My wife and I have a 1996 Dodge full-size van. It's eleven years old, but I still drive it to work because my 2002 Honda is with my daughter at college. Better that she drive the newer car to her internship, of course.
The van has been giving me trouble, though; trouble with the brakes. A couple weeks ago, I was hoping to simply bleed the brake system. As you might imagine, the parts are old and rusty . . . and the bleeder screw broke off. I took the rear brake apart and sprayed the brake line fitting with Liquid Wrench for several days. The fitting came loose - yippee! - but as I continued turning it, the fitting broke off from the brake line! Grrrr! So now I could remove the wheel cylinder (the assembly which forces the brake shoes against the drum when the pedal is depressed), but had to replace the line leading to the rear brake. Fortunately, the line was short, leading to a junction on the rear axle. I sprayed that for several days, too, and this time the fitting came loose without anything else going wrong.
Over the course of several more days, I bought a new wheel cylinder and a length of brake line, bent the brake line to (roughly) match that which was on the car, cut and flared the end, installed the cylinder, the line and all of the brake parts and (finally) bled the line. Then I broke the bleeder screw off the other rear brake.
Not that I didn't expect that to happen - I already have the replacement parts! But this whole exercise has led me to re-thinking my doing these kinds of auto repairs myself.
When I was sixteen, and had bought my first car, I told my friends that I never wanted to be tied down to having to see an auto mechanic for car repairs. As I was taking courses in Math, Science, English, Social Studies and German, and had no time for Power Mechanics, they taught me how to change the oil and tune up my car. From there, I learned to do brake jobs, replace radiators, water pumps, alternators, mufflers (and entire exhaust systems), clutches, transaxles, transmissions . . . .
I'm not sixteen any more. It's getting harder to work in the cold, and crawl around on the ground, under the car. Several years ago, while working on a '90 Dodge Caravan, it was sooo cold that I had to get a couple of pieces of cardboard to lay on - the concrete floor was so cold it was painful!
We're on a better financial footing, too, so the extra costs won't "hurt" as much.
But it feels like I'm leaving a part of my life behind, too. I'm kinda proud that I can do the work, and feel like I've been able to save my family a bunch of money over the years. It's "fun", too . . . and it's not programming a computer.
Can it be that I'm feeling a touch of remorse for the old days, or feel the years piling up on me?
Maybe it's fitting that the final episode of M*A*S*H is on while I write this.
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