With just two hours of sleep, you too can achieve the following:

The phone rang this morning. It was my dad. His Toyota truck was broke down about halfway home. He works nights and was headed home. I had to help him out. Somehow, his fan belt broke, and he tried to drive home. That's usually not good for an engine.

So we go buy a new belt and go back to the truck, which is an '86 model. I'm looking at the thing trying to figure out how to get the belt on it. The belt needed to fit around the fan and then loop around some pulleys. The problem is that there was another belt in the way, one that ran round the Air Conditioner.

Then I had my moment. Everything became clear. We didn't know of a way to loose the AC and take it's belt off. The Toyota is a small truck with a small engine with a lot of impossible angles to work in. I looked at my dad and said, "Cut the belt. Your AC doesn't work right. Eventually it'll catch on fire. Cut the belt." See, I have experience with this. My AC thingy locked up, caught on fire one day, and thankfully snapped it's belt. Afterwards, the engine ran better than it had in years. I serious. I told him cut the belt to the AC.

It didn't dawn on me until he had cut the belt that I know little to absolutely zero about car engines. It was too late. He was listening to me. And nothing good could have come from that.

We get the belt on. We even found a way to loosen the Alternator and position it to get the belt on and tightened it. Then I read the Toyota book. It said the belt needed to give 1/8 or 1/2 an inch or something like that. It said you could use some tool to measure it, but if you didn't have it, you could use a ruler. I told my dad it was too tight. And here's his tragic flaw, he listened to me again.

He loosened the Alternator a bit. And just as he was tightening it back up, the bolt broke. Oh, it snapped right off. And my dad looked at me like I knew how to fix it. He should know better than that. Then something came to me again. If we could get a bolt on the other side of the Alternator, it would push it and keep the belt tight.

We got a bolt, washer, and nut on and fixed the Alternator still and the belt tight. It was time to head home. My dad mentioned something about if things looked good, he was going to go to Mr. Warren's. Mr. Warren is a retired mechanic that still works on cars. He's good, really good. He's brought my car back from the dead a few times.

We headed out and just as we are about to turn onto the road to home, he continues on toward Jasper. Oh boy. We were going to push it today. When we got to Mr. Warren's, the truck was smoking a little. That's always a good thing. But there wasn't anybody home. Mr. Warren is out of town. So we turned around and headed home. I followed as close as I could. But at the same time, I didn't want to be too close to the truck. I'm pretty sure the truck hates me.

So we're waiting now for Mr. Warren to get back in town. We've already set things up with his wife. When he gets back, he'll drill out the screw and fix things.

So Boys and Girls, save up your money for a torque wrench. That's the lesson here, right?

  ¶ 3:16 PM