Several days ago I was driving in front of Mrs. Smoot and I noticed that one of her headlights had burned out. Anyone with my meager mechanical abilities and the slightest shred of common sense would have done one of two things in this situation:
- Conveniently "forget" that I noticed such a thing, hope that she doesn't notice it, and pray that the problem resolves itself.
- Flee the country.
Instead, I chose option 3, which was to blurt out the fact that the light was out, which was obviously going to lead me into an inevitable situation where I was going to have to attempt to resolve the issue, being the Man of the House and everything.
Yesterday afternoon I made the bold move to stop at the car parts store to purchase the new light. I never feel comfortable even going into these places, because all the guys who work there are all hairy and are brimming with testosterone. I have some sort of fear that they're going to ask me some easy mechanical question that will stump me, and then they'll all chase me around, snapping me with towels or something. Probably irrational, I suppose.
In any case, I obtained the bulb after answering all of the trick questions at the parts store ("What make of vehicle is the bulb for?" My response: "A car").
When I began fiddling with it last night, I went in with a positive attitude, thinking that maybe I'd be able to complete the mission before dawn. I took a gander at the general area of the light and quickly realized that I had no idea where to begin, so I broke Guy Rule #1: I got out the owners' manual, and looked up the instructions.
The instructions seemed benign enough. Take out three screws, pull some plastic doodad off, turn the bulb counter-clockwise and like magic, you'd be done. Somewhere in Japan there's a group of very evil men in Suzuki lab coats who are laughing their butts off at the thought of me following these simple directions.
I made numerous trips down to the basement in attempts to locate appropriate tools, and before I knew it there were random car parts strewn throughout the garage and elsewhere into the neighborhood. Once I got to the bulb itself, I found that it was secured into place with a Mystery Clip, which apparently did not like being disturbed.
After a significant amount of time, and some outbursts of questionable language, I got it off and changed the bulb, and then had to figure out how on Earth to get the Mystery Clip back into place. I'm usually good with puzzles, but even my ability to solve the Rubik's Cube didn't help with this mess. After yet another big segment of time I managed to get most all of the parts tucked under the hood in such a way that I was able to close it up. Oddly enough, the light actually works.
When Mrs. Smoot starts the car to head off to work, I am planning on being out of the country, though, just in case.
2 comments:
I hope those testosterone charged towel snappers at Pep Boys reminded you to not touch the bulb with your fingers, or you'll be out under the hood of Mrs. Smoot's car this weekend again. Of course now you are a bulb change expert and know where all of those screws and clips go. You've also figured out that wearing rubber gloves make the job go much more smoothly.
To deal with those inflated parts store egos, (how does earning $7 per/h in a parts store lead to that kind of arrogance, really?) next time mention that your Evo X waste gate is blowing off prematurely and tripping an OBDII code. That'll get you in tight with those boys right off.
They did actually remind me not to touch the bulb, which brought about another set of issues while changing it. I think that whole thing was a practical joke since they knew darned well that it was impossible to accomplish this feat without touching the bulb. I would have worn rubber gloves, but I have a pathological fear of them.
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