BWell, after hampering home at 40 mph, we set out to determine what was making the car shake on Monday evening. We decided it was probably coming from the back and went to take those wheels off. We found out in the process that one of our back tire studs had been cross threaded when we got our tires changed a few weeks back and we couldn't get it off. We were also missing one of the lug nuts and the stud it was supposed to be on was stripped. Yikes! We were glad to find this out at a time when it wasn't necessary to remove the tire.
We were able to get all the mud out without removing the tire, and it was a heavy thick mud:
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| this was probably 20 or 30 lbs. Some of it was still wet after two days. |
The car drove just fine afterward. Phew!
Well Tuesday morning I called the tire place and they took good care of us, but I didn't go get the stud fixed until Wednesday morning because of time.
Wednesday morning, Stan was on his way to work in the Explorer when it slipped out of gear. We've known the transmission was sketchy for a while and even though he was able to get it home, we didn't want to drive it for fear of having trouble somewhere and not being able to get it home. So the Explorer went out of commission. Wednesday evening we decided it was time to change the brake pads on the Corolla and found two more studs had been cross threaded by the tire company, one on each of the front tires, so Thursday morning I spent another couple hours getting that taken care of and all was well with that car, finally.
Thursday afternoon we took the Explorer to the doctor and it's been there ever since getting all happy again. $$$ :)
So that was our week with the cars. Friday evening, Stan began a fun project. Remember the TNC thing he got for his birthday? Well in order to connect it to the ham radio in our car, he need a cable with a jack on one end...and a particular type of plug on the other (you like my technical language, I obviously know what I am talking about). It would have cost $20+ to buy it and Stan decided he wanted to use his snazzy equipment. So on Wednsday night (this is when we realized we should change our brake pads), we ran to Goodwill to see if they had any old computer cables. The first one didn't, but on our last sweep of the cable section at the second store, we found one! For $2! It was perfect. Stan spliced that cord and an old headphone cord, soldered them together, and tada!
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| All ready to start the project at his little work station, we LOVE our garage :) |
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| Ready to start connecting! |
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| Checking the connections |
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| Getting ready to heatshrink it all |
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| The individual wires heat "shrunked" and ready for the black heatshrink to be put on |
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| Using the heatshrink gun (thanks Jeff!) |
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| The finished cord! |
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| Scott was so proud of his dad! |
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| All the equipment set up and it works great! |
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