Monday doldrums, POC, Botox, duct tape vette
Feeling down about the world today, hopefully just one of those cycles I seem to go through regularly.
I got a chance to see The Passion of the Christ. Although I am not a religious person, curiosity made me want to see it. This thing has made over a quarter of a BILLION dollars so far! As far as movies go, it is well done I suppose. I thought the fact that it was all subtitled would bother me but after a bit it really wasn’t that much of a distraction. The torture and subsequent death of Jesus was EXTREMELY graphic. Since I never read the bible, I am sure I was at a disadvantage compared to regular church going folk when following the story. Even though I may not be sold on the concepts that the entire event represents, I can see how religious people would be deeply affected by it. If anything, the story further cements the idea for me that mankind is flawed to it’s core and these flaws will be the end of us.
If anyone is all about fighting the onslaught from old age it is me. I do my best to retard it’s affects. However even I had to snicker when I caught a bit of the episode of Oprah my wife was watching. She was doing a show about the anniversary issue of Sports Illustrated where they had some of the old swimsuit models reappear, and I stress OLD. The three she had on were Cheryl Tiegs (56), Christie Brinkley (50) and Vendula (late 30’s). It was comical, all of them have stayed in shape but all three were ‘toxed up. They all had manequin-faces where only their mouths and eyes moved. It was sort of scary. I want to stay as youthful as possible but if I have to do that to my face I think I would need to draw the line there.
I ripped into the Vette some more this weekend and of course had more problems. I wanted to troubleshoot why the power locks did not work so I ripped off the door panels. They are half ass attached, with a lot of screws missing and screws that don’t belong there just punched through the panels at odd locatons. The driver side panel wasnt too bad but then I took off the passenger side where it had been hit. What a mess. The back of the panel revealed that it was held together with lots and lots of DUCT tape! It didnt even have a power lock switch on that side. I found the power lock connector buried down in the door. I hooked a switch up to it but no dice. Damn it. So I threw it back together the best I could. After it’s all back together the power windows now stopped working!!! DAMN IT. I was too frustrated and depressed to continue so after a a few quick attempts to remedy it I gave up. I did a six pack Saturday night and made some drunken posts on the corvette owner message board looking for answers.
On Sunday, after the fuzziness wore off, I decided to take another whack at it. First thing I did was sand off the contacts to the circuit breakers. For some reason, the entire fuse box is very corroded. WOW, I got lucky, that fixed it. I felt somewhat relieved and did some more tinkering in preparation for some miscellaneous parts that I have coming this week. Right now my immediate concern/fix list stands at:
Replace the dry rotted shifter boot
Replace the power mirror joystick control ( only works in 3 of 4 directions)
Replace the rear hatch solenoid (no remote hatch release but not sure this will fix it)
Replace all fuses (all are corroded)
Replace the EGR switch (Check Engine light issue)
Diagnose small leak on top of intake manifold where there is some antifreeze collectiing
Fix the passenger power seat
Remove each lug nut, apply “no-sieze” to prevent any more stud stripping
A long list and that doesn’t even scratch some of the bigger jobs like replacing the carpet, door panels and weatherstripping. One day at a time…