The Morning Report, with Alex Pendragon

Yesterday was pre-empted by a major, knee-jerk, reactive rant, and I apologize, but to make it up to you, I hereby provide my steadfastly loyal and remaining readership with the latest, up-to-date news from around the Hold. Enjoy!

That miraculous repair I performed on the Focus? Well, it seems that the fix was not totally in. On her way home from work day before yesterday, THE Wife experienced a hiccup, after which the car ran less than smoothly, sort of surging while at idle. Not quite the stumbling, gonna blow a gasket kind of hesitation that we had previously been experiencing, mind you, but not normal, and the check engine light came back on to herald that "Houston, we STILL have a problem"!

So, Yesterday I took her to work in the morning so that I could take the car to the parts place again and get the new problem code read. Only nothing happened. Car ran smoothly all the way home. Hmmmmmmm So, it seems the problem might be heat related, since it is cooler in the morning. I talked with a friend on the net who suggested that I could clear the old code out of the computer by resetting it, which required that I disconnect the electrical system from the battery, then reconnect, which would "reboot" the computer. Okaaaaaaaaa............

That cleared the check engine light and that afternoon I returned to retrieve the wife. She wanted to stop by a store, so it lengthened our return trip, which, sure enough, heated up the system enough to set off the check engine light again and the surging at idle returned. OK, then, fine, I would try again tomorrow.......

Today is tomorrow, I took the wife to work, I go see the Eye Doc who tells me that all kinds of evil yucky stuff had oozed out of my eyelid when he lanced it in the operating room, and that it should take another week yet for the incision to totally heal up. He gave me some steroid eye drops to help with the minor irritation I still feel.

THEN, I take my baby straight to the parts store, and get the kind black lady to come out and read the brain again. Same code; almost. This time it SEEMS to indicate that A: the DOWNSTREAM sensor now needs to be replaced, or B: the catalytic convertor is shot and it's going to run me more than $300 for the part, not counting labor, which of course I will be supplying myself (it's not rocket science, it's advanced high tech automotive engineering.....piece of cake!)

So, the car is cooling down, so that I can drive her up on my ramps and crawl under there to search out this second sensor. You see, the stupid (and I do mean STUPID for the way it just forgot all about showing where and how the second sensor was located) manual showed exactly where the upstream sensor is, but then completely skipped the second. So, before actually buying the part, I decided it best I eyeball where the sensor is and determine if I can get at it to replace it. The alternative is, you guessed it, garage mechanic and big bags of money, which I don't have. Wish me luck.

I now return you to your life so you can await with breathless anticipation how all this turns out on the nightly report with Alex Pendragon (AKA THE Michael).