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| Jeep TJ Wrangler door lock stuck
| Date: 10-27-2007 16:17
| Erin's Jeep TJ encountered an issue where the drivers side door was locked and moving the door handle from the outside or inside would not open the door. The lock/unlock button would also not pivot completely to the unlock position. Wiggling the interior or exterior handles and rocking the lock/unlock button wouldn't unlatch the door. In order to get it open we had to remove the interior panel from the inside to access the lock mechanism. Note: these were the full doors (not half doors).
Tools required:
T15 Torx driver/bit (star shaped)
Rag or old t-shirt
Phillips screwdriver (optional)
Lithium grease (optional)
First remove the manual window crank. The crank is attached with a C-clip with edges that flare out at the ends. The easiest way to remove it is by taking a rag or strip of an old t-shirt and place it into the are between the circle of plastic and the handle. Then use a shoe-shine like technique with the cloth. If done correctly the clip will get snagged and pop right out in just a few seconds.
Remove the torx screws, two on the bottom, two on the handle, and one towards the rear of the door plastics. Place the handle aside. All that's holding the interior plastics on at this point should be the lip at the top and a series of plastic tabs. From the bottom up pry the plastics away from the door and you'll hear the tabs pop as you remove them. Once the bottom is loose then pull the panel up to free it from the top of the door. This is a little tough with the door closed and locked but can be done.
Now that the panel is off there will be a vinyl plastic cover that can be peeled back to access the openings. There's a metal piece that the interior handle attaches too, this can also be removed with a phillips screw driver to make more room. There are small metal clips on each side of the metal piece which can fall off. Don't knock them loose, or take them off and set them aside to avoid losing them.
In our case the exterior handle mechanism got stuck. A long metal bar goes down, past the door lock and then back up in a compressed V pattern. Normally when the exterior door handle is pulled this bar moves down, but in this case it seized. The exterior handle could still be moved so it wasn't readily apparent that this was the problem. After wiggling it free everything worked normally so we applied a liberal coating of lithium grease (3.50 @ the local auto store for a tub) on the moving parts and put it all back together.
Putting everything back is the reverse from the above. When putting the door handles back on put the clip back on to the handle. I forced it on with the screw driver, but pliers might be easier. Once the clip is back in place push the handle back on to the post.
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| Pick two: Good, Fast, Cheap
| Date: 08-13-2007 10:40
| This weekend the flange connecting my the B-pipe of my exhaust to the catalytic converter broke. My guess is that it rusted right through over the years and finally met it's breaking point while I was creeping over some unsteady terrain this weekend
I'll do most car work myself, but I've never been a big fan of exhausts. This is mostly because of rusted bolts. There's also the added factor that and my condo association frowns upon the fact that I might be performing car surgery in our parking lots. Over the last few years I've already replaced a belt (in the Jeep), swapped an alternator, and removed my rear suspension so I could replace bushings. If they see me out there with my car jacked up at all four corners hitting rusty exhaust bolts with a MAP gas torch I'm sure that someone will probably say something.
Now, if I had a lift to go with my torch and maybe an extra set of hands to get the exhaust into place, and not to mention the time to do all of this I would do it tonight, but I don't. Professionals have this and I estimate that they could pop out the bolts and hang the exhaust in about an hour.
I dropped of my car at Gurney's Auto in Nashua because I'd 1)Read on Car Talk's Mechanic Files that they were good and 2)They're about a 5 minute drive from my home. They did just call and quoted 620.00. I almost fell out of my chair. I can get real Honda parts (b-pipe, muffler, gaskets, bolts) from a dealer on-line for about 375 (Actual parts cost is 300, but it would have to be shipped), Northern Foreign Auto has the pats for 379, and Gurney's told me the parts are 418. So I'm convinced they're probably marking them up to make a small profit. Hey, everyone's got to make a living and I don't have a problem with the parts price. It's the labor cost involved. As I mentioned before I believe this is a 1 hour job with the right tools. In fact I'd even provided a spare catalytic converter (yes, I happen to just have a second one laying around) in case the flanges that connect the b-pipe were too rusty or broke. Either way, once the rusty bolts are off hanging and bolting on the new stuff only takes a few minutes.
So I had to choose two: Good, Fast, or Cheap. Cheap doesn't appear to be an option however the car should be ready tonight. I'm not sure of the quality of the work. Only time and oxidation will tell I suppose.
[EDIT 8-22-07] I did get my car back that evening and it cost me 580 which is 40 dollars less than they quoted, but my opinion is still that it's a fairly straight forward job which should have cost 500 or less.
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| Bicycle Commuting
| Date: 08-05-2007 23:25
| This year I started commuting to work and so far things have been good. I figured that I'd run into people who didn't understand the concept of a bike riding with traffic but so far I can't recall a single beep. I'm sure that I'll eventually get someone who's ignorant or a road raging menace, but until then it's all good.
I outfitted my old Trek 8000 with a Blackburn "Moutain" rear rack. At first I tried to use it with an old backpack. Bun-geeing the backpack down to the rack turned out to be a hassle and that lasted about a week before I broke down and picked up some inexpensive panniers from Nashbar. I picked the "Euro" panniers because they were inexpensive and looked like heal-strike would be less likely. Now I can carry my laptop (in Erin's Timbuktu case), a change of clothes, and lunch with no problems. Unfortunately I've found that heal-strike can still occasionally be an issue when the laptop is in one of the bags, but mostly if I happen to be rolling my pedals backwards and that's not very common.
Overall I'm enjoying the commute. It's good exercise and I've lost about 5 lbs in the last month. Gas savings isn't really much of a factor. I might be saving a dollar a day, but it doesn't really offset the cost of bike tires, lights, panniers, etc. At this point I'm not sure how long I'll ride, maybe through October if the cold weather keeps at bay.
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| Regex, Blank lines and Windows is a bad combination
| Date: 04-12-2007 14:17
| For the last 2 hours I'd been attempting to split a large text file using csplit (from the gnu win32 ports) on a Windows box with little success.
The file was formatted as:
Group1
Member
Member
Member
Group(n)
Member
Member
...
So I figured I'd csplit it with a regex to catch the blank line, then run a wc against the whole dir. The line count will tell me the number of members (minus 1 for the groupname as well) and the whole process should take about 5 minutes. Hah. So I tried a /\r\n\r\n/ because viewing via a hex editor of my source file showed those blank lines were "OD OA OD OA". When it didn't work I tried various other matches of cr's, lf's and returns. Then tried various thing's like ^$ until fustration set in.
So then it hit me that it would be easier to do in perl, I wrote a 20 line perl script in a few minutes it was done. Unfricking believable. If someone happens to know why I can't match the blank lines with a regex I'd like to know why. Googling proved to be somewhat futile.
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