Am I Nuts? Read Further Before You Answer, Quirks of a quirky car guy

[glemon]

I just did something this weekend that I know have done many times before, but here is the latest example. I jacked up the front end to relube the poly bushes I had used on the upper a-arms, as they have gotten squeaky, and I hate squeaks and creaks, and clunks and bangs coming from my car as I go down the road, and no that is not quirky, it is crazy not to be bugged by such things, "can't you hear that" "HOW CAN YOU NOT HEAR THAT??" but I digress from my true intent here.

I hate leaving the car apart and inop. My other job was to put longer studs on the front hubs (for reasons not relevant here) an so I also took off the front brake disk and hub on one side and dismantled it to take a stud to the car parts store to try to get a match on a slightly longer one. Of course no one had what I needed (shank size is a little uncommon on our cars I guess) so I had to special order them, this is midday Sunday, and they will be in Tuesday.

So...do I leave the car apart, thus saving the work of putting the disk back together with the hub, back on the car, wheel back on, off the jackstands, then taking it apart again to put the new studs on (even the stock won't come off without separating disk from hub in case you are wondering)?, No of course not, I put it back together partly to see if my lube of the bushings worked, but mostly I hate having my car apart and not running, I have other cars to drive, I didn't have a show to make the next day, it just bugs me. I know when I first worked on cars they were my daily drivers, and I was usually rushing to get it all buttoned up to I could drive to work, but that is not the case today. Anybody else have similar, or other illogical quirks?

I will add that I would not put the old bearings back in the motor, the motor back together and in the car, and drive around while I wait for a part for an engine rebuild, but little stuff I nearly always put it back together rather that letting is apart, forlorn, and idle.

 

[Guest]

Makes sense, shyt happens sometimes and it might be a while till you can get it back together. Having worked in parts; sometimes things are late, wrong or never ordered. I would have left one out just to make sure it matched up with whatever came in for the same aforementioned reason...but that woulda drove you nuts too I would bet.layful:

As a tech I can't tell yo how many times we had to put a car back together just to use the lift it was on; I HATE that.

 

[glemon]

See you have hit the nail on the head, you leave the car apart, suddenly you need to space or facility to work on another car, but you can't, surely you can see how chaos and entropy slowly set in, the world falls apart, bonds that hold civilization together fail, I knew someone would get it.

Actually as far as leaving one out, I have a spare hub and spare studs, if I were really smart I would have pulled the stud from the spare part and figured out the parts situation before dismantling the car, but, to be honest, I thought I would be able to find a stud locally, I thought they were a pretty generic item.

 

[JPSmit]

I do understand the part about the universe winding down.

My issue with leaving the car apart is that all of a sudden 3 months have passed and I have mostly missed a driving season - or, I have ripped too much apart and can't remember where I put it or how it goes back together - umm that is to say it happened to a friend of mine, not me - yeah, that's it - a friend. On the plus side, I suppose I ended up with the Vauxhall because it got to be too much for someone.

Either way, none of this applies to my desk - I feel no compulsion to clean it up!

 

[SaxMan]

I generally don't like to leave the car apart, unless I'm doing a large-scale project where I'm working on the car almost every night, like I do during the winter time. My pet peeve is I don't like leaving the car jacked up or on stands for an extended period of time. So far, none of my repairs have required a long term removal of the hubs or anything that would preclude leaving the wheels off the car. Even the few times that I have done so, I will still lower the car and put a jack stand in place of the missing wheel, even though I have to jack the car back up again and reset the stands.

 

[PAUL161]

I do understand the part about the universe winding down.


Either way, none of this applies to my desk - I feel no compulsion to clean it up!

But you know where everything is at, right? I always said, a messy desk is the indication of a very productive guy! My wife will disagree though. :highly_amused: PJ

 

[JPSmit]

But you know where everything is at, right? I always said, a messy desk is the indication of a very productive guy! My wife will disagree though. :highly_amused: PJ

My wife is the same Actually I envy her - the older I get, the more clutter causes me stress - but don't tell her that.

 

[glemon]

My desk at work is notoriously messy, actually a clean desk makes me nervous as I don't know where all my work is hiding. Funny thing is whenever I give people from my work a ride in my car, I often get a comment about how clean it is. I didn't get it at first, but they assumed I was just a little on the sloppy side in all things.

BTW, it is not the mess that compels me to put the car back together, (my workbench is a little scary, but my tools are pretty well organized) it is that it is not working, I have a compulsion about mechanical things working, if the don't I obsess about fixing them.