Chevy & GMC Vans

I'm not complaining, just want to share. It's actually kind of funny.

Two weeks ago, my '02 Yamaha with 5600 miles suffered some kind of carb failure. I think it is a case of bad gas ruining the needle & seat valves in the float bowls. I've been messing with it, cleaning, adjusting, etc, twisted a screw off in the carb, still waiting on parts, etc.

Wednesday morning, while drinking my coffee before going to work, I hear a loud metalic snap. Wife and I look at each other, both wonder "what was that?", and go on. I walk out to my van, which I would have been driving in a few minutes, and see the passenger side front fender covering the tire. The torsion bar was the loud metalic snap. So I take the back up, since my wife loaths me using her van, cause I'm real hard on stuff.

I go out today, and my 3rd vehicle, an all original (and somewhat run down) 1981 Monte Carlo, get in, sit down, and notice what looks like steam on the inside of the windsheild.

Some background; this car is in a general state of disrepair, stuff like it hasn't had low beam headlamps for several months. I haven't had time to investigate this, so I usually only drive it during the day, but since the other two choices are down for the count, the Monte it is.

It also doesn't have a very good blower motor, makes noise, smokes, etc, and no selection of where the air comes out of the dash. It does, however, have cold and hot selection. So I choose hot, and low blower, which is all it can do, and the windshield goes completely white with fog. Crap. I smell antifreeze. So I shut stuff off, (I'm going down the road at this point) wipe the windshield with my hand, roll windows down, etc. I also have to manually shift second gear since there's something not right with the trans. And it's 4:20am and the only AM radio station the original AM radio can pick up isn't on the air yet. And it's foggy, cold, I have my high beams on, windows down, and come up behind some slow poke in a truck driving the center of the road at 35. I thought I'd never get to work. And my winshield washer won't work.

At work, I discover that a new employee is the little sister of a girl I had a fling with like 20 years ago when I was in school. I also had a fling with her best friend. And this girl knew ALL about it, and knew me by name. Why she told me about it, I'll never know, but I'm nervous since I'm a supervisor and really don't need my ancient dirty laundry going around. The new employee said that her sister and friend still speak of me...Creepy. I'm baffled as well. Luckily, she works 3rd and I usually work 1st, but had to go in earky to do a fire drill. I'll only rarely see her or her coworkers.

I make it through a crazy day at work.

To try to turn things around, I decide to work on the monte, being that I'm off early and all. I buy a blower motor, heater core, universal washer pump, dimmer switch, and I guess that was all.
I started to change the dimmer, and had a thought, what if, and this is a big what if, both headlights were burned out? Could it be possible, for them to go so close together that I didn't notice one was out?

Proposperous!!

OK, they were both burned out. So was one of the center high beams. Luckily I had replacements lying around (having junk is good). They are even fancy Sylvania Halogen instead of the old (prolly original) sealed beams. Wish I had all 4. What was the chance?

On to the blower and heater core. Easy, piece of cake. Also fixed a couple of vacuum lines.
I have a blower, no more antifreeze leak. Sweet. Sill no control of which vents, but can control the temp and blower, which is good enough, given what I've been working with. It even has High! And doesn't smoke, squeal, blow fuses, etc.

I wire up the washer pump, and it is capable of wetting the ground behind the car. Sweet! The old one could occasionally make a wet spot on the chrome trim at the bottom of the windshield, if it would do anything.

It turned out to be a good day after all.

I'm glad I am not the only one that has days like that. Thanks for the laugh.

i think everyone has at least one of those days you either just give up and go to bed or like rlsllc did and try to turn it around. mind you i can't remember the last time i had a day like that....
actually the day i bought my van was probably the last time started bad, got worse, got pissed went online happened to find my van, ran around and bought it as is (had almost no brakes, then got pulled over by cops 5 mins from work, got to work injured hand (nothing serious), headed home after work to work on NEW van , one driver side lug was seized, then i stripped it, got pissed started to drill it out then bit broke, walked to home depot(only thing left open at that point), finished drilling lug out final changed pads

I was right on the V-Star. New gas, needle and seat valves, new screw (didn't use a ratchet this time ), adjusted the valves, new plugs, removed the dumb AIS that causes backfires, new right motor mount on the left to fix the holes the AIS left, and this bike runs better than it ever has. The needles and seats along with the gas fixed it, the rest was for good measure. I also adjusted the mirror mounts and clutch lever to better fit my height. The bars are already rolled back and the windshield lowered. This bike fits me perfect now.

The van is back on the road, although I need to lower the preload since it is too high now.

The Monte has been going great since the last fit.

Life is good.

LOL, good to hear bro

I had another one of those days today.

My wife was given free passes to the Columbus Zoo and water park, only good today. She got them Sunday, and I asked my boss to let me have today(Wednesday) off on Monday. You are supposed to allow 2 weeks notice for a paid day, but she allowed it. I felt funny about it since she is new, only been there a couple of weeks, and wouldn't know that it was the first request for like 8 months for me.

Anyhow...

Between then and now, the weather forcast has changed from 80 and sunny to a high of 70 and rain all freak'in day. Bummer.

I had a disagreement with my car insurance agent over the phone right before we were to leave, and although I was distraught, I was polite and to the point, and asked him to look into what I felt was an unjust extra fee. I'm alway thinking everyone is out to wring you dry of every cent if you let them.

So we load up anyway, and hope the weather will break. On the way there, I hit 2 detours, and it takes like forever. I also hear a sound from the rear end, like a bad bearing or something. My wife mentioed it before, and I had faintly heard something, but this isn't faint. Argh.

Upon getting to the zoo, it was pouring rain, so we detoured to Wendy's for a bite to eat and to hope the weather lets up.

While in Wendy's, my 4 year old boy, who I love dearly, falls off of the bench and hits his head on a chair, busting it open by his temple, and it gushes blood and he wails like you would expect. I grab a napkin, scoop him up, wipe, look, and then apply pressure to the inch long gash by his temple. I had my wife tend to our 2 year old, and i carried him to the restroom to clean up the blood from my hands, his face, hair, etc, one handed as I held pressure.
He is a tough bugger, I talked softly to him to settle down, and he did, I checked his pupils, looked for other signs of shock, and carried him outside for better light, and to check pupil responce to light. All was well. A fire inspecter from Liberty Township helped with a bandage from his truck, and let us know where the closest Urgent Care was from our location.
Since he wasn't bleeding anymore (must have my healing genes, lol), we went back in and ate. My wife asked about the cut, and I explained what it looked like: an inch long and a 1/4 inch tall, by holding my fingers apart. She thought it would be OK, (note, she didn't see it) and we planned to proceed to the zoo. The inspector stopped by our table again and talked to my boy for a second, looked at his eyes, and said he looks fine, but we might think again about stopping by the urgent care (note, he saw the cut).
We go out to the van, and my wife decides to stop by Kroger and get a couple of smaller bandaids or butterflys for the cut, pulls back the bandaid and says, "Good lord, this is going to need stitches! Why didn't you tell me it was so deep?" I guess i did a poor job of explaining it, I can be a at times. Crap, now I feel bad for my little buddy, although he isn't complaining.
So we decide on the urgent care. I hit the key.......sputter, whur, whur, whur, whur.

????

Key on, no pump noise. I am such an idiot some times. I have had the crazy fuel gauge thing for a while, and a LOUD pump for a while, but did I change it? ](*,) No, I didn't.

It's raining, I'm 50 miles from home with my 2 youngest and wife, in a BUSY Wendy's parking lot, my little boy is hurt, and my lack of well forwarned forsight has stranded me.

My wife says, what shall we do? I say, Get it towed. She says, can't you get it to run? I say no. She says, can you fix it here? I say No way. So we sit there for a while, I turn the key on, listen, off. She has me crank it to prove it won't start. Nothing, just whur, whur, whur.

Not a big one for roadside assistance, I'm clueless, but she pulls the car insurance paper from the cubby, and calls, I didn't even know that we had towing. They took our info, that we were in a safe location, had small children, and an AWD vehicle (requires a flatbed). 50 minutes.

Cool.

Now, how will the family get home? We call her sister who lives relatively close to where we are, she's at work. Brother in law...no answer.

We dig around and find an umbrella, and my wife goes to Kroger to get a new bandage.

I call my Dad (who else, eh?) and he says he'll get a sandwich and head our way. He's like 50-60 miles away.

Cool, again.

Then a few minutes later, the wrecker driver calls, and double checks our location, asks how many of us there are, and I explain, 4; 2 of which are in car seats, and he says no problem. I say I've got a ride coming for the kids, and he says, really, no problem, we have a special extended cab F650 rollback for these situations, and can haul 5 passengers.

I'm in disbelief. How cool.

I get my dad on the phone, he's just a few miles form home, and thank him and get him headed home. The wrecker driver was real cool and polite, and hauled the van and our family the 55 miles home. The insurance covered the $135, the max was $150. Wonder what my agent will think of that. The wrecker company is Shamrock out of Westerville, OH, and our driver was a down home guy who was just great.

Sweet! Home!

My wife took my 1981 Monte Carlo (she called enroute to comment on how GREAT it is), and took my boy to get stitched up. She just called and said all is well, he didn't even flinch when they dermabonded (????) it.

Great!

I ordered a new Delphi pump module from Parts Highway for $279 shipped, I hope that does the trick.

So It's a bucket of KFC and a Netflix movie in tonight, and again, a crumby day worked out Okay.

Life is stranger than fiction, good thing you can see the humour in it

I agree with zam...sometimes you just have to laugh at your own life and how strange it has seemed to work out. Glad your boy is ok and that the tow truck driver was way cool!

That reminded me of a cool tow truck driver we hired once. We went up into the southern edge of the Adirondack Park and had planned for a weekend of snowmobiling with a buddy and staying at his camp. They were calling for -15 degree weather (here at home) and I said it'll be ok... ](*,) So we headed up Friday night and opened camp (this camp will hold 40-50 people comfortably and has NO insulation). We arrived at camp and it was around -20 degrees F. Not too cold really... We wake up after burning 3 wood stoves all night to a temp of -45 outside and around 30 inside. It warmed up to around -25 that day and again went to -45 that night. Sunday we were going to leave. Bill and I got the sleds started and went down to fire up his truck and the SPB. Remember that both of these vehicles had sat in the open and -45 degree temps for 2 days... The SPB's fuel pump just runs and builds no pressure. So I grab a pair of pliers and disconnect the battery. At least Bill's truck started... Crap the fuel line is frozen. We got ahold of the only tow truck in the area and he says, yeah I know where you are...I jump start several camp members every winter. He comes and tows us to another camp members house where he backs the SPB into his attached garage while still on the front tires! This is a standard door too...8' x 8' The best part is the bill...$60 He easily could have charged whatever and I would have been happy to pay.

Sometimes even the worst days turn out ok.

I'm so glad you guys understand. I do see the humor (humour lol), and I'm glad of it. It's healthy.

Dean, I can't imagine those kind of temps. Good greif! Cool that it work out.