Archive for June, 2009

What the F$%&, BMW!?!

June 27, 2009
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UPDATE:  I got the broken springs out last night, it  involve; removing the sway bar, disconnecting the differential mount and 5 jack stands.  Now I am just waiting on new parts.
I got the shocks for the BMW on Friday and after work I got the car up in the air and took the wheels off.  That is when I figured out what that rattling noise was.  The bottom coil of both springs had broken off, this is something that should never happen, I thought. Yes, the shocks also still need to be replace, the broken springs probably caused them to fail.  Now I also need to replace the springs, which I had to order, so now both cars in the garage don’t run.   After examining the broken coils, it looks like they have been broken for a long time.  Neither Gillian or I can remember ever hearing a large Bang! let allow two large Bangs!, and we have never overloaded it, so they might have been broken ever since we bought the car.  It really is a testament to how well BMW builds suspensions, that we can drive with broken springs and we never noticed until the shocks started to fail and the broken piece started to rattle.  Now I have to wait for parts to continue this mechanical drama.
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Swag!

June 23, 2009
…or is it shwag? I never know with you crazy kids and your hipster lingo.  Everyone was given one of these bags at work because we went 100 days with out a “lost time incident”, basically meaning no one got hurt.  Going a 100 days without getting hurt may not sound like that big of a deal, but you have to consider there are some 800 or so people working 8-10 hours a day building large farm equipment and no one so much as busted a knuckle or dropped something on their foot.  Anyway, this post is mainly just to keep my blog from getting stagnant, like some others.  I don’t really have much to type about, this bag is one of the more exciting things to happen lately.  Which is fine, I have had enough excitement in the past few months.  I did finally fix the hole in our siding that I made when I put the hot grill to close and it melted, I didn’t take picture of the fix because it doesn’t look great, it just looks fixed.  We also went to see the Beach Boys a few weeks back with Gillian parents and Santi and Sarah, as a  Father’s Day present.  It was a great show and they surprisingly played for almost two and a half hours straight!  Also, surprising to some, but not to me, I knew almost all the songs.  Oh, and in Falcon news, I finally bought some used cylinder heads off ebay and I am having them and the transmission rebuilt by a guy I play hockey with.  
And speaking of cars, the rear shocks on Gillian’s car need to be replaced, so I got it up in the air to take a look and it seemed like no big deal to replace…I was wrong.  Yes, I am going to be an asshat and bitch about our BMW, oh poor me, poor me.  Anyway, I guess the problem really isn’t BMW as much as it is the local BMW dealership, but the only reason I have to deal with the dealership is because nearly every replacement part on the car is a dealership only part.  What really frustrates me though is that A) the parts department isn’t open on the weekend so when I wanted to fix I couldn’t and B) when I called them on Monday to get the part they didn’t have it in stock so they had to order it!  How the hell do they not have SHOCKS in stock! That’s like saying, “sorry we are out of motor oil, we are going to have to order it.”  Oh, and for some reason it is going to take a week to get here! So apparently BMW shocks are not made, they are grown, on a small Dampener Farm some where in Bavaria!  OK, I feel better know, I probably won’t have the parts until next week, hopefully replacing them won’t be as frustrating as buying them.

3 Years

June 9, 2009

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Last Wednesday, June 3rd, Gillian and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary.  We both almost forgot, again this year.  Last year we didn’t remember until Erika sent us and e-mail congratulating us.  This is further proof that Gillian and I truly don’t understand calenders.  Hopefully this also shows our friends and family that just because we forget which day your birthday, anniversary, or child’s first baptism lands on, it doesn’t mean that we don’t care.