Murphy's Law

Who is this Murphy person? Is it Saint Murphy that's blessed me? I don't know who he or she may be, but they have touched my life in a big way. I'm sure there's someone out there who knows the back story...

You know the saying, "If anything can go wrong, it will." It's the motto of pessimists all over the world. The odd thing is, I think of myself as an optimist, almost to a fault. I'd like to think I'm a realist too, but it's hard to imagine the two going hand-in-hand.

Murpy's law applies to me whenever it comes to doing any sort of manual project. Whether it's making some home improvements or working on my automobiles, it happens. Everything goes wrong. A four hour project very rapidly makes its metamorphosis into a 2 or 3 day affair.

Case in point: A few weeks ago, I ordered an electric cooling fan for my '99 Dodge Dakota R/T from Jeg's. I got the brand-new Flex-A-Lite Black Magic XTreme 180. It's a sweet setup with its own built-in shroud and thermostatic control. The box arrived a few days later and being as giddy as a 4 year-old on Christmas morning, I opened it right away. Of course I justified this as just wanting to make sure everything that was supposed to be included was in-fact in the box.

Still excited just thinking about it, the next weekend I postponed plans to do some finishing work on our master bathroom that I just completed remodeling (another Murphy's story within itself). My thought process went something like this: I can put the fan in on Saturday and still have time on Sunday to finish the bathroom. ...pretty funny huh?

Saturday morning the fun begins. Still thinking that this is probably something that I could do in about 4 or 5 hours' time, I bum around the house in the morning watching some of my favorite enthusiast shows on cable. I hate missing "American Muscle Car" and "My Classic Car" on Speed.

Finally, I put on a ratty charcoal gray sweatshirt, an old but comfy pair of jeans, slip on my beat-up navy blue Vans and mosey on out to the driveway to pop the hood of the Dak. "Wow, that's a really big nut on the old clutch fan! I'll get to that in a minute," I thought to myself. Four nuts undone and the shroud is loose. I should've known it wouldn't fit past the fan. No biggie... One nut goes right back in to hold it in place while I work on getting the fan off.

I fetch the channel-lock plyers from my tool box and grab the fan nut. Ok, yeah, it's a clutch fan silly, that's not going to work too well. If I can just hold the fan and turn the nut, it'll loosen. No such luck, the pulley is turning. For some reason, in the back of my mind I was thinking that the fan was attached to the crank pulley. Of course it's attached to the water pump pulley, everybody knows that!

Hmm... what now? Maybe if I just put some pressure on the serpentine belt (I'd like to have a word with the guy who invented those), it'll hold the pulley in place. NOT! Ok, let's pull out the handy-dandy Craftsman strap wrench. Nope, no measure of tightness will keep that pulley from turning, not too mention the channel-locks just aren't gripping well enough.

By now it's well past lunch-time and I'm starving. I run out to Lee's Hoagie House to grab a bite and then it's off to the 2nd hand tool store to find a wrench big enough loosen this friggin' fan. I'm getting a little testy by this time.

Back to the driveway and the wrench fits like a charm, thanks to the info I found on the www.dodgetrucks.org forum. I still need to keep that pulley from turning. It's simple, just find something to wedge against the pulley bolts and the water pump or some other imovable object in the engine bay and I'll be good-to-go.

I found some other interesting information on the dodgetrucks forum as well... yep, the pulley is pressed on. No bolts in the pulley at all. Fortunately the holes are there to be used in a bolt on application as well. I'll just wedge a screwdriver... nope too tight to get it in there... allen wrench... that might do it... nope too short... slip... whack... there goes the knuckles.

As Ralphie exclaimed in one of my favorite scenes of one of my favorite movies of all time, "Oh, Fudge!!!" You know the one, it's a classic. I don't even have to name it for you, do I? Only, like Ralphie, I didnt' really say "fudge." I also didn't really say "shoot," "galdarnit," or "mother-anything." Nor, did the sayings go on for the duration of my project...

I can't even remember exactly what happened in the next hour or so. I just started slamming everything I could to wedge that fan and turn that nut. Applying the full force of all my 230 lbs (beer... it does a body good), this thing just wouldn't budge without everything slipping.

Fortunately, I didn't break anything, but honestly, by this point, I didn't care if I did. I was going to get this thing off even if it killed me. Bright idea after bright idea just wouldn't hold that fan in place. Finally I run in the house to grab a three inch screw from my trusty jar-o-bolts. It took me a good twenty minutes to wedge that into the vacant bolt hole on the pulley and wedge it up against the water pump.

Kneeling on the front bumper, right hand on the fan, left hand on the wrench, I push in two directions with everything I've got. Pushing so hard that, fudge [sic], it slips again just as all the veins are popping out of my head and everything is going black... but wait, no... what's this?

"Holy moley" (yeah, that's what I said, really). It didn't slip. The nut is loose! I'm so ecstatic that I'm practically doing cartwheels in my driveway!

I go inside for a celebratory dinner. I've been married for 6 years now, I can read my wife pretty well. I can tell that even though she's happy for me in my moment of triumph, she's getting a little grumpy that I've been out in the driveway all day and not spending any time with her or the bathroom.

I head back out to the driveway to figure out how to get these (now picture Austin Power's Dr. Evil gesturing quotation marks) "universal" mounting brackets for the fan to fit. By now it's getting a bit too dark to really see what I'm doing, so I call it quits for the day.

Tomorrow's Sunday. I'll get an early start and finish up by lunch. I'll even have enough time to get some trim work nailed down in the bathroom... I go to bed that evening feeling like I just ran the Boston Marathon, but I'm satisfied for the day.

(To Be Continued...)