I am not gifted at car repair. I mostly prefer cars to do their job and then sit in the garage (and only speak when spoken to). As a result, Lisa's dad is usually involved when things go wrong with our car. On Friday my car started to make a loud rattle underneath, and this weekend we stopped by Lisa's folks to take a peek at it. I actually found the rattling part after a quick inspection, and after Lisa's dad found a hose clamp in the basement, we managed to tighten up a loose piece of the exhaust and essentially fix the problem. In between those steps is where I "helped."
To get under the car Lisa's dad got out his ramps and we went to drive the front wheels up them. In the past Lisa's dad has usually done this, but I decided to just do it, since I was at the wheel already. So, as I've tried in the past, I used both the brakes and the engine simultaneously, crept up the ramp, reached the top, and then proceeded to shoot completely over the ramps. When you do this, the car drops over the far edge of the ramps, lands loudly upon them, and with the wheels still spinning some, keeps going. For a moment I had visions of plowing into all sorts of things at the back of the garage. During this time, the ramps, which are being crushed by the car into the cement of the garage floor, were dragged along with a deafening grating sound.
Fortunately, the car stopped relatively quickly, we easily jacked it up to release the ramps, and I successfully made it up on a second try. The ramps do have some dents on top where the frame of my car landed on them, but they appear to still be entirely functional (phew!). So, anyway, yay for incompetency in car repair.
12 years ago
