3rd of July

Everyone knows about the 4th but yesterday I got the day off and I was so excited about that, I took the day off. Not every week you get two Saturdays in a row. I spent it doing an hour-long job on the Jeep. Yes, the whole day. It's a simple matter to replace a power steering pump, especially if you just did it a week ago. A very simple matter indeed. First, borrow a turkey baster from the kitchen to suck out the power steering fluid. Then loosen a bunch of bolts. They are either 1/2 or 9/16, depending on which socket you don't have on your wrench. They are also impossible to reach with a socket wrench, or indeed any kind of wrench unless you are lying on your back in the gravel getting foxtails in your shirt and snaking your arm through oil-soaked steering linkage, or leaning over the top of the engine far enough to ensure your reading glasses, your best ones, the ones you could find, keep slipping off into a grease-covered maze of wires and hoses. Then, if you squint and grunt and contort your fingers in unnatural directions, one of your various wrenches might fit.

After loosening the last bolt one excruciating eighth of a turn at a time and then the last-last bolt which was previously invisible and is the one that allows you to loosen the serpentine belt and force it painfully off the pulley, it is time to consider turning off the hood lamp lest you lack battery power later when you need it. There is no switch, of course. It turns on automechanically when the hood is open. Nor can the connector be disconnected without destroying the plastic housing that has become brittle through twenty years of inland California temperature swings. But there is a ground wire attached with a hex-headed sheet metal screw, and pulling that off will work, and since Jeep is an American brand it is sensible to try your 1/2 and then 9/16 sockets on it. Neither fits, and when you come back out of the garage with your metric set and squint to read a 12 and find that is too large, and you find an 11 is too large, and you rummage around and find a 9 and discover that's too small, you then have to go back to the garage because your set is missing the 10mm socket. There's one in another socket set, and eventually you find it, pull the ground wire, turn off the lamp, and see about removing the pump from the engine compartment.

There's no difficulty with this part, it comes right out once you detach the two hoses and ensure the ground absorbs a pint or so of toxic fluid and twist and turn the damn thing three different ways to extract it from amongst numerous other engine components. My difficulty was philosophical: We had just put in a new one because the old one leaked and was twenty years old. The new one didn't leak but it didn't work either. Not at idle -- worked fine going down the road but the power assist gave out if the RPMs went under about 1500, and this was most disconcerting when taking a corner with the clutch in. It basically felt like the steering had locked up the instant you really needed it, when turning a corner with some litigious-appearing old dame in your path at the stop sign, watching with baleful eye as you screech to a halt half an inch from her newly-waxed left-rear quarter-panel. My son figured out how to rev the engine while turning and thus reduce risk of collision but to my old brain it was backwards to hit the gas while slowing down to make a turn, and after talking to the auto parts store and the pump manufacturer and a handful of home mechanics at work I decided the smartest surrender was to assume the new pump was bad and take it back. I hated doing this because the odds of getting a bad pump seemed somewhat less than that I had done something wrong, and the odds remained somewhat better that I would do the same thing wrong when putting in yet another new pump. I also had a theory that the first new pump had the wrong fluid control valve in it. I'd much rather replace the valve than the whole damn thing, because it was easy to get to. But auto parts return doesn't work that way.

Pulley replacement is fun too, because it involves an obscure tool that costs half as much as the pump itself and is good for nothing else, an old torque wrench, a combo wrench stuck in a length of pipe (for leverage), two legs braced in opposite directions, room on the ground to spread out in, and an assistant who is either very brave or has never done this before.

Love days off. Don't you?

Last night we went to a 3rd of July celebration: Cul-de-sac of midrange private homes, second and third generation owners and renters, fireworks in the street (the legal kind), beer and pool table in the back yard. I enjoy hanging out with my fellow suburbanites with their tatts and piercings, biker-chic slash blue collar style of dress, alternately polite and horrible children, undersized RVs, oversized motorcycles, redneck facial hair styles (e.g. shaven head and full beard), and hard but generous nature. Family men all, and I've noticed that family men who've been to prison are more polite than those who haven't.

The County is out in force this year to clamp down on illegal fireworks and our hosts were warned directly. No wonder, a house burned down behind their cul-de-sac on the 4th last year. It was abandoned, more than likely an insurance job, and clever enough to get done on the 4th of July, but this left the authorities no choice but to be suspicious and vigilant. They could not, however, hang out around the corner all night, and about ten or so an explosion above the rooftops grabbed our attention as a volley of twenty or so airborne Mexican-made fireworks lit up the night and set off the dogs and car alarms. It was a fitting end to a fine low-key evening. Tonight we're off to a shopping mall, where the rock radio station is hosting a display. We're thinking to fill our Nalgenes with beer and wander the crowd, watching faces, looking for familiar ones, and enjoying these magical times when our children are independent and still close to home.