Maintenance Chronicles

Maintenance Chronicles
3-21-2011

Now for a story that’s completely different. It goes without saying that when you are a homeowner of an acreage, father of 5 young children, and owner of 6 vehicles (the result of bad planning – we certainly don’t need all these vehicles) that you are going to have continuous maintenance projects. I don’t say this to complain, I say it because it’s a fact. We never run out of things to do because there is always a list of more projects that need to be done, and/or more things that need to be fixed. I could make you a list but that would make this a long and probably boring story, so this story is about a few recent examples.

One morning there was a knock on our front door. It was a weekday morning so only Ryan and I were home. Ryan was home because he stayed home sick from school that day. When I answered the door it was a guy who said he had a flat tire on his van a little ways up the road. He said he couldn’t get the flat tire off because he didn’t have the tools he needed to do the job. I asked him if he needed a star wrench to which he said no, he didn’t think that would work because the lug bolts were too long. So I got him about 4 different sizes of deep-well sockets and a 3/8” drive ratchet with an extension. He left with these and came back about 15 minutes later, saying these tools weren’t working. I asked him what he thought he would need and he said something with more leverage than a 3/8” drive ratchet provides. So I got him a breaker bar that was ½” drive (larger and longer), but I only had 3/8” drive deep-well sockets, so he would have to use an adapter to make it work. I mentioned that adapters are often the “weak-link” and often break when under major torque. So he took these tools, came back a little later saying that in fact the 3/8” to ½” adapter broke when he used it. So I told Ryan to get dressed so we could go take a look at this man’s situation. We all got into our GMC Yukon and drove the little ways up the road to this guy’s van.

This van was pulled off the highway and into a small dirt driveway by some grain bins that are across from our house and west about 1/10th of a mile. It was very muddy and sloppy around where the van was parked. It was an old cargo van that was supposed to have “dualies” or two tires on each side for the rear tires. This van only had one tire on each side, and the one on the rear driver’s side was flat. This is why the lug bolts were so long and a star wrench wouldn’t work, as he mentioned earlier. This man explained to me that he laid floors for a living. He was coming from Dubuque and heading to Kirkwood College to do a job, and he had over ½ a ton of flooring materials in the back of this van. The tires this van did have were much worn, so it’s no mystery about how he got into this situation. I told him I thought we should go into Marion, which is down the road and west about 4 miles. I recommended that we get the correct size deep-well socket, which I believe was 7/8” in a ½” drive from a hardware store. This way we could use the breaker bar and an adapter would no longer be necessary, so that’s what we did. Since the area around where he had to change the flat was so muddy and sloppy I thought there was no way the scissor jack that he had would work, so I drove us back home, loaded up some 2x4”s and our 3 ton floor jack into the bed of our Dodge Ram pickup, and we drove back to the van. After positioning the floor jack on the 2x4’s and jacking up the corner of his van, he was finally able to get the flat tire off the ground, remove it, and put the spare on. Since he had to use the breaker bar instead of the usual star wrench it took awhile. When he let his vehicle back down off of the jack we discovered his spare was dangerously low on air. So I loaded up all of the stuff I had brought over back into our pickup, and had the guy follow me home in his van so I could drag out our air compressor and put some more air in his tire. When I started up our pickup it started squealing very loud, and then started smoking. I knew that something was wrong with the serpentine belt, so I thought I would try to make it home before it broke, while the guy followed me slowly in his van. As I was backing the truck into its normal parking place, the belt broke and I no longer had any power steering. So I made it home but our truck was now out-of–commission until I fixed it again. The serpentine belt drives everything, the alternator, fan, air conditioner compressor, and the power steering pump. Next I drug our air compressor out and fired it up. I pumped up his low tire with air, and he was on his way, hopefully he finally made it to his destination.


Our 2001 Dodge Ram Pick-up.

So we use this 2001 Dodge Ram Pickup as our hauling vehicle, and sometimes for pulling our horse, and hauling trailer. Mostly we use it to haul our trash to the dump, usually once a month or so since we do not have any sort of garbage pick-up service. The reason the serpentine belt burned up is the pulley of the air conditioner compressor seized-up. Before this happened we had just had the radiator for the transmission fluid replaced, because it had a leak. So now we either had to replace this compressor, or remove the compressor and get a smaller belt. So I first tried to do the latter but I discovered it wouldn’t work because the replacement belt is too small. I discovered from our local auto parts store that they sell a bracket with a pulley that when installed can replace the air conditioner compressor pulley by being positioned in the same spot. We decided that we don’t really need air conditioning in this vehicle anyway because we mostly drive it short distances and rarely take trips with this vehicle. In fact it only can fit up to six people (it’s a quad cab) and we have seven total in our family. So I installed this bracket pulley in place of the compressor, took the smaller serpentine belt back and received a new regular sized belt. I also had to replace the belt tensioner pulley because its grooves were melted due to the old belt got so hot. I installed the new belt, recharged up the battery which went dead because it was sitting for weeks without running, and I removed the field mouse nest that was built under the air filter in the air cleaner (which smelled like mouse pee). Now the truck is back in use.

Another little incident that happened just recently is one of the kids (we believe either Jenna or Ryan, but of course neither of them would admit to it) threw something down our main floor bathroom toilet and flushed so it clogged up. This has happened about 5 or 6 times in the past, I’ve lost count. When this happens I get rid of as much water as I can by repeated flushing, then I turn off the water going to the reservoir tank and unscrew the hose. I remove the reservoir tank and the toilet and separate/remove the toilet seat cover from the toilet. I set the tank and the toilet inside our bathtub with the toilet upside down. Next I take a rubber hose and jam it down through the toilet bowl trap, and I can usually get the toy or whatever is causing the clog to come out the other side. Then I clean them up and reinstall in reverse order.


The toy that clogged the toilet.

Other things I occasional have to disassemble, clean-up or fix jam-ups, and reassemble are our televisions, DVD players, and VCR players. Most of the time I can fix these devices, but sometimes they need to be replaced. I won’t get into our computers, that’s a whole other article.


Our old "boat anchor" 36" CRT TV.


The kids playing Super Mario on the Wii.