I thought Darrin was going to post this one, but instead it is me again. Lately he has been on a "lets fix up our cars" kick. I have no problem with this, it is hard enough for me to vacuum or wash my car once a year, I think this idea is great! Our lovely 4 runner is a great car, it is a 93 which means it is getting up there in age but we can't complain because we have never had any major issues with it. A few weeks back I was driving it and it died in the middle of an intersection. I didn't know what to do, I was freaking out. I couldn't push the car myself. As I was frantically redialing Darrin's phone by the tenth time I had some fellow drivers stop to help push me out of the way. As they were almost done Darrin showed up to help. He towed the car back to the shop and with the help of some work buddies they concluded that is was the radiator . It cost 250 bucks but well worth it if my car started to work. I was quite impressed, he and Bryan installed it together, which I am sure saved us a lot of money. Well, as Darrin started up the car he made it a block and it stopped working, again. Now I was super distraught. We don't have the money for a new car and plus we just spent a lot to fix it. (for us it's a lot) I was super sad and very frustrated that our car wasn't working. Later that night we went back and Darrin put some more coolant in it and Woolah, it worked. YEAH!!! He is my hero. No more tears.
But then comes the BMW. Our rear passenger window motor went out over a year ago. It was so broken that any one could walk up to the car and push the window down with their hands. Whenever we would get on the freeway it would slowly creep down and the car would get louder and louder the longer we were driving until we could pull over and push it back up. Oh yeah, we lived with this for a year. Darrin finally decided to do something about it and we ordered a new motor from my fathers work. The day that it arrived Darrin decided that he needed to replace the motor himself. With the help of Google search he was able to take the entire door apart, remove the glass, replace the motor, and put it all back together. Now, the window looks great and it saved us a ton of money.
Then a few days later the brake light came on in the BMW. So, brazen by his trial and error success with the 4runner's radiator and the BMW's window motor, he decided to change the brakes on that car by himself. Again, with the help of Google, the first wheel took him about two hours, but the last three took about twenty minutes a piece. But he finally got it all put back together and now the car is safe for me to drive....yeah, yeah and yeah!
While he was at Autozone getting the parts for his "Autopian Adventures" he found a kit that advertises head light restoration. The BMW is also getting to be a somewhat of a geriatric and the headlights were looking pretty bad. They were foggy and yellowing which looked horrible. So, he decided to try the kit out, and let me tell you, it was amazing the difference this little $19 kit made. Our headlights look brand new and it changed the whole look of the car.
By this point Darrin is thinking he is pretty hot stuff when it come to cars, so he has decided to start changing stuff on the interiors. He started re-sewing the steering wheel of the BMW, and refinishing the leather on the steering wheel so that it did not look faded and feel all rough, he moved the iPod connector to a more central location, replacing the unused phone jack in the center console and moving the stereo face to a better location on the dash. Well, the interior is only half way done and right now I have NO stereo and the center console is in pieces in the garage. I guess it is a work in progress, but I will be glad when it is over. I do have a picture of the before and after on the headlights, it looks pretty good.

Posted in: 2009, darrin, riss on Friday, April 24, 2009 at