auto repair – A Stay At Home Dad

Yeah. Remember that starter that supposedly went bad?

Well, I went and picked up a new one this morning, as well as a couple of 3 ton lifts so I could get under the car without fear of it falling on my chest while I was pulling the old one out. Spent just shy of $200.

I was getting ready to start the whole repair process, which was going to be not uninvolved. Since I couldn’t start the car, I was going to have to jack it up in place, then use the 3-ton lifts I’d purchased to stabilize it. Probably wedge the wheels in the process. The last thing I wanted was to have a 2-ton car drop on me while I’m working on it.

Once it was securely propped up, then the fun would begin. Finding the starter, pulling it out and replacing it with the new one. Having done this once before, I was prepared for the fact the it would take most of the morning. Last time, the starter was in a tight spot and getting it off was half the battle, getting it out of the car was the other half. I was prepared for a similar experience.

With the prospect of crawling back and forth under a car on a gravel drive looming, I opted to try the Hail-Mary of auto repair and attempt starting the car one more time. I placed the key in the ignition, turned it ON and something seemed… different. Were the dash lights a little dimmer? Did it seem like the starter was trying to fire but just couldn’t? Was it just the 2nd cup of coffee coursing through my veins?

Was it possibly a drained, but not dead, battery?

Cutting to the chase, I hooked up the jumper cables between the cars and lo-and-behold, the car fired up. Drained battery it was.

I was elated and pissed at the same time. I wasn’t going to have to replace anything at the moment. But I still had to get the other car to the mechanics and I’d spent nearly $200 in prep this morning for work I, suddenly, didn’t have to perform.

Murphy was a mad genius.

I didn’t want to fix our cars window. I’d even called a “professional” to come do it. I’d done all the hard work for them, figured out the problem and procured the part. I explained what needed to be done and they were supposed to come out Thursday.

They no showed.

Actually, I ended up calling them late in Thursday afternoon and telling them not to come because we needed the cars at that point in the afternoon, so it would be a waste for them to show up. They assured me they would come by yesterday, in the morning.

Again, they no showed. To make matters worse, they have yet to call.

Not that it will matter at this point. I’ve already done the job.

After the jump is a description of the process I went through to change out the window regulator for a Toyota Matrix. No pictures though. I don’t think they’d be very helpful.

Prior to the instructions, for the curious, the window regulator is the mechanical portion of the window lift. It is basically a scissor with one of the arms fixed to the door so that the other, which is connected to the bottom of the window glass in some way, can raise and lower the window. A motor is attached to the “handle” side of the lifting arm. I believe the scissor arrangement also gives some mechanical advantage to the motor for lifting purposes.

Click Here for Instructions