11 July 2009

The Problem of Maintenance

I got home last night at 2200h. I drove to a small town about 45 minutes away where Bob was waiting in his shed for me with the timing belt kit, idler pulleys, water pump, and engine oil filter.

It took a while to remove everything to get to the timing belt. Releasing many of the bolts was easier said than done. At some points we were underneath the car. It was up six feet up in the air. And I held some kind of socket-welded-to-a-crow-bar tool on the bolt while Bob hit the end with a 10-pound sledgehammer as we tried to turn the bolt and remove the crankshaft sprocket. After a neighbor came over, hit it a few more times with a hammer and with the rattle gun. Then, he repeated the process a couple more times. Out came the bolt. All the instructions said were, "Now you can remove the crankshaft bolt." LOL. It wasn't quite as simple as the instructions implied.

The other two bolts were not quite as tight, but they were much harder to reach. We spilled a couple liters of coolant while changing the water pump, but that didn't take long. I also met a neighbor of Bob's who's a retired British Specials Forces dude and another neighbor of Eastern Europe descent who was a mechanic for 18 years. And Lorna prepared morning tea, lunch and dinner for us. We ate dinner on the floor of the shed and got right back to work.

Thankfully, putting it all back together didn't take as long as it took to remove everything. I got to have some good conversation with Bob. He said, "I've experienced some intense pressures in my life, but nothing like Christ went through. To think that he went through those pressures out of love . . . well, I say "Thank you" an awful lot." I've known Bob and Lorna since 1998. At least since then, Bob has been helping people work on their own cars for little to no pay and developing a sense of community among his neighbors.

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