Sunday, June 13, 2004

car talk

So. We were driving in the car Friday night and the battery light came on. I have never been in a car where the battery light came on before. Usually the battery is just dead when I get in whatever car it would happen to be. So I figured I would get to it on Saturday, you know take it to Autozone, or Laura could take it to Southern Indiana Tire on Monday. Well we had some things to do on Saturday (pictures for the church directory in specific) so we had to take the car out. Well we noticed electrical things not working so well. It was raining and close to lunch time when we were on the way home so we decided to just go out later. Well it rained a lot later and I got lazy, no other excuse, and decided to figure it out later. We made it to Laura's Aunt Barb's for a graduation party for her cousin Bobby, and then we went to church. Fortunately the car started each time and we headed home.

As a side note, the sermon this weekend was presented by pastor David's son, Paul. He was very good and very convicting (in a good way).

We decided something needed to be done with the car since lights were blinking and our headlights weren't working. I dropped off the kids and Laura at home and took off toward Autozone. I did not make it far. I made it about 1/2 a mile at most and coasted into a parking lot. I walked home and we contacted Rich (local auto expert) and he picked me up at home to go take a look at the car. The battery wouldn't start with a jump so we took it out and Rich took it home to charge it overnight. The next day we took the battery to the car and it started up but the battery light came on. We drove it to Autozone and had it tested. The alternator wasn't putting out any juice. Great news there. Had to go back to Rich's, take out the alternator, and take it back to Autozone to confirm that it was bad. Well, it was. Purchased a new alternator and a new belt for it (just in case) and headed back to Rich's garage. We put the alternator in pretty quickly, or at least we were headed that way until we couldn't get the stupid bolt to slide into the right spot. We finally had to tie a string to it and lower it down so that it wouldn't flip. Now the hard part, putting on the belt. The silly thing just refused to go on, kept slipping off. Well it went on in about 20 minutes and the car started up on the first try. No battery light either. Now I looked at the gas gauge and it was pointing straight down. Somehow it had flipped past the needle and when the car started it would go up to empty. We had to take the dashboard apart and take the instrument panel out to flip the gas gauge around. Finally we put that to rest and moved on to other projects. Quite an unexpectedly productive day.

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