November 4th, 2005
So how was my morning? Why, thank-you for asking! It was bloody awful!
First off, there's been a growing problem with my car starting. It's common; all cars have this problem eventually. The symptoms are classic:
- Turn key in ignition
- Ignition solenoid clicks, maybe the starter motor can be heard spinning, and lights dim on the dashboard
- But engine does not start
- Try again, same symptoms
- Try again, car roars to life and you wonder if it's your imagination.
Well, it's not your imagination at all; it's just a flakey starter, and if you know what's good for you you'll get it replaced soonest because otherwise you might have the morning I just had.
So I'm driving along and hit a column of cars at a red light. Fine. SOP. But starting up from a standstill I stall my car. Oops, I've been driving a manual transmission since I was 16, but I still sometimes get overzealous with the clutch and stall the car. It happens; I've learned to live with it. But when I go to restart my car, the starter won't engage. By that, I mean the little motor inside spins, but the gear won't move up and grab the flywheel to get the engine turning over.
Try again, no start. Try again and again and again.
No start.
But lots of morons learning how to use their car horns behind me. (Okay, so obviously they don't think about it, but if they did, they'd probably observe enough of my body language to realise I would move if I could, and that something is clearly wrong with my car and Shut. The. F***. UP! But they don't.)
Try one last time. Nothing.
Right, so my car just won't start, no matter how many times I turn the key. And I have to get it out of the way of the above-mentioned horn-happy hoo-hahs. Thus, it is time to exit the warm and dry environment of the cabin and push. Now, my little car is not that heavy, so this does not normally represent much of a challenge. But it is absolutely pissing down with rain. So I am soaking wet almost immediately. But still, that's okay; a little water never killed me.
I am also stopped in front of a particular large organization whose members happen to be picketing out front. They've got umbrellas, I grimly observe. I've got to push my car onto their hallowed ground, toeing (I presume) their picket lines to stop obstructing traffic. Which I do.
So I get my car to the side of the road, and marvel that my socks aren't yet wet (although my pant legs are), and I reach inside and pull the latch to open the hood. This piques the interest of three picketers. They sort of mosey on over.
I take a quick look at them: All three are men in their forties, two with beards and moustaches, one with just a moustache. Thick waterproof winter coats, bulky, weathered (and so were their coats—ha-ha!) Maybe these guys work outside and drive large pickups. Maybe they know nothing about little white family sedans. But that doesn't stop them from asking me what's wrong:
"Car troubles?"
"The starter won't engage."
"Huh?"
"The starter."
"Huh? What's wrong with it?"
"It won't engage."
"What?"
"The starter won't start the car!"
"Oh, maybe it's the starter."
And at this point, after having had that deep and meaningful conversation which will walk side by side with me until the end of my days, I leave them alone to confer among themselves:
"Probably the baffelbingerblurper."
"Naw, the wib-wib joint."
"Or the ling-a-lang."
While this conversation is going on, I am actually looking for the starter. It's not where I expected it to be (I've replaced starters on Fords and Chevys before, but was a little lost trying to find it on a Toyota.) Then I finally found it in what I though to be a strange location: It means that the flywheel is also in a strange location. Whatever, this is the most reliable car I've ever had (this morning notwithstanding) so whoever designed it must have known what they were doing.
But one of the picketers is still on about his own theory: "Hey, guy: D'yawanna test your ling-a-lang? I got a spare VOM in my truck."
"Naw, thanks, it's the starter."
"Huh?"
"It's the starter."
"No, you don't need a starter once your car is started. It's probably the froo-froo valve."
Deciding that the information about how I stalled my car is more information than I'm willing to give these guys—and pessimistic of my chances of getting them to even understand me—I decide to just move on to:
Plan B: Whack the shit out of the starter until it obeys me.
This is a tried and true method, by the way. Once a starter starts -er- not starting, the act of giving it a bonk with something heavy will, more than likely, give you a couple more starts before you absolutely must replace it. So I grab my anti-theft bar and angle it towards the starter (now I am really getting wet) and give the assembly one good whump.
A return to the driver's seat and "whirr-whirr-zoom!" Car starts. I close the hood while the three men are, apparently, now engaged in an amusing discussion about the last time one of their trucks' nertz-noddlers went out of alignment. I closed the hood of my car, and that's when they suddenly noticed that I got my car started and was leaving.
Is it just me, or did I detect a hint of lonely sadness in their demeanour? Were they getting all ready to carry my car, with me in it, on their backs to the nearest service station? I mean, these guys looked pretty bored, and they probably liked the idea that they were about to be needed and useful once again, while helping me through my Plight of the Stalled Starter-Challenged Car. But ... well ... no. Maybe next time.
[Just as I was closing the hood of my car, someone in a passing car yelled this out from a 2-centimetre crack of their window: "You're part of the problem!" I wanted to turn and tell the picketers that I thought it might be meant for them, but decided to just leave it well enough alone.]
I got back in and zoomed off leaving their astonished faces in the wake of the rivers of rainwater that Vancouver likes to produce every Autumn.
And, when I parked downtown, later than usual for work, I got smart and parked my car on a slope in the parkade; I can at least roll-start the damned thing if it doesn't start this evening after work. I'd rather not have an evening fraught with a repeat of the rainy starter-bonking episode I had this morning.
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