September 14, 2012

Frustrating

European Roadside Assistance Sign
Ever since I had to utilize the Ride of Shame a couple weeks ago with Maggie, it's been a "fun" experience.

By "fun" I mean that a lot of swearing and some bloodshed is involved.

I finally got the money for parts and headed over to NAPA to get what I needed.  You cannot just ask for a part.  instead you have to let them know the make, model, and year of your vehicle so they can get you the right part.....

.....or so they would have you believe.
Getting the master and slave cylinder for the clutch was easy.  A new hydraulic hose?  They have four listed, two 9 inch and two 10 inch.  The website says all the parts are in the warehouse and when I place my order they'll ship it to my desired NAPA store where I can pay & pick-up.....

.....or so they would have you believe.

Parts "in the warehouse" my ass!
I get a quick call explaining I have to come down and pre-pay for my parts.  When I get to the store they tell me that the hydraulic hose I ordered isn't the right one anymore (discontinued?) and the new one is not only more expensive, but I have to pay $8 to have it mailed up from Salt Lake City.  I manage to get them to lower the cost to match what I ordered originally, but I still have to pay $8 for shipping from the warehouse.  The other parts...no shipping from the warehouse.

I don't think they quite understand how a warehouse works.  I actually suspect there is no warehouse and all they are doing is shuffling inventory between stores.

Fine....I pay the money because I need the part.  Fortunately for me everything comes in a day earlier than anticipated.  I go pick up the parts and start working on the swap out.

The various fittings of the clutch cylinders haven't been touched in 34 years since the car was new.  What should have been 30 minutes of wrench turning was closer to 3 hours.  No matter what I did I could not get one connection to come undone.  I ended up just cutting the old hydraulic hose and after a lot of swearing and one gashed finger I managed to get the other end of the hydraulic hise disconnected from the steel line.  That 10 mm nut on the end of the steel line is now quite stripped, so if I need to do this again in the future I'm going to have to replace a lot of line with braided hose.

I got the master cylinder in easily enough, but wouldn't you know it...the 10 inch hydraulic hose is too short!  I need at least 12 inches to get the job done (that's what she said!) I'm pretty pissed because this was "the hose" that I had to pay $20 for!  I went online and tried to find a new hose, but of course the system wanted to know the application.  Eventually I was able to find a selection of hoses with the correct ends.  I placed another call to the local NAPA store and told them they got me the wrong hose.  Of course he wanted to know what vehicle it was for, but I put a kibosh on that, explaining the hose i got was the one they said would work.  We went back and forth a few times with part numbers until they could find one that I wouldn't have to get from Salt Lake City.

Well get Maggie running again!
I exchanged the old hose for the new, eating $8 in useless shipping charges, and should be ready to go.  Of course now I'm missing a length of hose to properly bleed the system!  I though aquarium tubing would do it, but it is too small.  This afternoon I walked about a mile down the road to the D&B Supply to get a more appropriate sized hose.

By tomorrow morning Maggie should....should be up and running.

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