were the European sourced parts.
Wow, I can’t believe you guys are telling me to get another van. It was a little peice of rubber/plastic! There’s nothing wrong with it! Idler arms go out eventually on ANY vehicle. And no, I wouldn’t get anywhere near the gas mileage on a big ol conversion van.
But yeah… for my next van I want one of those nifty toyota campers that they don’t make anymore. 🙁
We call that rubber thing a CV boot. Did it rip, or did it just come loose? I used to tie my on with one of those plastic garden ties which was the perfect size, because the mechanics could never make it stay on with whatever they tried and it was too big a job to take it off and replace it.
This was the first thing to make me laugh today!
Thank you for TrashLady story
Kate, it ripped and came loose. I salvaged a little connecty thing from it and got more exactly like it and then put it back together. It’s holding fine so far…
I remembered after I posted the other day that when I drove in the snow with the boot hanging off that I used to get wierd noise stuff happening that no-one could diagnose. Apparently the snow would build up around the joint somewhere and then by the time I got to the garage in town the snow had melted and so no-one could figure the problem (until someone who knew me and where I’d been driving pointed out that snow would do it). Also when the boot is off I think dust and shit getting in can cause noise that comes and goes. Glad to you got it fixed so easily, mine was a big job just to replace the boot, but I specialise in owning cars that have to be half dismantled in order to fix anything 😉