7.12.2005

Kosmobile at 99%

So like I've said before a few times, my car has been through a lot of shit in the past year. I had my front bumper torn off, luckily that was fixed pretty fast (I just had to add this to show my sweet rental car for that period that it was in the shop), then not a month later it was dented again, still haven't fixed that hence the 99%. The big problem I had was the incident where I locked my keys in my car. I had to have a cop help me try and unlock it with a slimjim but that only got me a busted car door and no car keys. If I wanted to get out of the car I had to roll down the window and open it with the outside handle.
Fast forward from that time to early June. My uncle who knows a thing or two about cars was in town and I asked if he'd help me fix it. I had not fixed it yet in hopes that the UHDPD would pay for it since they broke it, but they stopped communicating with me and it was too much of a hassle to go to court over. Anyway, we took the door panel off and after a bit of searching and blind groping I found the problem, a tiny latch that held the door mechanism in place had let go of the mechanism (man that's some crappy description). So after a little straining to get my hand to where it needed to go I got it back in place and my door handle worked perfectly. We put everything back together to find out the windows no longer worked. We dismantled the door panel again and tried to fix it. Tried being the key word, we ended up breaking some of the circuits that made the automatic windows automatic. So that was a bitch.
We spent some time looking around for prices on replacing the part and then I finally decided to solder it back together. Only thing is, I've never soldered anything before. So after a quick crash course I found online I was ready to tackle the task. I actually got it back in one piece, but as I was putting it back into the door I broke some more of it and had to resolder it. I did that about four times until it got to a point where I had nothing left to solder. Apparently, after closer inspection, I had burnt part of the circuit board and the metal piece I was trying to connect was no longer metal but charred ashes.
So I had to bite the bullet and have a professional fix it rather than me trying to put a new part in and possibly breaking that too. The damn thing was just so fragile that any little jolt made it break. I don't know how those repair guys were able to get it together again, but they did. While it was in the shop I got an oil change and had the car inspected too. So at least I got some other things done on the to-do list. Some of the repair guys even commented on how nice my car was. I guess they see a bunch of cars with trash all over the place. Good thing I cleaned mine out before bringing it in.
So now everything is in working order except for that dent that I have yet to fix and I think I may have blown one of my rear speakers. Other than that it's all like the day I got it. I'm going to try and fix that dent on a hot day by placing some ice over it and hoping that it pops back out. I've heard that works, but it could just be a myth. It's such a small dent that I'd had to waste money on having someone just hit it with a hammer. If I can figure out how to get that panel off without breaking anything I might just do that myself...

Yes I've made some changes again. I'm still in this phase. Just feeling it out. Benn helped me a little last night since he's more experienced at this good-lookin' website layout stuff than I.

1 comment:

Kosmo said...

did you not read how i end up breaking the shit i was trying to fix? i don't think you want me damaging your cars anymore than i already have. unless you want me to, then i'm your man.