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Aug. 12th, 2004 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI am so ghetto!
You may ask; "How ghetto are you, Storm?"
I could talk about my phone that I dropped last night, breaking the back cover and making it necessary to squeeze the phone together whenever using it (which is the last straw that inspired me to write this), but that's peanuts.
Remember my car? The 21 year old blue beast with 380,000 miles on it? You know, the one with the tire that I have to hook the compressor up to on random mornings because it has a leak dependant upon the orientation of the valve stem? The one with small gauge electrical wire spliced from the headlights into the taillights to make them come on at night? The one with only a single working light bulb left behind the instrument panel? The one that the trunk latch has been broken on for years and years, necessitating the carrying around of bungee cords when things are in there?
Now it's leaking. No, not oil; I took care of that a while ago. It's leaking gasoline. Andrea got a call at work saying that our 'abandoned' car was going to be towed. She told them that, in fact, it is an entirely functional car that her husband drives every day, but we were still required to move it with great haste. *sigh* I suppose I understand. I wouldn't want a car leaking gasoline and sitting in my parking lot. That's sort of dangerous. So of course I simply parked at at K-mart next door after getting home from class. (I hope it's still there.)
The leak is very minor. I filled it up yesterday and left it parked over night and through the day and at 4 o' clock it was just a couple inch puddle. I talked to my mechanic; a gas tank is going to be very expensive as far as parts and labor; probaby in the $700 to $800 range. He suggested a guy he knows who has a couple of cars for sale. I, on the other hand, haven't quite given up yet. He also suggested simply driving it around until it stops leaking, noting the level, and not filling up past there. That ought to work since it looks like the leak is very high up on the tank. This would make me even more ghetto which, if it saves me having to buy another car for that much longer, I'm completely down with, yo. It just seems like such a colossal waste to junk a perfectly good car that just needs as simple a thing as a big tub to hold liquid. (Just saw Andrea to her car before work and checked on mine; it's still there. I breathed a not-insubstantial sigh of relief upon seeing the old girl still waiting for me...)
On an idea from one of the people I was in class with last night, I looked up the cost of an appropriate fuel tank on Autozone.com last night. Looks like I can pick one up for about $130. On my love's advice, I'm going to check with a client of her's today; a junkyard. If I can find a cheap tank I may borrow space in Darren's (her ex-husband's) driveway to do the swap-out some weekend soon. I need to check my Hayne's manual to see how complicated the job is, but it's an old car; if I can swap a transmission on an F-100, I bet I can swap a gas tank. (Admittedly I wasn't quite able to finsish with the tranny, but there were extenuating circumstances.) If I'm quick, I could probably still make it to faire that day. *grin*
I swear, if it's in any way humanly possible I'm going to get that car to 400,000 miles...
You may ask; "How ghetto are you, Storm?"
I could talk about my phone that I dropped last night, breaking the back cover and making it necessary to squeeze the phone together whenever using it (which is the last straw that inspired me to write this), but that's peanuts.
Remember my car? The 21 year old blue beast with 380,000 miles on it? You know, the one with the tire that I have to hook the compressor up to on random mornings because it has a leak dependant upon the orientation of the valve stem? The one with small gauge electrical wire spliced from the headlights into the taillights to make them come on at night? The one with only a single working light bulb left behind the instrument panel? The one that the trunk latch has been broken on for years and years, necessitating the carrying around of bungee cords when things are in there?
Now it's leaking. No, not oil; I took care of that a while ago. It's leaking gasoline. Andrea got a call at work saying that our 'abandoned' car was going to be towed. She told them that, in fact, it is an entirely functional car that her husband drives every day, but we were still required to move it with great haste. *sigh* I suppose I understand. I wouldn't want a car leaking gasoline and sitting in my parking lot. That's sort of dangerous. So of course I simply parked at at K-mart next door after getting home from class. (I hope it's still there.)
The leak is very minor. I filled it up yesterday and left it parked over night and through the day and at 4 o' clock it was just a couple inch puddle. I talked to my mechanic; a gas tank is going to be very expensive as far as parts and labor; probaby in the $700 to $800 range. He suggested a guy he knows who has a couple of cars for sale. I, on the other hand, haven't quite given up yet. He also suggested simply driving it around until it stops leaking, noting the level, and not filling up past there. That ought to work since it looks like the leak is very high up on the tank. This would make me even more ghetto which, if it saves me having to buy another car for that much longer, I'm completely down with, yo. It just seems like such a colossal waste to junk a perfectly good car that just needs as simple a thing as a big tub to hold liquid. (Just saw Andrea to her car before work and checked on mine; it's still there. I breathed a not-insubstantial sigh of relief upon seeing the old girl still waiting for me...)
On an idea from one of the people I was in class with last night, I looked up the cost of an appropriate fuel tank on Autozone.com last night. Looks like I can pick one up for about $130. On my love's advice, I'm going to check with a client of her's today; a junkyard. If I can find a cheap tank I may borrow space in Darren's (her ex-husband's) driveway to do the swap-out some weekend soon. I need to check my Hayne's manual to see how complicated the job is, but it's an old car; if I can swap a transmission on an F-100, I bet I can swap a gas tank. (Admittedly I wasn't quite able to finsish with the tranny, but there were extenuating circumstances.) If I'm quick, I could probably still make it to faire that day. *grin*
I swear, if it's in any way humanly possible I'm going to get that car to 400,000 miles...
