car work
July 28, 2008
I took the opportunity tonight to have my older boys help me with some car repairs tonight. We had to change the spark plugs, wires, distributor cap and rotor on the 1990 Camry, and I thought I could use some help, while teaching the boys a little something, too. Everything seemed to work okay, but we did come across one item of concern. We found that the third spark plug had some oil on it. That just might explain why my car sometimes blows blue smoke out of the exhaust when I start it. Since the maintenance, the idle seems to be a lot better, but I still have something else that I think needs to be done, namely replacing the fuel filter. It really seems to struggle while I’m driving, especially when coming off of the line. I’ve never done anything with a fuel filter, though, so I need to do some research.
Mel told me you fixed the car door in the van too! impressive!
The van door stopped working when my daughter, who shall not be named, played around with the locking dealy thing and twisted it counter-clockwise until it became detached. When you’d try to unlock the door after that, the little metal rod thing that was inside the door would hit the underside of the inside of the door panel and was prevented from raising enough to actually become unlocked. I had to take apart the door panel (technically known as the “whatchamacallit”) a little bit, reposition the “little metal rod thing” into the hole. Then, I was able to shove the “locking dealy thing” back down in and screw it back onto the “little metal rod thing.” See? It’s not that hard.