winter narrative

Donovan Moore
1-13-2009
expoository writing, 4th hour
Mrs. Boreson
winter narrative
CAR TROUBLES
When I think about my Christmas vacation, I can remember a lot of things that I did, but only one of them really sticks out in my memory. That would have to be working on my car, I drive a 69’ mercury cougar, and it being now forty years old it requires a lot of maintenance. So over my break I did a lot of maintenance on my car because it was a little beaten up from the ditch that I put it in a few weeks ago. This is my story about my very interesting experience of trying to fix my car.
When I first started the Christmas break, I changed my spark plugs but forgot to attach one of the spark plugs which was pretty dumb of me but it was also an easy fix. Then it started making a really really bad noise when I was in Greeley so I had to stay there trying to fix it out side of the Advanced auto parts on 23rd avenue, I replaced the distributor cap, and also the point and condenser rotor and it still wasn’t working. I figured that it just needed to be timed so I left it there in Greeley all night until I was able to come back the next day to try and fix it. The next day, I came back to Greeley with my friend and her dad, who had a mercury cougar, so I was really excited about the fact that my car should be up and running that night, but sadly it wasn’t. We got it running a little bit, at least good enough to get it home, but I could tell something was still wrong. I went to work the next day and I asked the maintenance man if he might be able to look at it for me, I asked him because he has rebuilt four or five cars and he is always bragging about how he can tell what is wrong with a car just by listening to it. So he went out there for like an hour and told me he thinks it is my rocker arm, well I had no idea what a rocker arm was at the time so we talked about it for about another hour, which made my boss a little bit angry since I was at work. I went home that night and took off my valve covers to discover that my rocker arm bolt wasn’t even on it was just sitting on top! So I tightened the bolt down which I was nervous about because mark, the maintenance man, told me that if you tighten the bolt down too much then you can throw a rod in your car which is very expensive, so I finally decided just to tighten it down so it looks like the other ones. I then decided to check the other rocker arms, so I took the valve cover off and then was ready to put it back on when I discovered that my gasket had ripped and was now worthless, so I turned my car on to see if it was okay to drive and my oil drained out of my car because there was nothing holding it on. So the next day I still couldn’t drive which made me very sad, but it was fairly easy to replace the gasket, luckily my dad had the day off so that he could take me to get the right parts. Working on my car was a very good experience that was also a little bit nerve racking.
I enjoy working on my car and the fact that I actually improved it makes me feel a lot better about it knowing that I can usually fix it if there is something wrong with it. Working on my car relaxes me and is really one of my favorite things to do. Really the only reason that I have a job is so that I can fix up my car and also hang out with friends. My Christmas break was an enjoyable one that I will never forget.