Touched Them All

Normally a baseball term for a homerun, thus a reason to celebrate, “touched them all”, in my case, meant having to work on all four in the fleet; thus, not a reason to celebrate.

The fun and games began with Victoria’s late-morning Monday call informing me Glinda would not start. She was at a gas station north of Baltimore having just filled the tank with fuel. A turn of the key produced nothing – no turning, no noise, nothing. I had her find someone with jumper cables, but that only elicited a slow, weak spin of the starter. Fortunately, the lovely Loriann works less than a mile from the station, so she was able to rescue Victoria. After Victoria got off work, she and I returned to the scene where I cleaned the terminals and connectors, hooked up jumper cables, and let the battery get some juice from Heidi’s generator for about ten minutes. I spent the wait adjusting the idler wheel to get the fanbelt a little tighter. With that adjustment completed, Victoria turned the key and Glinda started right up. I started to close the engine lid, but stopped when I saw sparks coming from the idler wheel area. I had Victoria turn the engine off and I saw I’d not properly adjusted the belt guard. Five more minutes of fiddling, and all was good. She started right up again and the drive home was uneventful. Within five minutes of being shut off, the battery still read above 13 volts. Victoria hasn’t driven her since then because I left too much of a temptation – that being Heidi as backup while I drove Lucy to work yesterday.

Speaking of Lucy, before I could drive her I had to break off the dangling bit of rusted flooring and hook up the speakers. While trying to connect the right speaker, I found the wire had broken at the point it bent around the edge of the rear carpet. That fix would have to wait.

What was wrong with Heidi? Well, as I was driving home from dealing with Glinda, I glanced into her sideview mirror and noticed it was vigorously shaking. I rolled down the window and grabbed it only to have it come completely loose from its mounting. Thanking God I caught it in time, I placed it on the floor. When I got home, I reinstalled it, but had to pull a GUP gasket from the shelves. I also found the door pull was missing a screw, so a replacement was located in my can of screws and installed.

Finally, Ringo. My intention had been to spend the majority of the evening installing his interior, but that was thwarted by all the other activities. As a token gesture, I removed some remnants of masking tape from around the trunk opening.