![]() Even more than that though, I was looking forward to having a vehicle again, so I set to work. Heather was out of town, which was a shame, because I was really looking forward to gloating once I got that engine purring. ![]() I wasn’t giving up.įinally, two days later, the tool arrived. Her words fell on deaf ears, and before my head hit the pillow I’d already ordered two more taps off the internet. With a little less patience this time around, she shared her thoughts on the subject: “Just call a mechanic.” “What’s the deal? Supply chain issues? UPS lost the package?” It was called a “back tap,” and once I had it, I’d be on my way. I would use a special tool designed to insert into the cylinder, expand, and twist back out, cleaning and reforming the threads. After three or four hours down the rabbit hole of amateur car repair videos, I devised a plan. There was no way I was going to give up that easily. After a good laugh at my expense, she had this advice to share: “You should just call a mechanic.” Head down, I had no choice but to explain my predicament. Dejected, I slowly made my way up the steps back into my apartment. I tossed my tools into the cab and sat in the passenger seat of my van for a few minutes, pondering my situation. With the threads stripped, there was no way for me to screw in the final spark plug. I felt the steak dinner spin freely out of my future. I turned it again, and again the ratchet, extensions, socket, and plug all together spun free as the wind. I tried turning the ratchet again, and it just spun freely in place. There was resistance, and then a sudden release of tension. I thought to myself, “I’m about to drive myself straight to a steak dinner.” I stuck the new one in the socket and dropped the whole apparatus back down into the now empty cylinder. Too easy!Ĭlickety clickety clickety clickety clickety, I spun the plug right out of the hole. I tentatively gave the whole ratchet assembly a twist, and boom, smooth as butter, somewhere down in that shaft the spark plug yielded. I felt the socket come firmly to a stop around the top of the spark plug. With the spark plug socket firmly in place on the end, I carefully weaved the whole apparatus around every obstacle and down into the shaft, where that eighth spark plug waited patiently for removal. ![]() I stuck four different extensions on my trusty ratchet, turning it into an unwieldy, snake-like chain of tools. It was under a lot of awkwardly placed things, to be totally frank. I set my eyes on the eighth and final plug, way down deep in the back of the engine bay. I couldn’t believe some sucker somewhere was coughing up $700 for this. I chuckled triumphantly and kept on wrenching. Steak dinner tonight? Champagne? I kept whistling. Wrenching away, I started thinking about my six hundred greenbacks, safe and sound in the pocket of my jeans. I was hunting eight worn-out spark plugs and I was saving over six hundred bucks. Twenty minutes later, I was elbow deep in the engine, whistling a fine tune while I removed the air intake and a few other things in between me and my prey. Hah! Booyah! I grinned huge, despite the suspicious glance it earned me from the guy at the register. I slapped eight brand spankin’ new spark plugs on the counter, and to my glee, the total came out to a mere fifty-four dollars and eighty-two cents. I drove over the hill to the Advanced Autoparts on Greensprings, a hectic five-lane highway about two miles from my house. Seven hundred dollars? All you have to do is screw them in!Īfter calling around and receiving no less than five equally astronomical estimates, I cursed the mechanic profession, the labor shortage, each specific shop in my town, and even my poor old van. I said the word “Ridiculous” under my breath. I let the man know I wasn’t interested in his services and hung up the phone. I don’t know about you, but there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell I was gonna pay $700 just to have some teenager at Firestone unscrew eight spark plugs and then screw in eight new ones. Are you bringing it in today? If so you better get down here in the next hour or we ain’t gonna get it done ‘til the end of the week.” The phone line was quiet for a moment, and then a very clearly impatient, gruff kind of voice huffed back. “Seven HUNDRED dollars? For some spark plugs?”
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