You gotta have skills!

Well Babba's on another forced vacation. If I'm not on my way to Vegas than I'll be home working on my condo. I painted my office a nice color called "Arabica Taupe". It is the perfect color to cover the coffee stains from the previous tenant. I think the previous occupant was an English major that hurled cups of coffee at the wall when she experienced writers block. The Kilz brand paint covered in one coat and it looks delicious.

The only room left to paint is the big four car garage I call a living room. I knew it would be a challenge but I thought I'd handle it with my "over the hill" technique. This entails breaking the projects into small pieces and dragging it out a few days longer. CP wouldn't hear it. She said I couldn't handle the fifteen foot vaulted ceiling. I would have to rent a 10 foot ladder or a Bakers Scaffold to do a good job. CP has denied me a great project here. She hired a painter from the Feed and Seed. So tomorrow I have to disappear for the day so "Dan in Real Life" can paint the hangar. I call him that because he s a single guy with two teenage daughters.

Now I did do some of the prep work. I moved the two fish tanks into the center of the room and I took off the face plates and patched the holes and cracks. So now I just have disappear for the day and enjoy my vacation. Well, I'll always have my beautiful taupe office to spill coffee in.

No, that's not a Mercedes Benz

I decided to use my Topsider to change the oil on my 93 Oldsmobile. Oldsmobiles were cars actually made in the USA before Obama made us "Citizens of the World". I looked it up and it was almost a year ago that I discovered that Speedy Lube & Tune had stripped my oil drain plug. In this year I only accumulated 2,400 miles on my little jaunts to work and the store. I didn't want to take a chance on that aftermarket plug working a second time. Besides, I didn't have any replacement plastic crush washers which those plugs require.

My Topsider dip stick oil changer is left over from my boating days. The dip stick in the Old's is too narrow for the original drain hose. However, I was able to use an "intubating stylet" from work to reach through the narrow tube into the crankcase. (I spend a lot of time at working trying to think up real-life use for all this expensive medical crap.) The stylet is just a long flexible tube that you put in a patient's trachea to guide the breathing tube into the windpipe. It's only rarely needed; mainly for my special patients who arrive for surgery without their chins or with toucan-like overbites. This is how Mercedes-Benz dealers change their oil. I needed CP's help to pour the oil into the container for recycling. I can never do a job completely by myself. You can see the picture of us in the front yard bending over pouring motor oil in next month's issue of "Condo Life".

Well, it took a little longer with the narrow stylet (25minutes) to suck out 4 quarts of used oil. I added 4 qts. of Wal-Mart High Mileage 5w30 and I'm good for another year. The last time I used Ford's Motor-Craft Synthetic Blend Oil. I think it caused the seals to leak a bit.

I want to keep my Olds till the Obama regime is over. Besides, I enjoy it when young people ask me, "What kind of car is that?" I reply, "It's your father's Oldsmobile."

Kahuna Beware

The Fast and the Furious is on her way to Rochester. The Subie owner does not authorize any major repairs on this vehicle because it has already been reported stolen. However, the owners would appreciate it if the Kahuna could check the oil, tire pressure and washer fluid, since Team Subaru won't have the car back in the pit until it makes a few more laps around the northeast.

P.S.
CP requests that Kahuna hack into MP's e-mail and print out her insurance card and place it in the glove box.

Beware of Hunter Subaru

I really think when women bring a car to a dealership for repairs they should paint a target on themselves, or at least carry a pigeon. Case in point is my neighbor; she has been ripped off so much by Hunter Subaru of Hendersonville that she's about to go Honda.

In the latest episode they stripped her oil pan drain hole. No, this didn't take place at SPEEDY- LUBE (they are the ones that put Ben's plug in with an impact wrench). This routine service was done at the dealership. The car was only serviced at Hunter Subaru for its short life. They changed her oil every 3,500 miles or half of the recommended interval in the manual. That translates to about thirty oil changes performed solely at the dealership by their factory trained personnel. Hunter told her that her "oil pan wore out". The price to replace the oil pan: $250.

There are few problems with this scenario. Did she wear out her oil pan with all the extra oil changes Hunter did? The Subaru oil plug has about ten threads. That means in the world of "extreme service" car maintainance that plug was rotated app. 600 times. How come the crankshaft can turn 3,000 times a minute for every mile you drive at 65mph and last for 200K miles while the lowly oil pan wears out in 600 turns. They should replace the pan for free. But, then you wonder if that same factory trained personnel will be replacing the oil pan; a repair that has a thousand times the chance of being botched.

Three months ago this same Subaru developed a squeal. The owner called Hunter, they assured her that it was nothing. She left on a vacation and got about thirty miles from home when the tensioner pulley seized and burned up the belt and the broken belt caused other damage resulting in a $400 repair bill from Hunter. It took them a week to fix it and mysteriously when they were done she needed a new starter, ta da! The tensioner should have been replaced with the belt at 105K miles.

I accompanied a young nurse to Hunter to help her pick out a new Hyundai Tucson. It was in November and the salesman agreed to her price of $1,500 below sticker. When it came time to do the paper work we find out that the senile salesman didn't have the authority to make the deal. The invoice was for only $400 below sticker; not much of a deal for last year's car. I dragged the young victim out of the showroom. A few days later she felt bad and went back and leased a Mercury Mariner from them. I can imagine the great deal she got.

I take my Subie to Prestige Subaru in Asheville. They have an A+ rating compared to Hunter's C rating. But I do my own oil changes so I'm not certain they don't have any cross-threaders in their grease pit.