I am thankful to have good friends

who know more about mechanical things than me.   And it helps that they have the tools and supplies to get things done.   My saga started back in early May when I took my car over to my friends man cave

where he has a 2 post hoist (thanks Dom)  to make things much easier.  He also has air tools so off with the wheels

so we could have a gander at the brake pads.   Verdict: lots of life left, at least enough to complete our trip

This day the plan was to flush the brake system and install fresh brake fluid.   There are two trains of thought but the new way is to do the shorter lines first, and the rear lines last

He made a jig to pressurize the fluid reservoir using a garden sprayer notice the air gauge on the plastic container.   All you have to do is to open the valve at the caliper and my job was to keep the cylinder pressurized

Next was to change the power steering fluid.  I imagine that my fluid was the original that came with the car from the factory.  There is no way to drain the fluid so it had to be suctioned out with the plunger unit.   This was done at least two times and inbetween flushes, the engine was started and the rack allowed to turn from side to side inside the steering rack to flush out more old fluid

I came back another day so we could do a coolant flush.   While doing the flush he checked my serpentine belt and noticed that I needed a new one.   So off to the autoparts store to get one

I had to rush as it was a weekday and they were closing very soon

While I was there I also asked if they had a fuel filter, so I bought that too

The fuel filter is in a bad place behind the hot mufflers and it took a while while using a one-handed method to remove and replace it

There it is, way up there.   Lucky we were using my friend's hoist.  I can't imagine crawling under the car with your hands above your head trying to reach it

After it was all done, the belts were making an awful squeaking  noise.  We weren't sure what it was so I left the car and went home.   A day later my friend called to say the Harmonic balancer had failed and the serpentine belt was rubbing on the timing chain cover, and would have failed on our trip causing catastrophic failure.  Of course these type of things would happen in the middle of nowhere.   It could cost a lot of money to repair so we had to bring it to a proper mechanic.  The balancer rotates on a rubber bushing which deteriorated.  Perhaps the new belt stressed it more, but anyway it would have failed soon anyway so it had to be fixed.   A big job $$$  turned into a lesser $ thanks to my friends good negotiating skills

Last week we had a heat wave so I was testing out my air conditioning.   A couple of years ago I had a compressor failure and it cost a lot to have it fixed.   Anyway, driving in rush hour with the fan on medium it was draining my battery to the point where I noticed it wasn't charging like it should.   I remember that I bought the battery nearly 9 years ago so it was time for a new one

I went to the dealer and bought the highest CCA battery they had

Here's the old one as compared to the new one.

The battery goes in "there".

Didn't take long but then I attached a 4amp charger.  Batteries are not 100% charged so rather than drive the car I thought this would be faster.    After 5 hours, it was still not 100% charged so I brought out my big charger and pumped 10amps into it for an hour, and then put back the 4amp charger.   Soon all the green lights were on, indicating that it was now ready to use

Now I could sit back and relax.   There are just a few little cosmetic things to do like hide the wires to my Sirius satellite radio, and make sure my 2 way radio is working

My 'Vette is now ready for the road but there is still the story of my electronic shocks which created some panic a few weeks ago when I replaced them with Non-electronic ones which caused some error messages in the ECM

Here are the old shocks which were replaced with regular shocks.   The electronic shocks cost at least $500. each x 4 = $2,000. or more.   For the cost of one electronic shock,  I got 4 regular ones

Here are the regular ones which were bought on the internet from a Corvette forum member.  When electronic shocks are disconnected, the car computer presumes that there is a shock failure.  You get 3 error messages which cannot be cleared.  You hit reset but they keep coming back which is not just annoying BUT your Corvette is speed disabled.   I am sure you can imagine my stress of not being able to exceed 80 MPH . . .   more later if anyone is interested in how we fooled the computer