omg i almost killed my car

[jojolmnop]

well, it all started with the ever so evident, sluggish car on the freeway. so i decided this weekend to clean my intake manifolds.

berryman's carb cleaner rocks in dissolving the stuff. tho would have been better if i removed the lim to clean it instead of spraying away and letting it drip further below into the valves. (couldn't get the fuel rail off so gave up trying and left the lim there) fast forward to everything back together... car does not start... better yet, car dies at where the spark plugs would charge. no power to the car. because i relocated the battery to the trunk and the circuit breaker is in the trunk, tried like crazy to get into my trunk since the tail light covers will not let me use my key. managed to somehow push the trunk cover back to pull down chairs then switch back on the breaker. tried again, car dies. i sit on the couch thinking of not going to work to bring my car to mark's dad's shop.

brain fart, maybe all that liquid cleaner is grounding out the plugs. tear it back apart (break other parts in the process) and voila, i thought that liquid would have evaporated, wrong. run to advanced auto and autozone, get a liquid syphon and suck most of the liquid i could out from where i could reach thru the lim. let it dry overnight.

decide to buy new spark plugs to replace those thinking they are bad now. try to suck out any liquid thru spark plug holes just in case, good, no liquid. put it all back together, fix other things i snapped in the process and try to start the car. cranks then dies like last time. crap crap crap. luckily, i left my trunk open so i could get to the circuit breaker. turn it back on, crank and press the gas some. same thing. do it again and again. eventually, it cranks more and more each time before dying. then it finally cranked all the way and spits out smoke out my exhaust (expected) and then clean. yay, my car runs. ran it for about five minutes. checked for any weird smells from engine bay and all is good. turn off and on, still good. run for about 10-15 minutes for good measure.

moral of the story, i need a third vehicle... no, tis best to clean the parts off the car. now to get that dmd installed.... meh, maybe next weekend.

[Afuente]

good to hear all is well after that episode.

your heading made me wonder if you actually 'almost' got into an accident, unlike this one: about 2:30-3:00 today, west bound on Rt264 close to the Rosemont exit....a white suburban looked as if it had flipped over - the roof was caved in, more in the front than back.

speaking of accidents, 2 friends from work share an apartment at Latitudes. the building next to theres (you can see it from RT264) burnt mostly down yesterday afternoon. they were saying somebody had a charcoal grill on their balcony. the fire spread thru the entire building.

oh wait, one more: I left an after hours club last night between 3:30-4am. at the entrance to the downtown tunnel there were 2 firetrucks, and a state trooper had just pulled up. the accident was further down into the tunnel, but I could only imagine if a DWI accident had occured how bad it could have been.

okay, that's all i've got.

[jojolmnop]

yeah, i don't have accident stories. knock on wood.

i was all thinking too, if the engine was really dead.... 3L time! but first, to buy another car. grumble grumble. i guess i need to get one anyways just in case. yeah. i really need to get around to teaching gina to drive a manual.

so how is everyone! this has been a long weekend.

[tnkgurl]

I had an alternately fabulous/crappy weekend. On Friday I took Blu to the dealership because I noticed a crack in the paint on the front bumper. Long story short, I'm getting my bumper repainted because they have to strip the paint to see if it's a crack in the gel coat or not (thank you, Eric! Had it not been for a crack in your gel coat, I never would have thought about it!). Oh by the way, the repainting is at no cost to me! Yeay!

Then, on the gorgeous weekend that we had (finally) I started my Web Developer course. Much to my dismay, there is a guy in the class who acts like he's never even seen a computer before! I honestly think he's homeless, but where he came up with $5500 to take the course at Georgetown, I will never ever know. It's going to be a long six months!