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To show you what I mean
here is a shot of Jan as she is reclining - oh so elegantly - upon the
hood of this fine example of General Motor's automotive design
excellence!
Just for balance, here I am
standing out in front of the same beast!
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We are both smiling here because I
am fresh back from purchasing my NEW wheels! This is but
the second vehicle I have ever owned so I made it a good one. I
made sure that it would be a nice, practical machine. A machine
that would suit my needs and had not an ounce of extravagance in it.
So, I bought a
pickup truck!
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Damn, what a nice
toy! And damn don't I look white!
Looking back on this from
some four years distance I am rather amazed they actually sold me
anything. My hair has now grown out to about the middle of my
back and I would not be caught dead going out of the house looking like
this guy here on the left.
But hey, the truck still
looks cool!
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This fine machine that is gracing
my driveway is a 1996
Ford Ranger XLT Supercab. It is the four cylinder, two
wheel drive version. I did not opt for the more powerful V-6 as it
would have added too much to the cost. Nor did I really want a
four wheel drive machine as I have no plans for offloading with this
truck. I have been driving my new toy for several years now and I
really like it.
The seating position in the cab
is a real step up from when I was in my VW Golf. Now I can
see much more of the traffic in front of me and that has made driving
much better. I also like the utility of this utility
vehicle. I was always cramming things into my Golf and although
it could hold an amazing amount of stuff, it really doesn't hold a
candle to what this pickup takes in stride.
The Tie-Down Escapade
To assist in this hauling I
decided to install some tie-downs in the bed of the truck.
As this is my truck, not just any tie-down would do. Oh no!
These had to be special. The ones I settled on are ProTracks made
by Eagle Co. in Temecula CA. They are well made and offer a
good degree of flexibility in attachments. The one thing about
them though, was that they required using bolts for the most secure
placement of the tie-down tracks. This was a problem as I have
full bedliner on the truck and did not want to cut big holes in it.
A friend of mine, Joel Vande
Berg, solved this by suggesting I work up an attachment plate to hold
the nuts in place once I had drilled the holes for the tracks. To
have these attachment plates made however, I would have to have them
fabricated. Just my luck that my boss's son is a metal worker
here in town. I discussed this with him and we settled on the
spec's. Here is what he came up with.
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This view shows the
relative size of this tie-down attachment track and the attachment
plate I had Alan fabricate. The ProTrack is on the right
and the fabricated attachment plate is on the left. That is
a Quarter there in the middle to show the overall size of these
items. The attachment plate is a rather simple
affair. Just a 1/8th inch thick metal strip with three holes
drilled in it that match the holes in the ProTrack. At each of
those holes in the attachment plate Alan welded on a Steel-lock
nut. He then painted the plates black and put on some adhesive
tape. |
| The tape really helped in
holding the plates in place while I reattached the bedliner. Here
is a shot of the tape. The attachment plate is sitting inside the front
of the ProTrack. |
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One thing I did learn from trying
to install these things in my truck bed was that I should stick to my
day job! I am pretty good with tools and have made a number of
things out of wood. This was the first time I had done much work
with metal. I learned, the hard way, that metal work requires a
different approach. After much sweating and frustration I learned
that being off by even the smallest amount could really mess things
up. I am used to working with tolerances of no more than a
sixteenth of an inch. For metal work, even work so simple as
this, that was too much slop. Alan was real helpful with
this and we got done what needed to be done. As a result, I now
have the tie-downs I wanted and things are great!
| The Brake Job
Back in 1980 my dad decided
that my future would be well served if we all knew what, exactly, my
aptitudes were. So, when I came home from college for Xmas Break
that fall, he popped for having my aptitude
tested at this little private testing company in Boston. I
would much rather have gotten more Xmas goodies with the money he spent
on that testing but, hey, it was his money. What we learned from
all of this is pretty much what we knew going in to it. Namely,
that I'm pretty bright, have got good hand/ eye coordination, can read
well, and have a good sense of spatial relationships. From this
the testing company said that I would make an excellent brain surgeon
or lawyer. As I was planning a career in the military at the time
(flying
jets in the Air Force!) I wasn't particularly interested in
enduring the horrendous education process to become a doctor or a
lawyer. Not to mention that there was no way either of my folks
could have put me through that sort of schooling. I still have
the test results report around somewhere.
The other thing which that
testing confirmed was that I have a high degree of mechanical
aptitude. I'm pretty good with machines. I already knew
this. My mom already knew this. My dad already knew
this. The testing proved an expensive way of confirming
this. But, he was paying for the testing.
Over the years my mom would
frequently turn to me for help with something mechanical. At work
I got this a lot too. At my first professional job, working for MCI in Pentagon City, Virginia, I eventually
got put in charge of all the IBM PC's in my department. I got put
in charge of the IBM PC
AT's when we got those too! (That's a referential joke meant
to show just how long ago it was when an IBM PC referred to an actual
piece of specific hardware and not just a generalized term.) I've
long prided myself on my mechanical systems knowledge. I have
usually been able to fix most things around my living spaces.
I've made a lot of things. I've done a lot of work on my own cars
too. Mostly this was out of a dire need to save money but it was
also something I enjoyed doing.
Cars were, however, new to
me. I'd never owned one when I bought my first car and I had no
idea what it took to maintain them or what was an indication that
maintenance was called for. That proved an expensive process to
learn as I went through at least one clutch in my VW Golf for not
knowing that clutches periodically need adjustment.
Back in November of '01 I
had another learning experience.
I pride myself on my
mechanical abilities. I also pride myself on being aware of
mechanical things. I knew it had been a while since I'd had a
look at my breaks but their response still seemed fine and I thought it
alright to let such things slide until I had both the money and the
time to fix them. Silly me.
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This is NOT
a good thing.
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| I took my truck down to
the Dualtone
shop in Pacific Beach and asked them check the brakes for me.
This, with the intention of letting them do the messy work of replacing
the pads and perhaps turning the rotors if need be. Well, it was
worse than that. Much worse. It turns out that I hadn't just
worn down my brake pads I had actually worn them out. Almost
through to the liner on the left side and completely through on the
right. The right side was so bad, in fact, that it had caused the
brake caliper to seize up. That's right, the right front brake
was locked up in the locked position. All the time. That is
not a good thing.
Aside from grinding through
the brake pad and liner, this also caused the caliper head to start
grinding through on to the rotor surface itself. In the picture
above here you can see what sort of effect this had. The bright
ring on the edge of the rotor head is where the caliper pistons had
actually worn through the pad and were in direct contact with the rotor
surface.
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| I was not happy about
this. The good folks at Dualtone wanted the better part of $600
to fix this. Most of that was the labor involved. That was
about $400 more than I had to spend on this. So, I had to make
this repair myself. A learning experience indeed.
So, I unlimbered my repair
manual, not the one that came inside the glove box with the truck, and
looked things over. This was a rather basic bit of work that also
involved no specialized tools. It was something that, with a
little preparation, I could do myself in the span of an
afternoon. And that I did.
I was a bit leery of mucking
about with the brake system of my vehicle. Even more important
than making sure that my vehicle would go when and where I wanted it to
was that my vehicle would stop where and when I wanted it to.
Maintaining that secondary ability is central to avoiding a life filled
with unpleasant complications such a medical bills, lawsuits,
replacement vehicles costs, and accident reports.
I read as much as I could
about this and also had the good advice of a friend of mine, Joel (once
again), who had done this sort of work on his own vehicles. It
wasn't exactly a "piece of
cake" but it was pretty direct and straightforward.
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Here it all
is
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In this shot I have already
removed the old brake caliper and the rotor. The new rotor is
that shiny thing in the center of the picture and the new caliper is to
the left of it and right next to the hammer. I needed that hammer
to pound on the ratchet there to the right of the rotor. The
bolts holding the brake caliper in place had locked in there pretty
good. Repeated heat stressing had seen to that. It was a
real pain to loosen those puppies. In the future I'm going to
have a breaker bar for such a job. Ratchets are not made for
intense pounding or stress. Too much and it will break the
ratchet mechanism inside of them, rendering them useless in the
process. I was lucky that such didn't happen here.
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Looking at the new caliper next to the
old one really showed how much wear the old one had endured as a
result of it being seized. That placed a large amount of
mechanical stress and heat stress on it as well. I'm glad it
didn't fail as I was driving along.
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This shot above is what the new
rotor looked like when I finally had it mounted. Placing the
caliper onto that assembly was pretty direct. I had to replace
the rotors on both sides so that the braking action would be equal on
both sides. That was necessary but a pain. That clear hose
and bottle hanging off the side of the shock absorber there is the
brake fluid I drained from the system and caliper in order to pry the
brake loose on that side. A messy thing this. The stain in
the concrete there is from what dribbled out before I got it plugged.
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