Long Night

No, it's not what most people would think - didn't go out and party last night. I was working on my car instead. Or more specifically, I was assisting my dad, who was working on my car. I didn't just stand around, I climbed, er, rolled under the car (really a freaky thing to know that your life is basically depending on the strength of the jacks supporting the car). We had to replace the belt tensioner and the serpentine belt. Both were a pain the the ass because of the location of everything. I'm seriously so lucky that my dad was willing to help fix it and didn't tell me to just take it to the shop; I can only imagine how much money I saved.

So here's my car - had to move some things out of the way to be able to get a good look at what was going on with it...

Here's what the belt tensioner is supposed to look like - new, out of the box...

Here's what mine looked like... Yeah, my dad wasn't sure which went first... if the bearings on the tensioner gave and that's how the serpentine belt got caught up in it, or if the serpentine belt started to shred, getting caught in the bearings, and that's what happened. Regardless, it needed to be replaced.

We started working on it around 5, took a break for dinner, and finished at some point after 10. My back really hurts from being hunched over the hood for so long and I really did end up covered in dirt and grease from head to toe. Walked in the bathroom and saw a streak across my forhead... no one even bothered to mention it to me... oh well, comes with the job, right? Just didn't sleep well and I'm completely exhausted.

So, now my car is running again, which is good since I have a test this afternoon and I didn't want to take someone else's car and run the risk of having campus security stick one of those nasty parking violation stickers on it since no one else has a parking decal for my university.  I'm about $90 down, but at least I have a vehicle again.