My car ahs a problem; it pulls to the left, and has a tendency to wobble down the freeway. Due to this, I took it in to get an alignment today. No big deal, right? The guy in the big shed works his magic and I get a car that drives in a straight line.
Not so much.
It turns out that I need new Ball Joints. Not a life-threatening thing in their own right, loose ball joints lead to things like wheels not having the strength to maintain straight-line orientation that they are supposed to have, thus affecting alignment and things like that. I tell the jolly man, “OK, so how much to have them fixed?” his response was enough to make my cringe visible from the moon: 750 buck.
So the debate begins to rage in my head: is the money the car fixer-upper says he wants to fix-up the car worth the heartache of doing it yourself? Let’s see.
A new set of Ball Joints will cost me a little over a hundred bucks, with tool rental and grease and such. It will cost me an afternoon of cussing, sweating, probably cutting myself at least once, cussing some more, getting dirtier than I probably need to, dropping small parts on a floor that is not conducive to finding small parts, and generally being pissed off and frustrated.
The benefits are that I will have once again proven my worth as a dude who can fix his own car, will have a new texture in my skin (at least until the grime wears off), will be somewhat lighter due to water and blood loss, and will have saved a sum equivelant to one-half the GDP of most South-American nations.
In light of this little discussion we are having, I think I’ll do the work myself when I get back from Desert Fiasco V1.0 and hope to god that I get it right.
Wish me luck?
Fucking Brilliant