What a day...

It's about 2 AM as I start writing this, but I only just got home a little while ago from a very long day full of misadventures. It all started when my friend A. texted me to say he wanted some immoral support while replacing the alternator in his car. I had helped him diagnose a faulty fuel pump earlier this year, so he is under the delusion I am a source of automotive know-how.

He must never learn the truth! It's all a masquerade!

He says he was on his way home when the car started running poorly and assorted warning lights lit up his dashboard. He pulled over by another car also in some distress, awaiting a tow truck. When the truck arrived, A. directed the driver to the others, and asked for a quick battery charge to get him the last couple miles home. No headlights, just emergency flashers. His power steering cut out as he coasted into the driveway.

Anyhow, I headed over to help. The weather was wintry, just a hair above freezing and snow was falling. The roads were fine, but the other drivers were not. Driving in slush and snow requires some caution. Increase your following distance. Accelerate and brake gently. Avoid abrupt steering input. Basic stuff. The roads were just wet for the most part, but people were driving like it was all black ice.

I got to his place at about 3:30 PM, and his new alternator had not yet arrived. Apparently the delivery service was also facing traffic delays. We bullshitted a bit, played some Xbox games, checked some how-to videos to prep for the project and waited for the part to arrive. It finally showed up at about 7:00, and we started to set up the pop-up canopy his wife bought to keep the intermittent rain/snow showers off our workspace in his driveway.

I try to take photos when projects start, just to avoid later confusion. This is the original alternator with the tensioner bracket system circled in red. This will; be important later...

It was dark, so we scrounged some lights and started taking stuff apart. It needed a 10mm, 12mm, and 14mm wrench or socket for the bolts. Wait, there's no 14mm to be found in his tools. Usually it's the 10mm that vanishes. As we were pondering this, the dead calm was interrupted by a gust of wind and the canopy took off like a kite. We managed to grab the frame before it went over the fence into his neighbor's driveway. I think it may be salvageable, but we put it away. The weather was not going to cooperate, and we had no way to stake it down well enough to fight another gust, so we would have to just suffer in the open.

It was about 8:00 PM when the lack of a 14mm was preventing progress. All the nearby hardware stores were closed, so it was up to me with the functional car to make the trek to Walmart and find some cheap Chinesium craptacular tools there to get the job done. He needed to get to work in the morning, come hell or high water. He stayed home to continue searching for that elusive 14mm. He was sure he had one.

I was pondering the assortment of wrenches when he texted he had found a socket. I bought some wrenches anyway, and drove back to his place. When I arrived, I was told his dog had escaped and was running loose in the neighborhood. Instead of getting back to the car, we went scrambling though the neighborhood to find the damn dog. If I had a pedometer, I would have racked up some steps, no doubt about it. It was a couple miles at a quick pace as I went one way, his kid went another, his wife went driving around side streets, and he looked for how the dog might have escape din the first place.

Our best guess is the wind gusted hard enough to pop open a door that hadn't been latched tight enough.

At any rate, I finally found the damn canine, but he didn't want to be caught. He wanted to romp and play! He led me on a merry chase around several small town suburban blocks until he decided to loop back toward home, and paused long enough to exchange words with a miniature dachshund in a neighbor's hard. A's daughter managed to nab his collar then, since she had come around from the other direction when she heard the fierce barking of the small rat dog defending his turf. I snapped the leash on, and we finally walked back home.

Uffda!

The unrepentant miscreant back at home.

A that point, I was tired and a bit sore, but we still needed to finish installing that alternator.

A. had gotten some of the bolts back in, but the belt was not properly tightened when we lined everything up with the markings we had made for reassembly. Many bad words were said while we tried to figure out what was wrong. I finally determined that everything except the location of one mounting hole was the same. That one feature was different between the two. This meant the mechanism for tensioning the belt wasn't working properly either. The ideal fix would be a shorter bolt, but we didn't have one. Instead, I finally determined the next-best fix would be ignoring that problem and just tightening everything until the belt was tensioned properly.

It worked. He started up the car, and the belt squealed, so I tightened it a bit more, and then it ran fine, There was just enough juice to crank it, but once it started, it purred like the proverbial kitten. We let it idle for a while to recharge the battery, and he'll let me know in the morning if everything is A-OK, but I'm pretty sure he's fine now.

The hook is completely off that bent flange on the metal bracket. Something is not right here, but it works. now, and that's good enough.

But that's not the end of the misadventures. Oh, no. Not even close.

After a chance to finally eat some late rotisserie chicken I had also bought at Walmart, and a few rounds of video game violence to wind down from the ordeal, I headed for home about midnight. However, my headlights weren't lighting the road ahead of me quite right. The high beams were bright enough, but low beam was almost like no beam. I pulled into a grocery store where I could check everything out. Sure enough, I had a light out. The Friend-Shaped Car has two bulbs on each side, one low and one high. The low beam on the driver's side was kaput.

Fortunately, I had a spare in my glove compartment.

Unfortunately, the FSC has a miserable system for accessing the headlight housing.

I went into the store to warm up my hands and double-check that I wasn't missing any part of the replacement process. I also bought a beer, some chips, and a few other necessities for when I would (hopefully) get home. Then I went back to the car and managed to get the headlight out before my fingers got too cold. The old bulb was a bitch to get out, and a bitch and a half to replace, but I got it done. Something still isn't right. The mechanism to hold in the headlight assembly is fuckered up, too, but I got it reassembled enough to get home.

So I did. And here I am, trying to make the ordeal into a semi-coherent narrative. I am tired, sore, cross as two sicks, and too wound up from the stress to relax, so I hope telling y'all about it helps me wind down enough to get some shut-eye. I have a good beer and good chips for a now after 3 AM snack. Good night to everyone except spammers and trolls! Good comments will be upvoted eventually. Nonsense will be downvoted.

Alas, the beer is gone, but some of the chips will be saved for later. Good night... or perhaps good morning? Whatever time it is, it's been a hell of a day, and I need some sleep. Typos likely remain, but I don't care. I'll edit them later.

HIVE | PeakD | Ecency | LEO

If you're not on Hive yet, I invite you to join through InLeo or PeakD. If you use either of my referral links, I'll even try to delegate some Hive Power to help you get started.