omniplex

Well it’s nearing the end of March and this month has been pretty busy.  Changes at work as well as cleaning at home. My dad will be coming up from Richmond next weekend to help me replace the lower level rear sliding glass door and frame. The new one is better then the crappy original one installed by the builder. I also had the AC serviced and it was short 2 pounds of refrigerant but should be good for the summer.  Hopefully it will not freeze up all the time like it did last summer.  I’m revisiting some projects that were dropped due to time constraints on other people, hopefully something will get done since I will be working on it myself now.

Today is the last day of the busy weekend. Saturday went by pretty quick. I caved in and bought my daughter Chihuahua puppy. The puppy has taken to her pretty well and my daughter is adjusting decently to her new found responsibility. We will see how long that lasts. We did warn her several serveral times that before she gets this dog she needs to understand that it’s a life time commitment and that she can’t just change her mind about it.  We also attempted to goto Wal-Mart Saturday night, only to discover the are expanding and adding a grocery store section to this store. It was total chaos in the parking lot. I did manage to pick up a copy of Resident Evil 5 though.

I was hoping that Today would be a down day, but unfortuantly my wife started to goto the store and then called to tell me the car stalled. She did manage to drive it home and the check engine light had come on. I decided to goto the parts store and get a handheld OBD II diagnostic computer. The computer told me that the number 3 cylinder had misfired twice. I replaced all the spark plugs on the car which has resulted in the car now running much better. I checked the gap on the spark plugs, and the gap should be .043 to 0.053. Unfortunatly the number 3 plug had a gap of 0.075 and another plug had a gap of 0.070. The big problem with replacing the plugs (I already have the tools to do it) is that the geniuses at Chrysler decided to mount the engine sideways. In a V engine, you get half of the plugs and cylinders on one side and the other half on the other side (as opposed to a straight block that has them all in a row). Well with the engine mounted sideways, the odd number plugs were on the rear side of the engine. What makes this difficult is that the windshield overhangs into the engine compartmant and goes past the firewall. This makes it a very very tight fit to get to the rear plugs and requires that you work by feel instead of sight. Plus my arm got a little torn up from rubbing on the engine and other metals.

All in all though it was a fun weekend.