Life is better with friends. With people. And the same is generally true of wrenching. I’m a clumsy person with little mechanical sympathy and I have a difficult time interpreting visual instructions. When I wrench alone it’s always an extra fun experience as I’m frequently having to stop, reassess, and then start over.
I do my best to mitigate this by, for instance, removing a swaybar and keeping it in the same plane so that when I have to put the bushings back on and reinstall it I don’t try to install it upside down (which I’ve done).
It’s much easier to do this with a friend because I can ask them my favorite question: Does this look right to you?
This went to hilarious extremes last week when I finally took my E39, Clive, out of winter storage (a few days before a massive snowstorm) to fix the heater and generally assess what needs to get looked over and what I can keep ignoring for a little longer. Our friend and occasional contributor Joel lives not too far away and has a large garage that can be heated if necessary, so I brought Clive there.
Joel’s a huge gear nerd who usually has the right tools and always has the right enthusiasm for projects. I don’t always love the process in the way that Joel does so it’s nice to have him there both as a guide and as a cheerleader. Last week he went way above and beyond.
Other than needing a new battery and some oil topoffs, the E39 hasn’t needed much to operate, even though I haven’t driven it too much as I’ve been meaning to do more work to it before it becomes a true daily. The one thing that sidelined it for the winter is that the blower motor stopped working. I asked a buddy at FCP Euro and he was immediately like: it’s the blower motor resistor/final stage unit. Apparently, it’s always the FSU.
I ordered the part and then got busy and forgot about it for a few months. Then I wanted the car back and decided to watch a few videos and it seemed fairly easy.
It was way easier than I thought. Joel and I removed the trim pieces, disconnected the battery, and removed the screw holding it in. Joel thought I might need some pliers to get it out and so I went into my toolbox and asked him
“The little flat ones or needle nose?”
“Hold on,” he said.
So I held on.
“Ok, it’s in.”
“What?”
It turns out that this was at least the third FSU to go into the car and so the stock unit, which the videos suggest can be a little tough to remove, was long gone and the aftermarket FSU literally just came right out while I was looking for the right tool. I spent more time reconnecting the battery than he did swapping the part.
The nice thing is that this gave me time to start taking leaves out of the engine bay, which I did by dropping them on his garage floor. Joel is the Felix to my Oscar, so he quietly got his shop-vac and started cleaning up those little pieces before helping me touch up the engine bay.
Friendship!
Who do you wrench with? A parent? A spouse?
My wife.. because she is the tool person in the family..
I wrench alone.