Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope you had a labor-less one. My dad was about to dispose of his Datsun 120Y car (which I will now refer to as the rustmobile), getting it towed away, when his brother noticed the nice tires. My uncle wanted them tires for his rustmobile!

So begins a sweaty stinky 4 hour tire change in the sun. My dad smartly parked his car on a grassy dog toilet. I wish I had a camera to document all this. 🙁 Otherwise you’d have to bear with my extremely low-poly, low-quality 3D representations of the car!

Step 1: The rear tires

The Datsun on its front wheels
This was relatively easy. There was one jack on each side. My uncle salvaged the tires.

Step 2: Crumple and kill!

The Datsun slid and sunk!
I jacked it slightly and the back slided away from me, like its butt was hmmphing away. It then fell with a resounding thud and rusty crumple! My dad and I aren’t exactly into panicking (runs in the family) so he took another jack, risking amputation of fingers by placing bricks under the side I was working on. Then we went over to the lower side (the car was tilted with the front wheel slightly risen) and jacked that up too, with bricks to support it.

We then had both rear wheels on two bricks each. Not as easy as it seems. The next time you see an abandoned car by the roadside, think of the huffing and puffing that was required to do that!

Of course, the jack that was squashed couldn’t be tightened nor loosened… only after using the third jack did we see the damage. The screw had dug into the ground, and the support beam under the rustmobile had contorted upwards.

My er… aunt’s jack, bent.
When you see this happen to whatever-hard-metal-this-is you get traumatized. You’d know that nothing’s too hard for the crushing weight of an old rustmobile. You’d be wary of vehicles that (gasp) can kill! They don’t even have to be speeding!

The front part was really bothersome. It seems the support beams below had become digestive crackers as the jacks ate into the metal! It had to be placed at at least 3 spots near the front wheels to get a grip.

Lunch break!

Sweating and stinking, I entered the Christmas-television-special-enthralled family hall of mine as they looked at me, with their noses, like a contractor. I felt like one too.

My uncle came back with his two tires changed somewhere (more on that later) and he collected the front tires to go change them as well. When he returned with his two tires, we had a (relatively) easier time putting them in.

I was finally free!

Now you might be wondering why didn’t my dad just drive his rustmobile and my uncle’s rustmobile to the same place and change them at the workshop. I wonder why myself.

Quite simply, my dad’s very stingy. He’s darned proud to do stuff on his own. (Do you see a tormented child here? Have pity on me!)

Also, since the Datsun’s gone, I will not have a car to drive, if and when I do get my license. My mom’s van is out of bounds. I’ll gladly and proudly take public transport for now.

Of course later I went visiting relatives, a Christmas dinner barbeque party with fellow Xfresh Crew at Andrew the marketing dude’s house. I thanked my boss for my job programming, sitting at a cubicle, staring at a monitor all day… it sure beats being a mechanic. I had fun at the party, but that’s the happy stuff though – not-so-happy stuff makes for a more interesting read. 😉