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What did you do this weekend?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Nice weather continues, therefore the enthusiastic work on the Tercel does as well. Only had one day to work this weekend as Sunday was spent with my wonderful wife.
Remember last week when I let loose a lot of potential energy and instructed you, dear reader, not to do the same? Well, today you'll be receiving a similar instruction. You see, those struts assemblies I took apart in an attempt to fruitlessly remove/replace the old shocks and ultimately ordered replacements from a different car; well, those new struts arrived and in order for them to be assembled you have to put all that potential energy (and more) back into them to do so. Still got your full face helmet on? Good, you'll need it.
First off, run the screws all the way out of the spring compressors you bought. Why? Because they're never, ever, greased from the factory and if you want the threads to last and not strip out, a good high pressure grease is highly recommended. So lube them up and run them through their range a few times to get it all in place. Attach the spring compressors to the spring as instructed, while keeping the top/more dangerous end pointed away from you should the whole kit and caboodle let go, and get to building up that jaw shattering potential energy in as even a fashion as possible. Get the spring, carefully so you don't drop it and release the instant-dental-extractor towards that pretty mug of yours, onto the strut and and the spring seat and strut mount in place and bolted down.
Now I know what you're thinking... "Hey AugustusFerdinand, you dumbass, that's the old strut. What the hell are you doing?" I'll tell you oh observant reader! I wanted to know how the overall height compares between the two once fully assembled even though I'll have no way to compare the compressed height once the new struts are in anyway! Who's the dumbass now? It's still me, but I wanted to know so I did it and if you think I'm stupid now, you just wait until you remember that I'll be taking those apart again for the strut rod at the center.
Repeat the potential knockout punch procedure on the new, heavier-duty-and-therefore-more-dangerous, springs and keep on compressing them as your heartrate steadily gets more rapid until you finally have enough clearance to get the upper spring perch onto the square shoulder of the shock rod. Get the perch and mount torqued down, release the compressors, and admire your work/compare it to the old strut while you breathe a sigh of relief that you aren't seeing little cartoon birds swirl around your head. Then remember that you still have to do the other strut. Twice. Because you notice in the side-by-side that something doesn't look quite right and you have the spring perch backwards on the other strut and have to compress the spring and do the whole song and dance again to get it facing the right way.
After correcting the mistake you never admit to making, it's time to remove the lower bushings from the Ford Thunderbird rear shocks so you can install AE86 Corolla lower bushings so you can install said shocks onto your Toyota Tercel while the engineers that designed the suspension you're now cobbling together with seemingly random parts so you have more ground clearance spin in their graves! Actually, that's not an entirely fair statement. I don't know if they're deceased, it's only been 40 years since the car came out... Moving along! The "correct" way to remove and install bushings is with a press.
I don't have a press. (Yet.)
Of course the "correct" way to install springs is with a wall/floor mounted, caged, hydraulic spring compressor too, but we here at Good Enough Garage™ make do with what we can. So we'll use a ball joint press/removal/installation tool. See those threads? Treat them like you'd treat your lover, with sweet talking and lots of lube before mounting them in a vise and busting out the power tools. Align the offending bushing (it insulted me, very offensive) and get to using the greatest of the simple machines, the screw, to evict it from its cozy little home. Do put the removed bushing aside into your bin of random parts, uhh... because you'll never know when you'll need the rear shock bushings from a 9th generation Ford Thunderbird? Shut up, I'm not a parts hoarder!
Align the new bushing and get your stack of various adapters to have as flat a surface as possible and get to pressin'! Repeat with other shock, admire work, then take a shower so you don't smell like grease, dirt, shame, and sweat for dinner with friends after a day spent in the garage in 100% humidity. Do take off the helmet before showering though.
Thank you very much for the full Things I Won’t Work With-style rundown. I’ll continue to regard heavy automotive repair as a spectator sport…
Hello fellow Derek Lowe appreciator!
LOL, ouch! Isn't that just the absolute worst feeling? And it seems no matter the job, they're all full of those same sort of moments. PC building (my "hobby") is rife with them as well. E.g. From a comment about my previous build from a few years ago:
And my most recent build also had several similar moments, like when I realized I had installed the case fans backwards (push instead of pull) on my front mounted water cooler grill, which was a massive PITA to get in and out of the case.
I'm 100% with you on the pre-POST anxiety every time I build a new rig or help a friend build theirs. The slot being on the bottom/backside of the mobo is just an extra kick in the pants. I thought them being underneath the graphics card was bad enough!
Lots of yard work! I just moved into a rented house and have never had to clean up leafs before. Where's the roomba for yard work?
I also got to try flying trapeze for the first time after volunteering my Sunday to do... more yard work for a local non profit.
For the trapeze, you climb maybe about 35 feet up to a small platform above a safety net and grab onto a trapeze. Once you have both hands on the trapeze the support crew say 'ready... hup' and you jump forward with your arms extended while bending back and swing back and forth in a arch shape about 5 times. At the end they say 'hup' again and you let go to land on your back on the safety net. I managed to do a knee hang without trouble and a flip after a few tries; however, my flip looked more like a 2x4 rotating in the air as I forgot to tuck in. It was pretty silly looking. Needless to say there was a lot of safety infrastructure in place for a noob like me and I never felt too at risk. If any of ya'll are into that kind of thing and have a training center within driving range, it's a fun thing to try.
We went on another camping trip. After that, we biked to a bar, then a brewery to meet up with a friend. So glad the weather has been warm enough to be comfortably outside again. I get cold when it’s below 60F, which means I’m miserable for about a quarter of the year.
House work and spring cleaning. I've been living in this apartment for 6mo, yet I still had some boxes out in open and paintings not hung up.
I hung up the last painting. It's a big one: 55"x39" (139x99cm). I did it by myself, without a drill (even though I have one). 3M has these inexpensive claw hooks that work pretty well for paintings. Leaves much small holes than nails or screws.
Finally went through some boxes of junk I've been taking with me from apartment to apartment to apartment. Old college textbooks, notebooks, papers and essays, and even things from high school. Keep in mind that I graduated from high school in 2005, and did the bulk of college in like 2005-2012. Guess I kept all it for sentimental and nostalgic reasons. But no longer. So tossed out practically everything from high school, other than a handful of small pictures and photos of me and friends. From college, tossed out all the notebooks and school work, and then brought a whole box of textbooks to Half Price Books. Where they gave me...$4.86 for the lot! I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on those books, I'm sure. Oh well, at least they're not in my place anymore and don't have to carry them up and down the stairs.
Lastly, as a "reward," bought myself a capture card. Been playing some PS4 JRPGs lately and thought, you know, I want to stream these to Twitch and/or put the recordings on YouTube as a Let's Play. I've wanted to stream for awhile, so I've been giving it a try. It's a little hard having to talk to an empty room for 45-60min, but whatever. Even if I get one silent viewer, that's OK. Gotta start somewhere.
I tried to relax because this last week was stressful. And I'm halfway convinced I really don't know how to do that anymore. It feels like everything I do stresses me out lately. I can't chill to youtube videos because most of them feel like they're fighting some stupid culture war or another. I can't relax with reading online stuff because everything there has turned into a culture war as well. I can't take naps because it feels like I'm wasting what little leisure time I have, and because I have had so little leisure time I haven't been able to put time into many hobbies because I feel I won't have enough time to do anything meaningful. I told myself I wouldn't study Japanese yesterday because I wanted to relax but felt anxious that I was starting to fall behind because of a botched assignment so I ended up studying for a short while.
Boy if I can’t relate to this lately…
Don’t have any easy answers for you, but you’ve got solidarity if nothing else. Turning off go-mode is hard.
Unsolicited advice
Maybe a familiar TV show or well-known book would help? That way you know what you’re getting into, and you can enjoy it without needing to pay too much attention.
I've kind of already done this with the new Chrono Cross release, but it has the tendency of sending me asleep because I'm too familliar with it.
Honestly, regular sleep hasn't been good lately, either. I think I need to ask a doctor to see if I can get some help with that.