a good saturday with the tools, so far

Much as I have always treated the weekend as time-off, that is time-off from everything apart from laziness, most other folk don’t. They wind up like clockwork toys and rush around making all sorts of noise and fuss. I never understood that; if I finish a week’s hard work I want to chill out, cool down, and relax. There is also something about Saturdays that is meant to be special for working on vehicles and this applies even where I live, out in the margins of the bush. If I drive up the nearest populated roads looking across fences and down driveways I am sure to see at least two or three locals with garage doors open, tinkering at something or other. If I try and ignore the distant sound of revving engines carried across the rural landscape then some bugger or other will hoon down the bush tracks on a dirt-bike and bring the disturbance to me.

This Saturday I lazed as long as I could trying to ignore three neighbours doing various mechanical things that sounded like a combination of generator, water-pump, ride-on mower, circular saw, chainsaw, truck engines, tractors, bulldozer and nail gun were being used or worked on. By lunchtime I gave up and decided to be one of the boys.

The car needs something done to it. It won’t start. I am fed up of using the motorbike in the cold autumn rain and winter is coming so I should work on the car instead of hoping it will fix itself when I am not looking. I have bought a lottery ticket out of the vague and misplaced sense of hope that I will win a million or two, this is my usual first move when vehicles get sick.

Ten days ago the trusty car just stopped - it had fuel and it had spark but it wouldn’t run. I left it a few hours so it could have a rest and think about things but nothing happened apart from me running the battery flat.

The first mechanic I called out said one particular thing was bust - which proved to be wrong after I did as instructed to replace the parts to no avail. The next mechanic said ‘no spark’ and therefore another thing or two was wrong - but I am sure he in fact broke something because the first mechanic and I saw the spark. It is now up to me to find out what is actually wrong because although I do not have their qualifications and experience, I also do not have the money to fart around while they try out their different theories on my car. That usually means replacing one expensive piece after another until it all fails and they can blame the computer system (they know that no-one will spend the required replacement cost for that on an older car). I usually just get new bits until it works again miraculously or else I run out of money and patience then smash into it in a rage with a sledgehammer.

I then go and buy another old bomb from the ‘little old-lady, one-owner, regular service, low miles for age, no aircon but has a tape player’ line of vehicles out the back of the prestigious car dealers in nearby towns. Everyone local but me is rich and buys new wonderful vehicles and the trash trade-ins are what I have to pick from before they get taken to the dump.

But I like this old car of mine a lot. It has only 250,000 km on the clock in twenty years and it has electric windows and electric adjustable mirrors! It also has a handy towbar and newish tyres I put on a year ago and it is full of lots of my personal junk that I do not want to have to transfer to another vehicle. I carry the usual tools and extra windscreen wipers, oil, fuel and so on, and also survival stuff such as sleeping bag, spare clothes and boots, fire-starter, hunting knife, take-down bow and arrows, fishing rod and rain gear, ropes, wire rope, shackles, candles, water and muesli bars. Three decades ago I got snowed in under three-meter drifts on the Welsh moors for three days and the candles kept me from freezing and saved my life. I also have a spare mobile phone and batteries, an electric shaver, radio, solar charger for car battery and a ton of other useful stuff. I know I am living on the other side of the planet in a fifteen year drought now but you never know, I am not neurotic, just careful …

If I add up the fuel costs I would have saved in a lifetime from less weight if I did not carry all that gear I could have got a new Toyota Landcruiser by now. But I would have died that long ago time, caught up in the blizzard. Amazing what you can do with a candle (as the actress said to the bishop).

I shall take a look under the bonnet soon. First I shall shout in advance at the neighbour’s yappie c**t dogs that yowl all day especially when I lawfully walk around my own property or make the slightest noise such as shut a car door from a hundred metres away. Then I shall have a cup of tea and plan the nasty process ahead. Experience dictates this - find some tools and hope they will fit, find some cloth for cleaning hands, find a tarp for under the engine for the bits that fall off and that do NOT get caught in inaccessible nooks and crannies, fetch a container for nuts and bolts etc., take a camera to show how the damn bits came off as it may be weeks before they go back on, a banana, steel-toed boots, torch, bandaids and a cushion. Also a paperback so I can sit in the car and take a breather now and again when my brain is particularly numb and battered by some nasty mechanical conundrum as is sure to happen.

I shall have to take up smoking again, the stress of working with cold metal, tools, oil, grease and well, almost certain failure, always leads to that. Is there more merit in admitting beforehand that I shall certainly weaken and smoke at least three packets of fags then suffer while I give up again, or is the merit in denying it now despite I know I shall be giving in later?

OK. Time to start. Bonnet up. Battery disconnected. That took half an hour alone as it turned out the right spanner was in the shed under a few other half done projects, however I also found the brush-cutter snipper cord stuff I couldn’t find the other week. And some bolts that do look worryingly as if I left them off the motorbike last time I was, ahem, servicing it.

OK. Follow the spark plug leads back and somewhere under all the efi gear and cables and things I will find the distributor. I hope it has a distributor, that is as far as my knowledge and three hours research on the Internet of possible problems and causes and fixes goes. I already found out a few weeks back that it doesn’t have a carburettor. Amazing, how can it possibly work without one of them things? Yes, it has a distributor, a weird one with all sorts of things hanging off it. Camera. Good. Now then, screwdriver is required. Not that one, that other one, no, that other other one, no, a special that other one. Yup, amongst my seventeen screwdrivers I carry ‘just in case’ I have the special other one and one screw bolt thing is soon off. Naturally my fingers have found that the other screw that holds the cap on is underneath and needs a screwdriver with three bends. Other than that, it will need some bits removed around it … air thingy, tube thingies, wire connections. Camera. OK. Spanner, no, socket with extension. Found it quickly enough. Remove five nuts and bolts, retrieve a couple from the tarp underneath, find a longer extension for a hidden bolt, ease it all off. Stuck. Struggle with a clip on a pipe, break a small clip thing that doesn’t look to important and can be replaced with wire, twist, pray and bugger, bent another hidden clip. Oh well, now I can get to the hidden distributor cap bolt. Special other screwdriver - and it is off without too much ripping of the bolt head. Hmmm, next time spray WD40 everywhere first. Ease off the distributor head and BUGGER bits fall over the place. Hopefully find them all and hopefully they will go back in some logical order later. Everything inside is a bit corroded and very worn. Was that the problem? New distributor cap needed perhaps but will try and clean up this one first … wish I had taken a photo. Where did that hour go?

Time for a cuppa and a banana. Recheck my research notes from the web … aha, coil. Seen one of them once. That will be findable and checkable I am sure. Maybe. Back outside. Yup, there is the coil. Oh dear, lots more bits of wire and clamps and things to work out. Shock sets in and instant depression. That is enough for one day. Motorbike trip to the shops, buy cigarettes and two Mars bars, boost the fire, have another cuppa. Lots of bits and pieces in plastic containers, tools all over the place. I admire my own resilience and independence. That will do for now. A good days work. Sort of. For a mechanically defunct philosopher anyway. Nothing fixed but nothing much broken further anyway. No need for sledgehammer, just pray for a lotto win and hope tomorrow is dry too.

I have a kind of mechanical dyslexia. On a bad day I look at an engine and associated bits and pieces and they sort of flow together in my mind into a three-dimensional jigsaw of unconnected meaning. Nothing makes sense, it all blends into a soul-destroying mass that poking a spanner into will not resolve. On those days I look for crow feathers to tie onto the driving mirror, clean the windscreen, fiddle with the radio pre-tuner settings unsuccessfully for the fiftieth time and hope it will fix itself while I am otherwise occupied.

But today I am optimistic. I got the distributor cap off and found all the bits that fell out of it. A good start. Thank goodness I also have a motorbike.