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There was a flat tire that needing fixing, so I decide to help fix it. No, it wasn't on my bike, in fact it wasn't on a bike, it was on a car, not even my car, and as I found out the driver of the car is a neighbor from up the street that I had never met.
My number one priority today was to replace the headlight assemblies (not just the bulbs, but the whole housing unit) on our PT Cruiser because the PVC lenses have yellowed and have lessened their luminary power over the past few years. I had bought the units from a website last week and was able to get them delivered so I could work on them this week during my vacation time. I read a maintenance book to get an idea of what was involved in doing this. Take off the front tire, remove the wheel well splash shield to gain access to the mounting nuts. Once the nuts are loosened, then it’s a matter of pulling the assembly out from between the fender and the molding below it & above the bumper. The book has some instructions on doing this but failed to be precise in what it was trying to say. I took out some fasteners after I got the old assembly out, which made it a little easier to get the new on in, but it was impossible to replace one of the fasteners, and next to impossible to get the second one in – it took me over an hour with a little ingenuity of using a clothes hanger to fish it into the crevice and feed it (tab A) into its mount (slot B). As I got to this point, Jacque & Andrea arrived home from their eye doctor appointment, bearing the gift of lunch. I went ahead and finished putting the wheel well back together and remounting the tire before heading in to eat lunch – that was may be 10 minutes work.
As we were gathering the tools to move them from the drive way and into the garage, a car came rolling down the street, and it was obvious that a tire was flat – flop flop flop. Wondering what the person was thinking as she kept going down the street, stopped at the stop sign and then turned right and disappeared around the corner, the brief thought I had about helping this person disappeared as soon as the car did from my sight. I went inside, sat down in my recliner and began eating my lunch. A couple minutes later I look up and the car is now in my sight – apparently she did a you turn and settled on a somewhat flat section of road and was trying to get the car jacked up. A few youths walking by, stopped and helped her loosen the lug nuts and went on their way as she went onto begin lifting the car.
How could I just sit there and eat and enjoy my lunch and see her dealing with her situation? Well, I sat my lunch down, went out to the garage and grabbed the floor jack I had just taken out from under my car a few minutes ago, and carried down to her car. As I got there she had just gotten the scissor jack to start lifting the body and they way she was turning the wrench it probably would have taken her several minutes to get the car up. I backed it down, and put my jack under the car – the wheel was changed in less than 5 minutes. We put her ‘donut’ spare on and it looked mighty low as the car was lowered. I told I would be back in a minute, as I carried my jack back home and grabbed a little compressor out of the back of my truck – it is a light duty compressor, but it also plugs into a lighter/power port in a car. When I returned to her car, my pressure gauge showed the spare was currently around 20 lbs PSI – that is not much better than the flat tire that was just removed. It took about four or 5 minutes for this little compressor to get the tire up to about 51, 52 PSI – good enough to get her a couple miles to the tire repair place.
God’s timing: my floor jack was not holding up my car – it was available for use. God’s prompting: I was willing to help as I saw her go down the street, but like I said above, that thought disappeared as she went around the corner. So, when she was no longer out of sight, I could not just sit there and ignore the situation.
After seeing her off and finishing my lunch, replacing the other headlight assembly didn’t take nearly as long – I avoided removing and trying to replace those fasteners, and with Jacque’s hands assisting on part of it was able to get it all done in what seemed like a pretty quick time.
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