Tayden’s car, Goff, has spent some time in the shop the past two weeks. Right after Tayden left for work a couple weeks ago, his car started shimmying. We’ve all seen the cars that shimmy, and it’s not good. He called us and we told him to bring it back home. He took my car to work. Travis ran a diagnostic on it and came up with three potential problems. We called our mechanic and he said we could bring it in, since it was definitely not drivable, but he couldn’t get to it until possibly the following week. So, for a week, we juggled cars, and I rented a car to go visit Catherine. The following week, we got it back. It was one of the less expensive problems (ignition coil and spark plugs). He had it back a few days and he called me on his way home from work. The driver’s side window was partly down when he came out of work, which he thought was weird. When he got in and closed the door, it fell into the door. Fortunately, it wasn’t a rainy day, so he just came home. 

Since Travis was working late that day, Tayden and I had to try to fix this thing. By fix, I mean jimmy-rig it. Tayden got home really late, and rain was in the forecast, so we had it right in front of the garage, so we could pull it in if needed. The garage was really hot, so we wanted to stay outside. We took the door apart with only a couple snafus that couldn’t be found on YouTube. While disconnecting the handle mechanism, I broke the tiny black plastic part that connected the wire to the actual handle. Although I doubted I could glue it, some time was spent looking for a tiny piece of broken black plastic on a blacktop driveway in the dark. So there we are, dripping in sweat (it was one of those 90+ degree days), on our hands and knees with our phone lights and a big mama-lama flashlight, feeling around in the dark looking for a black on black piece of plastic. Words may have been exchanged. But I am definitely the one that broke it. In my defense, it was difficult to remove, and the flat top screw driver popped it right out… in two pieces.

In the long run, we learned that the door light stays pretty hot as it swings off its wire while we work (ouch), and that, in my world, duct tape is a required tool in auto repair. After we slid that window back up, we duct taped it into place. We also used duct tape on the handle. We figured out a decent method to replace the little black piece, so that the door could be opened from the inside. Perhaps we should have left the window down and he could have entered through the opening, Dukes of Hazzard style. 

The problem is that the duct tape didn’t keep the window up. It fell back into the door. We had an appointment at the mechanic to repair the air conditioner, so I called and changed it to repairing the window instead. The air conditioner had magically repaired itself (or they fixed it and didn’t put it on the bill) during the spark plug, ignition coil repair. To me, all repairs are a bit magical. And the mechanic had a replacement plastic piece for the one I broke. No charge.

Also, duct tape can fix a cheap (but not cheap $$) Brita filter container. And that repair held! Why do they use such a cheap plastic container for the brita filter? Unfortunately, no pictures of the car. All seems well for now in the 2003 Honda Accord. Drive on Goff!