| March 18, 2003 |
| Well, I don't have much time to type this up but I figured I'd let you all know what's going on up here. I just arrived back here around 1220 this morning... yes, not Monday morning, Tuesday morning. Why did it take me thirty eight hours to take a trip that normally takes me 14 to complete? Incompetence you say? I have two words for you... car fire. I set out around 10am on Sunday and was well into Wisconsin when all of the sudden I noticed I didn't have any power steering... then I looked at the guages and noticed that my heat was rising rapidly. Uh oh I thought... must have tossed the belt. So I pressed on to the next exit and popped my hood at the gas station I pulled into. Well I got a hell of a suprise, smoke and steam were rolling. My alternator had aparrently thrown the shaft bearing and not only did it catch on fire and have the fan eat the casing, but also ate the bracket. This was very bad, considering I was in a small Wisconsin town (Tomah actually) on a Sunday afternoon. On top of that I couldn't get through to anyone at home... once I did I was in luck though. One of grandma's friends runs a Napa back home, so he ran and got an alternator for me, then my dad, brother, and Gary (a friend of dad's) piled into his truck and drove the 360 miles up to where I was. They got to my hotel room (I checked in for the night) around 3am and slept till 7. Then they set to work on pulling everything apart and also getting a new bracket from a local junkyard. We got it all off and back together, only to realize that something was wrong with the alternator fan, so dad and Gary drove it back over to Napa. Turns out the new shaft nut was stripped, so it wouldn't tighten down enough to secure the pulley and fan. We also found a vacuum hose that was burned in half, so dad spliced it with some hose he happened to have with him. We finished it up around 4pm and ate, then I headed on my way up here. Pulled in around 1220 and went right to bed. I've spent today working on the shit I'm behind on now from missing a day... I'm getting ready to head down to the CS Lab to work on a project for an hour before my evening class, then I'll head back to the lab for a while after that. If I get enough done there and finish up the Calc I need to do after I get back tonight I may work on the site. I've uploaded all the pics I took from Break and uploaded several that I'm going to use for my Spring Break and a few other pages. Well, now you know the story... I've got to run. |
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| Getting the bracket back over the power steering pump. |
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| The toasty alternator and broken bracket. |