Wheels

I was recently going over my finances for the past twelve months, and noticed that my car took a much larger chunk out of my budget than usual in 2014.  The reason is fairly simple: the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, is a 2007 model year, which means that it has reached the vehicular equivalent of middle age.  Just as has happened with me in my own middle age, lots of things have suddenly come up needing some attention.  Luckily though, for both me and the car, most of it has been preventative maintenance.  I am known as a pretty frugal guy, so one would think that I would be bothered by all the extra cash I laid out on my car last year.  If those expenditures were on anything else, say my wardrobe for example, or my lawn and garden equipment, I probably would indeed be a bit irked.  The thing is, the primary set of wheels in my life at any given time has always held a rather special place in my heart.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say money is no object when it comes to my vehicles, but it is less of an object than it would be for other things.

Big Wheels Rolling

My love affair with things that go started very young.  At Christmas when I was almost three I got a low-slung plastic tricycle popularly known in the early 1970s as a Big Wheel.  These slick little machines were heavily marketed during children’s television shows as being the pinnacle of cool for the preschool set.  In addition to a storage box in which to keep important “stuff”, the big draw for kids like me was a hand brake on one of the rear wheels which effectively allowed the driver to spin out in the most awesome way possible.  And yes, it was well and truly awesome.  The house where I grew up had a long sloping driveway that was just perfect to barrel down at high speed and then yank up on the hand brake, spinning almost all the way around.  The end of the driveway was constantly marked by rings left behind by my spins.  I wore out my first Big Wheel toward the end of its first year by overusing the hand brake to the point where it wore through the rear wheel.  Such was my love for the Big Wheel, and my parents’ appreciation for it as an outlet for my energy, that I got a replacement the next Christmas.  It came with a parental proviso, however: Lay off the hand brake.

This vintage ad sums it all up nicely.

Big Wheel #2 ultimately received even rougher treatment than its predecessor.  Not only was I getting bigger, but since I was using the hand brake less, I needed to find another way to get a vehicular thrill, and found it in jumping the Big Wheel off whatever makeshift ramp I could concoct.  I rode it as fast as I could off curbs, low steps, or any other slight elevation, lifting up on the front end.  It was an attempt to “get air” before “getting air” was even a thing.  Heck, this was even before the Dukes of Hazzard.  Much like the spinouts, these jumps were well and truly awesome in my mind, even if they were usually only an average of four inches off the ground.

I think this was Big Wheel #2.

My second Big Wheel died when it broke in half.  Yes, you read that right.  It broke in half!  While I won’t disagree that I played pretty hard with it, it is also worth noting that in those days before video games, DVDs and the like, kids spent MUCH more time outside, at least several hours a day for me and even more in the summers and on weekends.  The majority of that time for me was spent on wheels.  Big plastic ones.  Therefore, some attrition was to be expected.  Those things got a whole lot of use before they finally gave up their ghosts.  Believe it or not, my parents did actually get me a third Big Wheel, but fortunately for their pocketbook, a market in used ones had emerged locally at yard sales, the toys having been around for a while at that point and kids were outgrowing them.  They were able to get my last one at a steep discount. 

Frankenstein's Bicycle

My third Big Wheel did not meet the same untimely end as my first two, because shortly after I got it, I got my first two-wheeler, which subsequently dominated my attention.  My first bike did not arrive with a lot of fanfare.  It was not a Christmas or birthday gift.  There was no anticipation, and I did not even ask for it.  It just kind of happened.  One Saturday in the summer before I started kindergarten, my father and I were nosing around in my grandmother’s garage and found the remains of several of my uncles’ old bicycles, which had been sitting in there for ten years or so.  It didn’t take my father very long to determine that he had all the parts he would need to assemble one Frankenstein’s monster of a bicycle for me from the remains of the old ones, and later that afternoon I had my first bicycle.  The only expenditure on my parents’ part was a couple of dollars at Western Auto for training wheels.  I only used the training wheels for little more than 48 hours, however.  The bike had a pretty heavy frame compared to most contemporary bikes of that time, and the training wheels were not made for that kind of weight, so they started bending almost immediately.  When it was pointed out to me by my friends that I was riding on two wheels anyway, I took the training wheels off by myself.

I had several bicycles after that first one, but that bike my father cobbled together in my grandmother’s garage was the best.  It was too big for me when I first got it, but that didn’t keep me off it for a second.  A shade of dark metallic green with a white banana seat and huge handlebars, it looked like no other bike on my street.  The tires were of an early 60s vintage, very wide and thick, and the frame was virtually military-grade.  That bike was solid as a tank, and many neighborhood kids recognized its uniqueness.  Sure, it wasn’t as sleek and attractive as some of their newer ones, but it was solid as a rock and remarkably fast.  I distinctly remember an older boy named Kevin admiring it and asking me how much I wanted for it, and I replied that it wasn’t for sale.  Even though I was just a little kid, I could tell that this ten year old was trying to con me when he offered me a hundred dollars, then a thousand, and then a million.  “I’ve really got it at home,” he said, counting on a preschooler’s lack of money sense.  I only had to let him have the bike now he said, and he’d come right back with the money.  Yeah, right.  My final response was that I would only sell it “for the highest number there is”, and then pedaled off, with my suspicion that I had something special on my hands confirmed.  

Bicycles were my primary mode of transportation and the symbol of my personal freedom for the next nearly ten years.  I always felt naked if I didn’t have my bike within easy reach, and it was always a sad day each year when the first snow came and my bike had to be put away for the winter.  It proved to be my parents’ most effective discipline tool in my childhood, as few punishments were worse for me than to have my bike taken away for a day, much less a week or more.  Send me to my room. Take away the TV.  But leave my bike alone.

Beloved Rustbucket

My first car came to me before I even got my driver’s license.  Living in a rural area, my parents had to do a lot of chauffeuring for my brothers and me, so my being able to get myself around would be a real plus for them.  However, they didn’t relish the idea of having to share the family vehicle with another driver, so they encouraged me to start saving for my own car as soon as I laid the subject of driver education classes out on the table.  I started working a part time job in the spring of the year I turned 15, and by that August, I had enough saved up for a very used car my father had found and approved.  I paid $575 for a rusty, 13 year-old Chevrolet Caprice with nearly 100,000 miles on it.  It sat in the driveway taunting me by its presence for the four weeks between when I got it and when I actually passed my driver’s test.  Needless to say, by the time I got behind the wheel to drive it by myself for the first time, I had polished and detailed that car to the point where it probably would have glowed in the dark, in spite of the rust.  I spent nearly as much on Turtle Wax, Windex, Armor All and paper towels as I did for the car itself.

It looked a lot like this, only less sexy and more rusty.

The Caprice was huge, and even in those days of cheaper gasoline it cost me a fortune to keep it filled.  I could fit a lot of my friends in it however, which was a real plus because I was one of the first in my class to get my license and one of the only ones to have his own car.  My services as a taxi driver to and from school were in high demand.  The car wasn’t very reliable.  It was always a roll of the dice as to whether it would start when the temperature dropped below freezing, and it had a habit of stalling in almost any weather.  There was a constant blue cloud coming from the exhaust pipe, and the interior smelled like burning oil, which I tried to cover up by using a half dozen cherry-scented air fresheners.  For a while toward the end of its life, I actually had to keep the passenger side door closed with a piece of rope.  It probably would have never passed inspection again, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Environmental Protection Agency had a warrant out for its arrest.  Nonetheless, it was all mine, my ticket to freedom, and I loved it.  That Caprice had one of the smoothest rides of any car I’ve ever driven, and was so large that if I had been in an accident, it would have kept me relatively safe compared to the ubiquitous compact cars that were on the road at the time.  Plus the radio had great reception and was LOUD!  I only had that Caprice for a year before the cost of upkeep got to be too much, and I downsized to a newer, smaller car which had fewer problems and expenses.  It just didn’t live up to the standard that the first clunker had set for me, though.  I sold the Caprice to a man who wanted to use it for parts.  To this day when I smell cherries, I am reminded of the air fresheners I used in that old car and wonder if it is still around, rusting in the woods or in a junkyard somewhere.

I’ve had quite a few cars in the thirty years since I bought that Caprice, all of which came to be central players in my life.  My latest is no exception.  It’s my chariot, my set of wheels.  I travel a lot, and when I am on the road, my car acts as a mobile comfort zone when I am staying in pleasant but strange places surrounded by welcome but unfamiliar things.  There’s always a slight sense of satisfaction when I catch sight of my car in a parking lot after having been away from it for an extended period.  I don’t think it is so much the car itself that stirs these feelings, as much as what it represents: freedom, opportunity, and the ability to ultimately return to the things that mean the most to me.

A glamour shot of my current chariot, from the manufacturer.

Getting Rattled

I've been a “car guy” ever since I was a little kid.  Not a car guy in the sense that I could tear down and rebuild an engine, but a car guy in the sense that I have always enjoyed driving and admiring them.  When taking a trip in my car, half the fun for me is the journey to and from the destination.  An antique auto or any kind of unique vehicle on the road will almost always turn my head, and I find it impossible to just drive past any kind of car show or display.  One of the highlights of my summer excursions around Maine this year was a day spent at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum in the town of Owl’s Head, just outside of Rockland.  I could have made it several days, actually.

Because I place such a premium on the car experience, it makes me kind of edgy when something interferes with that pleasure.  You may recall that I addressed this here in this blog a few months ago when my Hyundai Santa Fe developed a mysterious knock which seemed to be coming from the undercarriage that I could not track down no matter how hard I tried.  It turned out to be some manner of rod near one of the wheels, according to my mechanic, who is also likely certified to fly space shuttles.  I think this “rod” was actually part of the flux capacitor or something, and I never would have ferreted it out by myself in a million years.

Because my Santa Fe is nearing seven years old, I know that it, like me, is not getting any younger and is bound to develop more frequent health quirks.  Much as I do with my own health, I sometimes get concerned that the other shoe could drop on my car’s well-being at any time.  Also much like my own health, I am not so much worried about some major crisis as much as a series of irritating little ones. 

Take, for instance, the plastic covering for the fuse panel, on the side of the dashboard.  It has a loose fit nowadays, and occasionally falls out onto the ground when the door opens.  If it ever gets lost, I would probably also lose at least a piece of my mind.  On the other hand, there is no good way to secure it in place short of duct tape, the sight of which would bother me just as much as having to constantly watch to make sure the covering doesn't get lost.

And then there are the various and sundry pieces and parts that are rolling around inside the back door.  When installing a new license plate a few years ago, some washers and little plasticky things fell inside it, and now rattle around in there whenever I lift open the door or take a sharp corner.  Taking the door apart myself to retrieve the errant pieces would just be a recipe for complete and total disaster, and taking it to a mechanic for something so foolish to someone else would likely be both embarrassing and expensive.  So, I just put on my big boy pants and deal with it.  Not happily, mind you.  Not. At. All.

About a year ago, I got a pen wedged inside the ashtray, preventing it from opening.  I don’t smoke unless someone sets me on fire, so it seemed at first like a good place to keep a pen.  I often have need of one while on the road and can rarely locate one quickly.  And a good place for a pen it was, for quite some time actually, until one day I went to open up the ashtray/pen receptacle while at a drive-through ATM with a line of cars behind me.  It was well and truly jammed.  No amount of jiggling, finagling or cajoling could get it to open, and the line behind me was growing longer and more impatient.   I left without completing any of my banking tasks and immediately pulled into a nearby parking spot.  I spent nearly an hour on every strategy short of explosives to get it open.  At long last it did pop free, with no damage to the ashtray/now-former pen receptacle.  It’s a good thing too, because if I had to look at a broken ashtray every time I got in the car, I’d probably have to sell it immediately, probably at a loss, just to get it out of my sight.

My latest potential vehicle crisis emerged a few days ago.  There was a tiny but highly irritating rattling sound coming from somewhere inside the cabin whenever I drove over rough roads, which are not unusual things to encounter in northern Maine. 

Rattles belong in playpens, not in Hyundais.

Source: http://www.2carpros.com/

First, I checked the storage compartments, of which my Santa Fe has more than a herd of kangaroos. I store plenty of stuff in most of them, like CDs, charging units, my GPS, manuals, a small rubber lizard that came with a great drink I had in the Old Port in 1996, as well as the typical flotsam and jetsam that accumulate in a vehicle like paper clips, receipts, gum and the like.  I secured anything and everything that looked like it might be loose and headed back out on a bumpy street.

The rattle was still there!  Drat.

(Yes, I really did say "drat".)

Perhaps some part of the vehicle itself was loose, I thought. Since I could only hear it when I was driving, which is a less-than-ideal time to be crawling around looking, I recruited a friend to drive while I attempted to pinpoint the problem.  The thing was, when I was in the back seat, it sounded like the rattle was coming from the front, and when I was in the front, it sounded like it was coming from the back.  We switched places, and I had my friend try to find the source of the rattle.  Nothing.  After exhausting my friend’s patience as well as half a tank of gas, I concluded that it wasn’t a loose part either.

By this point, I had endured the phantom rattle for three days and seemed no closer to locating the source.  I was within inches of deciding to sell the car for scrap when fate, as it so often does, led me to Dunkin Donuts. Treating my friend to coffee was on my agenda, and as I got to the drive-through window, I went for my wallet in the glove compartment. 

You see, once in a while I keep my wallet in there, along with the vehicle manual and other car-related papers.  Nothing loose though.  It’s a pain to fish anything out of there when driving, so the glove compartment doesn't accumulate nearly the amount of stuff that the other ones do.  I was so sure that there was nothing rattle worthy in there that I hadn't even bothered to check it thoroughly. 

As I shut the glove compartment, I heard it.  The rattle.  Thankfully, no one was in line behind us, so I asked the coffee guy to wait for just a second, as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached over to pull everything out onto my friend’s lap.  Under the manuals and paperwork, I found a quarter, which had likely slipped out of my wallet.  It had to be the culprit!

I gave a fist-pump of victory accompanied by a loud “Yussss!”

The coffee guy looked at me as though I had lost my sanity.  My friend knew that particular train had left the station a long time ago and just rolled her eyes, a reaction I tend to get a lot, especially from women.  Regardless, the latest rattle crisis was resolved.  I have driven in rattle-free bliss ever since.

Winter’s coming, and no doubt new rattles and knocks will be popping up in my car.  Cold weather seems to foster them.  So if you see me pulled over on the side of the road frantically fishing around the vehicle, don’t worry.  Probably something has come loose.  Whether it’s in the vehicle cabin or in my head is a matter of debate, I guess.  

I Hear You Knocking

A "glamour shot" of my vehicle that I found somewhere on the Internet a long time ago. (From www.autonet.hr, I think)

My car has a knock and it is driving me just about out of my mind.

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog already know that I am notoriously fussy about some things.  One of the things about which I am most fussy is my car.  I like it to be clean, comfortable, and in excellent working order at all times.  Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I like to be too.

If a dashboard light comes on, I immediately stop and look into it.  If something is spilled inside the car, I will pull over to the side of the road wherever I am and clean it up.  While it is impossible to keep the exterior spotless during a Maine winter, I do hit the automatic car wash as often as I reasonably can during the winter months, and can be seen washing and waxing almost every weekend once the weather gets above freezing.

So, you can imagine my horror a month ago when a strange sound started coming from what sounded like the passenger side of the undercarriage whenever there was a slight side-to-side motion of the car.  Given the pothole quotient during spring in these parts, and the fact that my car is an SUV with a fairly high profile, I was hearing it quite a bit.  It was a gentle knocking sound, as though something dangling underneath was bumping up against something else.  The car, a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe with about 70,000 miles on it, has had very few problems in the two years I've owned it, so this was cause for concern.

Frankly, I did not want to shell out a bunch of cash to a mechanic if I could solve it myself, which I hoped was the case here.  My vehicular mechanical skills are much like my computer troubleshooting skills: intuitive.  I don’t really know how to explain what is wrong or how to fix it, but I can generally dive right in and take care of it myself in many situations.  If I had to teach someone else how to do it or describe what I just did to fix the problem, I’d be totally lost for words (which would be really something for me).  I instinctively knew that this sound from below the car, while irritating, was not something serious that would impede operation of the car in any way.  The only way the knock would knock was when influenced by a side-to-side motion.  It was not, for example, a faulty CV joint, since I've been there before with a prior car, and my bank account has the scars to prove it.

I did the most obvious thing first.  I went through the interior of the car to see if something was loose and knocking around.  I crawled under the seats and looked in all of the storage compartments, finding nothing that would be prone to movement.  I don’t tend to store a lot of “stuff” in my car anyway.  Just to be sure, I took every single thing out of all nooks and crannies of the car, from the papers in the glove box to the spare tire and everything in between.  Then I went for a quick drive around the block.  The knock was still there.

So much for Plan A.

The next step was to jack up the car and crawl under.  It was still mud season at the time, so this was a miserable thing to do.  There wasn't really enough room in my garage to easily jack it up and have room to get underneath, so I had to do it outside in the wet, muddy driveway, where there were likely earthworms and God knows what else.

I didn't use the small emergency jack I carry in the car, since it was both flimsy and also neatly packed away again after the failed Plan A.  Instead, I got out the allegedly heavy duty hydraulic “SUV jack” (note the quotation marks), which I kept in the garage.  I had not actually used it on this particular vehicle before, though it had always worked fine on my previous vehicle, which was a lighter car.  There was no reason to think it wouldn't work on this one, since it was supposed to be a jack capable of lifting SUVs, and my current vehicle is indeed one of those.

Wrong.

I positioned the jack carefully and started moving the handle up and down, up and down.  This went on for several minutes, and I was starting to get a bit winded.  “Wow,” I thought, “the suspension on this thing must be terrific if it takes this long to get the wheels off the ground!”  Come to find out, the jack couldn't handle the weight of my vehicle, and all my jacking was for nothing.  I proceeded to cram the car, the jack, and myself into my tiny garage and tried the whole process again on a cement surface, but still nothing.  This “SUV jack” was just not going to jack my SUV.

Moving the car back into the driveway, I shimmied underneath it without benefit of a jack.  The undercarriage does sit fairly high off the ground, but it was still a tight squeeze for me to get underneath to inspect things and commune with the earthworms.  Every move required contortionist-like skill, which is no easy feat for a guy like me.  The idea was to muckle onto a few things underneath and gave them a gentle shake to see if I could replicate the knocking sound.  After slightly burning my hand on a still rather hot exhaust system, which had been the primary suspect, I concluded that it was not the problem.  It moved a little bit, but made more of a metallic sound. 

Every shake dislodged a winter’s worth of dirt, most of which landed on my face and in my hair.  Nonetheless, it seemed like most everything under there was pretty solid.  I was just about to crawl out from under, pick the squished earthworms off my back, and go shower for several days when I tried one last thing.  There was a conduit for what I believe is a brake line that seemed like a possible culprit. Sure enough, it did have a side-to-side movement and bumped slightly into some other thingy nearby.  It sounded like the knock I had been hearing, and so I thought I had found it.  With much effort, I maneuvered my way out from under and went to get some plastic ties to secure the conduit in such a way that it wouldn't bump the other thingy.  After doing so, I took a quick spin around the block in the car.

The car still knocked.

Dammit.

I crawled back under, carefully avoiding the now very hot exhaust system, and saw that the ties had come off somewhere on my short drive around the block.  Still convinced that I had pinned down the problem, I got some more plastic ties and fit them more tightly than the last set.  I didn't want to make it too tight, for fear it would damage the conduit.  Another trip around the block, and still the knock persisted. 

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.  In spite of that, I crawled under the car yet again and readjusted the plastic ties in such a way that there was no possible way the conduit could knock against anything.

People were starting to look out their windows as I drove around the block for a third time, probably wondering if I was stalking them.  The crazed look on my face as I continued to hear the knocking sound in spite of my efforts probably only heightened their fears.

So apparently the brake conduit was not the culprit after all.  I was done for the day, and decided to just keep the radio turned up loud to drown out the knock until I could get a second opinion.  I was going to dinner with my brother not long after that, so I figured we would take my car and he could hear the sound for himself.  He didn't.  Claimed he didn't hear a thing.  Of course, he has two young children and a large dog, so his cars are constantly rattling, clanging, and bumping from all manner of detritus left behind by the youngsters and the pooch.  My car probably sounded like a sailboat on a glassy sea in comparison.

A few weeks have passed, and my delusion that the knock would just resolve itself miraculously has long since fallen by the wayside.  I've crawled under that damn car at least three other times in hopes of finding that which has eluded me for nearly a month, but to no avail.  The knocking persists.  As much as I hate to admit defeat, I think it’s time to make an appointment with my mechanic.

I can almost see how it’s going to go:  He’ll call to say the car is ready.  I’ll stop by to pick it up, and he’ll hand me an empty bottle of Ibuprofen or something similar he found rattling in some compartment I missed in my previous searches.  Then, with a smarmy grin, he’ll hand me a bill for several hundred dollars, and I’ll wish that bottle of Ibuprofen had a few tablets left.

I still have one plan left, although it might have a few flaws.  Since the knock can only be heard when the car is in motion, I am thinking that I can get someone to hang suspended by bungee cords underneath while I drive around on some rough streets.  The aforementioned “someone” would thus be able to pinpoint the source of the knock, and will then tell me what it is as soon as they are released from the hospital. 

Any volunteers?  Might be a free beer in it for you.

YouTube Video: A live version of the classic "I Hear You Knocking" by the incomparable Dave Edmunds. You have no idea how much I hate this song now.