mmmmm, greasy

So saturday I didn't have any plans really, I got up with my wife, took her to work, came home, fell asleep in the chair I'm in right now then when I woke up the sun was working on creeping over the mountains peeking into the valley and I went for a 3 mile run. I got home from that, helped my mom-in-law by helping my dad-in-law move a large tub from just outside the stable in the back into the back of the suburban then helped move a several-hundred-pound-bench over so it was by a stable wall 30 feet away from where it was sitting... dad-in-law couldn't lift one end by himself so he refused that I move it by myself though I was moving it just fine by lifting one end, rotating that end to being further over and repeating the process. So, he intervened, so we lifted an end together (really it felt to me like I was lifting the same as before so I'm not sure how much he was helping but it made him feel better so whatever...) then began again the process I'd previously started...but under his direction.

By the time we'd finished with that it was nearly 11, I still needed to shower then I was going to try to play catch (with a football) with one of my niece's who'd asked me to a few days prior before catching G.I. Joe with a nephew (wifey was working so I could go to a movie she was apprehensive about going to previously....) and the movie turned out to be much more awesome and impressive than I'd been expecting, I was very happy with it and can't wait to buy it on BluRay as I expect nothing less than complete awesomeness from it... :)

During the movie I missed two phone calls, I checked the voicemails when I got out, one was my wife letting me know they were going to have her work two more extra hours beyond the 8 extra that she was working that day, the other voice mail was my nephews mother asking me to help fix her car when I got back, the universal belt had died on her minivan and needed replacing. Well, when I got there I realized it hadn't died but it had shredded half way through and had also slipped off the pullies. Within two minutes of being there my sister-in-law told me that she was taking my car to pick up her daughter (who was at tennis practice and I had passed by where she was when I was on my way over to their place coming back from the movie) and that she'd buy a new universal belt on the way back. She came back (still not having asked to use my car) with the windows down and locked the doors but left the windows down and kept MY keys! (mind you there's a several-hundred-dollar CD player in the car with a USB Jump drive attached to it with 9 gigs of my music on it, not to mention a not-cheap mp3 player in the center console as well as other items like a Flip recorder, my indestructible point and shoot camera and some other items I'd like to not lose at a thiefs whim)..... I didn't know she'd left the windows down as I was laying under her minivan trying to figure out the configuration of how the belt goes on the pulleys with the old-broken belt.

5 months ago I replaced the positive power wire (which had been roughly attached when it had broken nearly 6 months prior but had completely been forgotten about) and we'd searched high and low for where the starter motor was so I wouldn't have to trace the power wire all the way through the engine compartment.... We couldn't find it though so I ended up having to cut through 8 feet of wire wrapping to open up where the power wire was (bundled up with more than a dozen other wires courtesy of Plymouth thereby making it impossible to trace without cutting open the wrapping no less than every six inches). After I found how to put the belt on, assuming there was only one configuration that would leave little to no slack in the line, but without knowing how to create enough slack in the line to actually put the belt on the pulleys it was impossible to complete the job. Total time at this point was 3 hours. The previous time working on the power wire took 8 hours because of having to find for myself exactly how everything went...and jump starting the car because the battery had died... not to mention I did this in the dark, though the sun was still out the whole time I was working on it most recently, Very, VERrrrry fortunately.

So this time I start to send my sister-in-law out to pick up a Chilton's manual for the minivan so that I can have the mechanics-advice I need without going to a mechanic and paying to get it done... While she starts looking (including trying to call her husband who's out in Georgia at the moment) my wife calls asking me to pick her up (I still haven't remotely finished with the universal belt, nor have I gotten my keys back though they'd been back on the premises for 45 minutes at this point) so I told her to call our sister-in-law to pick her up in Our car (when she picked my wife up she didn't relinquish the drivers seat to my wife which ticked us both off that much more....). Just before she left to pick my wife up though she found the manual her husband had bought for the 98 plymouth minivan some 8-9 years prior, low and behold it's the very brand I was hoping for, Chilton. So within minutes of looking in it I've located the diagram for the universal belt on the pulleys and confirmed they're to be in the same configuration I had deduced while under the van (remember I couldn't just look at it when I first got there to find out how it was done because the belt had fully fallen off...) and the only pulley that could possibly have a pivot (which I'd gone as far to trying to move as putting a rod against it and pushing until I was lifting myself off the ground...) was the very same pulley that's supposed to pivot, clockwise (like I'd deduced) only they said to "turn it clockwise to release dynamic tension".

To me a statement like "turn pulley clockwise to release dynamic tension" means spin the blasted thing to the right and it'll open up the tension so you can put the belt on... No, turns out it means get a wrench on the bolt (like I thought we were going to have to do but I don't know where tools are at their place and I haven't had tools in my car for a year and a half now...) and pull it toward the bumper as hard as you can while someone not physically strained from holding the dynamic tension back puts the belt in to place... This is where you find out it Does matter which pulley gets the belt on it last as some Rrrrrreallllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy don't want to get it last, but a few tries (12 or 20 is more like it) later we've got the belt on, moments before we get the belt on though my sister-in-law says to me and her son (that I'd gone to the movie with earlier, he's been helping me this whole time) that we should just stop and she'll take it in to a mechanic on monday... (next time tell me "hey the van broke can you pick up my daughter and I'll get the van fixed monday...? lol) but we got it finished, she started up the engine and it didn't even slip off! I just had black arms. from fingernail to beyond my elbows was literally black on almost every square inch.......... Apparently (as I found out while i was under there) they're burning oil, leaking oil, leaking anti-freeze and haven't had an undercarriage wash in Years, their spacing is off on their spark plugs so oil is leaking out of those sockets and overall they need a tune-up on their van.

But we got it done

I didn't swear

And my nephew got a chance to learn how to fix a car, and realized why he doesn't want a vehicle that has no space to manuever his hands in while working on them... All in all a good 3.5 hours spent. :)

plus we got a full tank of gas, dinner, and a loaf of banana chocolate-chip bread, which combined to all equalize the other issues faced while trying to fix the blasted thing, lol.

So when you hear your vehicle have a slapping sound coming from the engine of your car, pull over immediately, cut the shredded parts off, and MEMORIZE how the belt goes over the pulleys, go to the nearest auto parts store and buy the best belt you can for your vehicle (the better you get the less likely you'll replace it again soon) and if you don't have a Chilton manual for your vehicle pick it up while you're at the parts store... Haynes will do too but Chilton seems to do a better and more in-depth job of taking your car apart and putting it back together... Then go home and use a wrench and loosen the line, remove the old belt, put the new one, and if you do it the right way with the right instructions and don't have to wait for parts to arrive or a spare hand then it should only take 20-30 minutes, including wash up... fun fun fun!