Paint the Car

Working on the car. Got it started this morning, after several days of trouble.

It is an older Town and Country, and if you look a number of these over you see they almost all have rust in the exact same spots, over the rear fenders and at the lower edge of the hatch.

I did some Bondo repairs last summer, and repainted the car. I wasn't happy with the result, and get a little rust-through returning.

So I have been sanding down the bad areas, grinding out all the rust I can get at and spraying a phosphate rust inhibitor on everything that I can't get at to remove. Hope it holds for another year.

So the prelims are done, now to paint the car. The hardest part is actually the taping, masking everything you don't want paint on. The paint spray mists, and travels a long way, so if you are spraying the rear hatch, you have to cover all of the windows or get a nice, fine coating on them.

This year the car will be gold, a fairly bright one.

The Car, the Lawn, and Other Money-Sucking Hazards

Mowed the lawn today, after letting it get pretty long. With the wife and kids away I tend to let these things go. The grass looks great, so much rain this year.

Put $170 bucks into the car last week, new brakes. Didn't expect it so soon, had work done just two years ago. Sad to say, the shop didn't guarantee the work past one year. So I went to another shop.

That was fine, sort of, but this week suddenly it won't start. Turn the key, plenty of juice in the battery, but nothing, not even a solenoid click. Bad connection somewhere? Maybe, but hard to test, because it only happens sometimes, and I can't make it happen when I have it at the shop. It didn't start this morning or last night. But it did later this afternoon, after sitting in the hot sun. I suspect moisture is getting in somewhere, so it works when it is dry but fails when wet. 12 years old and 100,000-plus miles, things break.