The Wife has been trying to learn about football this past couple of months. Number two son made it on the junior varsity team this year and she wants to be supportive. For my part I know just enough about football so as to not have to turn in my M card. But I bluff well and don't get frustrated like he does when explaining the difference between a punt and a kickoff (again). So I have become the favored information source. The two of us were sitting in a bar last night in my big city, holding hands and talking about football. But between plays I was multitasking and thinking about a van problem.
As usually seems to happen on this project, thinking about the problem is the first step. Then, shortly thereafter comes the step “paying for making the problem go away.” For the couple of months I have been hearing a noise from the front of the van. I was pretty sure, even with my limited grease monkey expertise I had a front wheel bearing going out. But over the past three weeks it seems like the volume had been increasing dramatically. Then this past weekend I drove the van home, ninety miles away. I didn’t notice it so much even getting home but when I pulled out of my driveway to drive back to the city it sounded like the van was dragging a rock. I started getting worried.
There is a little family history of letting things like this go. My father mentioned some noise from the front of his two ton truck. A few days latter, driving back home with a load of ground feed from the elevator, he stepped on the brake and one of his front tires kept going in front of him. An understated man, he said the first thought that went through his mind was, “That can’t be good.” Then he said he checked the review mirror next with the hope maybe there was someone behind him who had lost a tire. But by that time the front of the truck had started to dip and he knew where the tire had come from.
He was lucky. Five thousand pounds of ground corn in the back of the truck assured those rear wheels were going to remain in firm contact with the ground. In the front, where the wheel was missing, the truck only just barely scraped the gravel. I might have grown up fatherless had he been empty.
I went ahead and drove my van to the city (don’t judge) but I knew with the noise level going up so quickly I had to take care of this pretty quick. Checking on eBay the part was available from $35-$100 depending on how english-first-language the advertisement read. I went on to watch a Youtube video on how to replace a front wheel bearing. I knew at a minute forty-five into it there was no way I could do it myself. When I was driving in I had been thinking about my options. Obviously I was still thinking about them that night over football.
I know I am going to be home for a long weekend in a couple of weeks. I have to get a little mechanic work done myself the clinic. My plan for the past couple of weeks was to get the van at a local shop at the same time. —Gotta support the small town. The van and I would both be ready for another hundred thousand. Getting this job done in the city though, my transportation options are somewhat limited. It had to be someplace close or someplace on the bus route. I took to maps.google.com and found a shop about a mile from me at work. I read some reviews on the place and it seemed like everyone who wasn’t complaining about ambiance was giving it high marks. Since The Wife was still in town, we dropped off the van at a shop and went out to lunch close by.
The place wasn’t marked very well. Twice I drove by a corner junkyard before I realized the junkyard was an old gas station, now the shop. Walking inside I understood the reviewer’s opinions. The place had a single path. Everywhere flat was piled four feet or more with parts and projects.
It was a double lift shop. Meaning at one time it had two bays for working on cars. Each of the bays fitted with a hydraulic lifts to raise the car up. The first lift seemed to be inoperable, or at least was now. It was in the up position, a very rusty pickup with a heapingly loaded truck bed at the top of it. Well the underside of a pickup, naturally would have quite a few places to hang things from. Let me just say things were hung. It formed kind of a wall. I couldn’t see over to the other bay where the guy was working.
I thought about the glowing reviews. Hoped they weren’t all from the guy’s brother in law and left my van behind. Herself left for home right after lunch, she had Scoutmastering to do that night. I went back to work and waited for my phone to ring. About five I hadn’t heard anything. I was a little nervous because I figured I would have my bedroom back. I hadn’t lined up a couch for the night. I gave them a call and they assured me it would be done by 7pm. I hung out in my office for a while and then made the walk. The van was way quieter on the drive back.
Of course a lot of the fun of a vehicle like this is when you drop it off you can play it straight. Don’t say anything about its purpose. It’s a cargo van, right? Then, when you pick it up you try to tell from the person’s face whether they have had a look or not. This guy’s eyebrows were way up, the expression on his face looking like he really *wanted* to say something but couldn’t. He had totally had a peek. But, he didn’t say a word about it.
I had two jobs done. Replace the front wheel bearing. I also had the guy take a look into the heater fan. During the summer, running the AC, the fan wouldn’t run until you got the van up to about 70. Then it would start up and keep running regardless of van speed, as long as you didn’t shut it off. Once the weather turned cold I suppose the lubricant thickened up in the fan bearings or something. Anyway it ran never at any speed. The shop guy thought the fan was likely shot. I concurred. He said if that was the case he would just replace it.
Picking the van up the final damages were $413. That broke down to $73 for the blower fan. For the wheel bearing it was $129. Labor for the fan was $50 and for the wheel bearing was $125. Never a great time to have a four hundred plus expense, and of course right before Christmas particularly cruel, but my kids shouldn’t really be fatherless either.
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