theodore is not pleased with the ride to the vet to get snipped. he was calm but his expression said it all.
Tag Archives: ford
bartering for straw, wisco style.
two bales of straw for The Girls in exchange for a pabst blue ribbon seems like a fair trade.
day 4417: quality afternoon at the local swimming hole.
couldn’t ask for a more gorgeous day at the swimming hole!
what could possibly go wrong?!
waterlogged kids get aired out with a ride home in the galaxie.
rolling to doggy day care in the galaxie five oh oh.
frida looooooves the big, open window and unobstructed view on the way to visiting her buddies.
the galaxie 500 horn has started honking on its own which can be SUPER AWKWARD.
for 14 years the galaxie 500 horn has not worked because a clip on the horn ring ( the thing you press to make contact to complete the horn circuit ) is broken. finding some parts for a 51 year old car can be a challenge and the clip on the horn ring is one of them. not impossible, but just hard enough that it’s been easier to just not have a horn.
on a recent longish road trip in the old ford i recommitted to finding the part to fix the horn because it’s sometimes it’s a safety issue to one! i stopped into the local ford dealership to see if they had the part. unsurprisingly, the answer was no.
weirdly, the week after i started thinking about fixing the horn it started honking on its own! but only when i’m cranking the steering wheel around more than a full rotation. i assume there’s a new bare spot on the horn wires in the steering column that are touching and completing the circuit when i turn the wheel?
it doesn’t honk all the time, just when i’m cranking the steering wheel around. and when am i most likely to be doing that? when i’m parking! which i’m quickly realizing can be super awkward when people are walking by. when i was leaving work some women were walking nearby when i was pulling out and the car started – HONK! HONK! HONK! of course, they looked at me perplexed which meant i had to stop and explain that i wasn’t honking at them. it was the car! doing it on it’s own! not me! crossed wires!
more perplexed looks.
the galaxie (500) in the car wash.
fired up the old ford today. 51 years young! i think she deserves to stretch out on the wisconsin backroads this summer after sitting around all winter.
298/365. when it rains it pours ( a galaxie 500 repair clue ).
the old ford doesn’t usually give me too much trouble ( yes, i know i just had to put in a new oil pressure gauge line but that was probably 20 to 25 years old and i probably should have just proactively replaced it years ago. ), but i think i Got A Clue to another repair.
today i was running errands and it started to rain and she went from starting very easily to starting very, very, very, very hard. i’ve learned over the years to pay close attention to any changes in noise, vibrations, smells or whatever because they usually Mean Something. suddenly starting hard in a driving rain could be a coincidence, but odds are it’s not.
my guess is that it’s probably time for a new distributor cap and/or rotor? because i’ve been blogging for 16 years, i know precisely when i last got a new cap and rotor. ten years ago, july 2005, in amsterdam new york, while driving back from maine during a “hilarious” incident when the unsecured(?) battery fell off its mount, hit the fan blade and sprayed battery acid all over the engine compartment. fun times 🙂
side note 1: i’m glad i have a first printing of the 1965 ford galaxie 500 shop manual. it comes in handy! also, super weird how close it’s aged cover matches our aged end tables.
side note 2: you can still click on the images to that 10 year old story even thought the image embeds are broken. flickr changed some things and it’s a reminder that i need to write some server side magic to make older embeds work. )