Going back to work is such a PITA after having a 3-day weekend. We made an effort not to have to go back, but unfortunately some other bozo won.
We had the day off from work, but did little if anything in celebrating the holiday, unless of course you count eating red, white & blue M & Ms. We had planned on a hike in Hitchcock Woods but the morning rain put a literal damper on that plan. Instead we just hung about the house and enjoyed a lazy day.
I had 3-1/2 hours free this morning after we returned from the store, so I decided the time had come to paint the brake calipers. I loosened the lug nuts on all four wheels a half turn and put the car on jack stands. I pulled the right side wheels off and when I started on the back left there was one lug nut that required a lot of force to back off. I quit after a half turn knowing just what that meant, stripped or cross threaded lug nut. It felt just like the last time back in April. So much for painting calipers.
What the heck, I thought, I’ll do the passenger side this morning and do the other side at another time. I removed the bolts holding the right front caliper on and lifted it off. Sprayed it real good with brake cleaner, so the paint would adhere to it and rested it on top of the rotor. I then went in search of something to hold it or hang it from while I sprayed it. First I was going to paint it with some silver I had as an undercoat before hitting it with my Garnet Red in a can. Couldn’t find the old coat hanger I thought I had in the garage, so I went back to the car to study my options some more. The more I looked, the more I thought it would be hard to mask all the spots I needed to and make it easy to paint without getting overspray on places I didn’t want to. I relubed the slider pins and put the brakes back together.
Because I had the wheel off in back I lubed those slide pins too before mounting the wheels back on the car. I used some of my recently purchase anti-size compound on the lug nuts as a good measure. For the heck of it, I also put some anti-seize on the left front lug nuts before putting it back on the car. That left me with the left rear and it’s stuck lug nut. I tightened the other three down and slowly backed off the offending nut. Maybe because the car was a little cooler or the other nuts being tight, but I could slowly back it off the stud. When I looked inside the nut I could see that it was very mangled. The stud had a few misplaced grooves but otherwise it looked OK. I put the anti-seize on all of them and carefully tightened up that scarred nut on the scarred stud.
I have zero proof that this is what happened, but from recent experience it certainly seems likely. The knucklehead who changed out my previous stripped stud decided he didn’t want to put a half mangled lug nut on his nice new stud, so he walked around the back of the car, removed a random lug nut off the left rear wheel and using his impact wrench force fed the bad nut on hoping that would re-form the threads. Instead he just created another problem as I am going to have to have the one on the left replaced, plus it might be a good idea to get a new lug nut. You can bet that even though they should do the work for free at the LTS, I’m going to cut my loses and go somewhere else and pay to have it done.
I haven’t given up entirely on painting the calipers yet either. I think instead of the exact match thing I will go get a small can of the liquid Rustoleum in maroon and use that. I had a real good experience with that stuff when I did my old Laguna Blue’s calipers in yellow.
Fell from 2nd place in the AL East to 4th last night. The streaking Yankees and the Blue Jays (who just swept a 3 game series from the Bosox) are now a half game ahead of them in the standings while Baltimore remains on top of the division 5 games ahead.
Tonight is the first of a 3 game weekend series against their arch nemesis the Yankees. If they can’t get motivated to play these guys and break out of their slump it is going to be a long ugly summer. At least the Red Sox won’t go from 1st one year to last the next as long as Tampa Bay remains in the division…
Sort of.
I got tired of the random colors so I ditched them and picked one and used it through out. Now I’m not so sure that was the right thing to do…
I also have added another little section in the right column for acronyms I use or will use here. More to come. Or should I just say MTC and add that to the list. 🙂
Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. They loaded up in Jack’s minivan and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. They pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.
“I realize it’s terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I’m recently widowed,” she explained. “I’m afraid neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house.”
“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “We’ll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we’ll be gone at first light.” The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night. Come morning, the weather had cleared, and they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.
About nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend.
He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, “Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up North?
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?”
“Yes,” Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out. “I have to admit that I did.”
“And did you happen to use my name instead of telling her your name?”
Bob’s face turned red and he said, “Yeah, sorry, buddy. I’m afraid I did. Why do you ask?”
“She just died and left me everything.”
As they say in the business. The June issue of “The Driver” is all ready for mailing. Tomorrow we will make the trip to the big city and postagize the envelopes at Rader. If you are allergic to paper, you can read the gist of it online here thanks to the generosity of Yahoo! Geocities and some of their fine sponsors that the Master’s Miata Club neither approves nor endorses.