Excuse the puns but as I was leaving last night my alternator belt flew off (it would be a fan belt if it didn't have an electric fan on the radiator) and I was 40 miles from home and it was getting dark, for those of you who have no understanding of cars the alternator is needed to recharge the battery to stop it going flat, it tops it up as you drive so to speak...... :(so I raced home on side lights and eventually got home on headlights no brighter than an Argos Christmas tree light bulb but after a phone call to Halfords in Carmarthen I reserved on Peugot 205 alternator belt and brought it home and proceeded to fit it.....
Now what should have taken at most 20 minutes took an incredible 2 hours, I'm not a stranger to things mechanical I have taken on some fairly big jobs regarding cars, and I was confident I would nail this and be in before my cup of tea got cold..... Alas I didn't count on a 15mm bolt securing the top of the alternator to the engine which felt as if it had been spot welded in place, I tried everything from WD40, diesel, brute force, ultimate force... short of a tactical nuclear detonation this bolt was refusing to free itself, I even tried heating up the surrounding metal to expand the thread hole......nothing worked.... it got that bad I was even considering half catching the belt on the engine flywheel and then turning the starter motor to jump it onto the flywheel, but as I stood back and contemplated my next angle of attack and weapon....I paused and I then picked up a hammer and gave it a damn good beating ( think Basil Fawlty and the car hitting episode but with a hammer), I looked like I had dipped my arms up to my elbows in molasses by the time I had finished..... :) I then smashed a 15mm socket onto it's tortured hexagonal's and wrenched it so hard I could swear my shoulder sockets came out briefly as the car moved back 12" ......Then I heard the briefest of squeaks from the bolt, thinking I had sheared the head off the bolt I turned it gingerly half expecting the clunk of the bolt head falling onto the garage floor.... but NO NO NO it had deemed all by itself a fitting time to unscrew.....
The new belt was on and tensioned within five minutes and the engine running, topping up the almost flat battery.....I retired to the house looking like an extra off the black and white minstrel show...(for those of you who remember it) and found that my cup of tea was almost frozen :)
Andrea has finally finished work now, and is already bored to death......the house is sparkling though, I guess you can only watch so much Jeremy Kyle before you HAVE to do something else ;¬) fair do's though she tidied my study which had fallen into a right state through my neglect.... the only thing now is I can't find a damn thing :)
(my lovely wife posted a comment but I rejected it because it had too many swear words in it ;¬) )
No comments:
Post a Comment