Jammed, Surviving A Grinder, Number 29
Wow, this weekend was just stuffed with things. I got out on the bike Friday after work. The cold front had dropped the temps and humidity to fantastic levels which is great. The cold front also brought very windy conditions, which was not so great. The long leg after the turn around spot was especially brutal. I just tried to keep my body as low as possible to reduce my wind impact area. Even with doing so I was hard pressed to keep my speed over 15-16MPH on that segment. By the time I got home I was pretty beat. Combining some pickle ball and road biking on the same day hits me pretty hard nowadays.
In the last 10 days I have been slammed with 3D store orders. I spent a good portion of the weekend trying to keep things flowing. Some of the orders I could fulfill out of stock but some I had to do on the fly. I am very conscious of trying to turn around orders as fast as possible since I know that is how I like transactions to go. I have sold the most in a short period of time in probably a year, it’s a nice problem to have.
It was beautifully cool on Saturday morning. After doing my morning chores I loaded Sadie and Elsa in the truck. One of my stops was Trader Joe’s. There is no better place for me to find good tasting and decently healthy single serving frozen meals. I loaded up enough to last me a long time. We also made a stop at the local feed store for chicken supplies. With only one chicken left I need to try to scale back the food appropriately. It’s hard to accurately do so because so many wild birds come and snack on Kathy’s food throughout the day.
During the afternoon I got started on a BUNCH of small to do’s. When the new vent fan receptacle showed up mid-afternoon that jumped to the top of the priority list as I had an empty hole in the bathroom ceiling since the previous week when my install failed.
I first had to splice in the new receptacle. I did my best to make sure the connection was secure and locked together with a wire nut and electrical tape. After snapping the new part in place I carefully attached the new fan and plugged it into the new receptacle. I hit the switch to verify juice was flowing, it was. After some awkward finger work I finally got the two spring clips in place and pushed the new fan flush against the ceiling. It looks good and throws a ton more light into the space which I like. I again mentally kicked myself in the ass for not taking on this task many, many years before.
By the time I finished up all of my to do’s it was getting later in the afternoon. I came up with a Saturday night game plan of parking at DD, riding, and then going back to Brooks Burgers for another meal while sitting at the bar. I again took the OneWheel GT and I again really enjoyed my ride. During the 20 minute plus video I got sidetracked into conversations about non-PEV topics like my overall sense of well being, my recent chicken loss, and why I am more comfortable talking to a camera than most human beings.
The trip to Brooks was uneventful. There were actually less people there than the week prior. The same two guys that were singing last week were there again which I appreciated. For a good portion of the time it was just me and some other old dude at the bar. Later a few older, presumably married couples joined us but I just sat there and chilled. I only drank a couple Bud Lights during the meal.
Sunday morning was again a glorious crisp and cool morning. Sadie loved just sitting in the yard and chilling out. Her mobility is getting more and more limited, especially after she has been laying down for a prolonged period of time. Her desire to be close to me at all times has her getting up and down constantly in the house to be in whatever room am in. It’s very endearing but also very sad for me to see her struggle so much to just do the simplest things. I can tell her mind still wants to run around and play like she did for so much of her life but now she is trapped inside of a failing body. It sucks.
I spent a ton of time at the computer Sunday morning between paying my bills and processing orders. We didn’t get out on the road for our coffee run until after 11. I had cleared my afternoon schedule because my buddy Matt was coming out to the house for the first time ever so we could install a towing hitch onto his 2019 Tesla Model 3.
Matt showed up about 1:30. After giving him a brief tour of the property we began the install. He had found an installation video for the hitch that we both had watched prior. I saw nothing in the process that looked out of my capabilities. Matt wanted to add the hitch to utilize with a platform to increase his cargo capacity during his annual summer road trips.
I brought my laptop out to the garage so we could follow along with the video. I also brought my Sony camera out on a tripod thinking I could film the process for content for my channel. Well that idea did not last for very long. The initial steps of the process went relatively well. Tesla’s utilize snap together construction for a lot of the car. To install the hitch you take a lot of stuff off the rear end including the tail lights, bumper cover and bumper crash bar. There is also a rear belly pan which comes out.
At first we thought we didn’t need to put the car on ramps but we eventually did. It’s a good thing because there were certain things we could not have done without the car being elevated. So we were moving along steadily. We got the car ripped down to the point where the bumper crash bar was removed. This part needed to be installed onto the new hitch assembly. In the video this looked stupidly easy. You put some carriage bolts through the one side, which will line them up with the other side. Snug them up and you are good to go. Well this is where the install hit the wall.
I have taken on some pretty major, to me, projects in the past. Many times these include those walls, the point in the project where you aren’t quite sure how you are going move forward and the idea of going backward seems impossible as well. So for whatever reason the bumper crash bar was not aligning as it should to allow us to cleanly get a socket on the nuts to tighten them. If we aligned one side perfectly the other would be off and vice versa. Matt and I spent at least two hours fcking with this thing in every way imaginable to get it lined up. In the video the guy was using a 2020 Model 3 which had a different looking aluminum bumper crash bar. Matt’s bar was painted and looked more like steel. Tesla is infamous for making changes in the middle of a model year. I developed a theory since Matt’s car was an early 2019 model, they changed something later in that model year, namely the bumper crash bar hole layout, which was the root cause of our frustration.
We could not get the crash bar aligned 100% and we had to make a decision. It was now around dinner time and the availability of daylight became a concern for me. We had two options, reverse everything and admit defeat or be good enough with getting less than 6 bolts snugged up. We chose the latter. I was able to get 5 of the 6 bolts very tight. The crash bar had nothing to do with hitch strength or stability so Matt was ok with rolling ahead as is, thankfully. I know if it was my car I would like everything to be exactly as they say it should be but we had to improvise if we wanted to make this work.
We weren’t in the clear yet. With the older Model 3’s there is no convenient hatch built into the belly plan for a hitch. We had to create our own with a metal snips. Getting the belly pan reattached to rear bumper cover and then getting that big clumsy assembly over the trailer hitch was frustrating as hell as well. I had to do some additional cutting to make it work. Finally, finally we got the hitch popped through with the bumper cover in place. We slowly worked our way backward. My work area was a lot more chaotic than I normally like where I keep fasteners logically sorted and organized. To attach three belly pan bolts you had to slide under the car which was extremely tight. It made a MRI chamber or a coffin feel spacious.
Finally somewhere around 7:30 or so the car was back together. The predicted 3 hour job took almost double that. I was so freaking dirty. It felt like I had greasy dirt mashed everywhere, including my hair. I had Matt take the car for a quick test drive to make sure no mysterious noises or rattles were present. He came back with an all clear, thankfully. We were both beat to hell from a long session of climbing, crawling and sliding around on a concrete floor. My “video” consisted of maybe 5 minutes of footage before we hit that wall.
We washed our hands thoroughly and Matt and I enjoyed the special beer he brought. I forget the name but it was good, coming in a wine size bottle, complete with a cork. I had not seen Matt in person since probably 2019, which is crazy but not an uncommon scenario in our new covid reality. We just hung out and talked for a little while, which I enjoyed. Matt and I align in a number of areas, including age, he is 54 as well. A little before 9PM he headed home. We both agreed we should hang out more in the future, without a major automotive project as part of the schedule.
I was really, really tired. However even with as frustrating as the install was, there was a small part of me proud that I still have the ability to grind my way through a really tough situation and still find a path to the finish line. There were multiple times during this Matt and I took turns just shoulder shrugging as to what to do next. I think having both of us working towards the goal kept either of us from throwing in the towel.
I had an email this morning saying that my PEV Live Stream/Podcast was ranked number 29 in the electric vehicle podcast list. It was unexpected but cool. 🙂