--adventure by Tones--
For years, my wife has been complaining that something has been hanging low on her Camry's underbelly causing a scraping sound every time she drives up and down our driveway. I've put this off for other projects over the years, but I finally had some blog-inspired motivation (and a new garage) to tinker around and see what's up.
My maw has a jack at her house that is coming my way now that I have a new garage, but I'll have to make due with these ramps in the meantime. They always make me nervous driving up them, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right?
Car on ramps: SUCCESS! Now it's time to take a peek and see what's going on underneath the car. I've been holding on to my Dad's old Jeeper's Creeper for a decade, waiting for a cool garage in which to scoot around. Finally, I get a chance to scoot under the car in old-school style.
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| The Jeeper's Creeper. Sweet. |
I took the creeper for a test scoot, but I was a bit disappointed in the performance. It rode kind of like that one cart you get at the grocery store that pulls to the left. I put the Camry project on hold for a while to investigate.
Turns out that my dad must have run over some shag carpeting back in the day. I attacked this wound-up string with a needle nose and removed it with relative ease. After a quick shot of WD-40, and the Jeeper's Creeper rode like a dream! SUCCESS!!
Whew! It's getting to be about noon at this point so I reckon it's time for a quick Coffee Break.
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| Starbucks French Roast. |
Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, the Camry. I scooted under the car with my sweet new ride and found that the plastic panels were sagging as they dropped two of those plastic pushy-things (grommets?).
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| Metal housing above, plastic cover below. They need to meet. |
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| One of the two sagging panels. |
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| One of the grommets still intact. |
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| I need a grommet here... |
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| ...and here. |
Knowing that I would never find a grommet in the garage, I found myself looking for an alternative. Maybe I'd find a self-tapping screw or something, who knows. Duct Tape is a no-go: no style points there. ZipTies, on the other hand, are not only acceptable, they are encouraged. If I could fish the ZipTies through the grommet holes in the metal beam, I could be in business!
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| BINGO! |
The first panel was an easy fix as the grommet hole was drilled out in an open-ended metal housing. Threading the ZipTie was simple and I was halfway to SUCCESS.
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| zzzzzip! |
Unfortunately, the second grommet hole was a bugger. It was drilled out of an enclosed metal beam, so making the necessary "loop" for the ZipTie would be tricky indeed. Noticing another hole drilled out of the beam a few inches away, I found a possible "loop," but how would I finagle the ZipTie in and out of the beam?
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| I'm pointing to the Grommet hole. Note the secondary hole an inch or so downward. How do I get a ZipTie threaded in that? |
Fortunately, I have years of ZipTie experience and I'm quite adept at pulling off the impossible with these things. With a trademark move called, "The Selby Hook," I bent the very tip of the ZipTie and made a secondary bend a few millimeters upstream. This made this potential boondoggle almost laughable. Man, I'm good with these ZipTies.
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The "Selby Hook." (Pat. Pend.)
Amazing, aren't I? |
With the ZipTie threaded, all that was left was pulling things tight and snipping off the ends.
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| zzzzzip! |
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| SUCCESS! |
With everything holding tight, I took my wife's car for a test drive up and down the driveway a few times. I didn't hear any scraping sounds, so I'm calling this a SUCCESS!!! I also found a half-bag of peanut M&M's in the car... BONUS POINTS!
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| Payment for my labor. |
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