The Safety Dance

[evolutionmovement]

Maybe it's karma for all the safety precautions my boss (the marina owner) likes to dismiss, but this Jag was a real deathtrap!

Missing bolt to left rear control arm that holds it to the rear subframe so that it could have backed itself out ... in theory.

Trailing arms both missing the bolts to attach them to the chassis mounts (!) Only age and outright stubborness kept these from succumbing to the forces of gravity.

Hand brake calipers missing bolts that hold them to the standard calipers (and thus allow them to work)

Left rear brake caliper broken where one of the mounting bolts was.

I told Frank (the owner) about his problems and I don't think he had any clue what it meant. All I could picture is one of the trailing arms coming loose from the chassis and catching a pothole or something at a decent speed and trashing the suspension while violently causing serious and sudden toe out on that wheel.

And of course there were the lovely rear subframe mounts that had days to let go, but waited for me to be underneath.

Had to share this with someone.

Steve

[BAC5.2]

What the fuck? ANOTHER car fell on you?

Damn man, what kind of Marina has you working on cars instead of boats?

Sorry stuff keeps falling on you .

How do you like it? Significantly better than Pep-boys (specifically money wise)?

[entirelyturbo]

We can dance if we want to / We can leave your friends behind / Coz your friends don't dance and if they don't dance / Well they're no friends of mine...

Sorry, couldn't help it

A whole car never fell on poor Steve, the rear subframe as he described was what fell on him the last time.

Where the hell'd he get this car from? I'd just tell him the car is unsafe to drive and is seriously ready to come apart right under him. If you must, physically show him what's wrong and explain it in layman's (read: idiot) terms. Then charge him like $500 under the table to fix everything

[evolutionmovement]

No, this is the same POS Jag. It only fell on me once. The parts came in today so I tried fixing what I could and was just shocked at the missing hardware. I wonder if someone who worked on the car didn't like my boss as it almost seems intentional the way some things were left off.

It's just this one car there as it's slow now boat wise anyway. Money's nearly double Pep Boys, but still not what I used to make. Not too bad, though and I get to see the sun set over the water and smell the ocean. Never got that at the office (or Pep Boys for that matter, but I barely consider that a job). At the end of the day I feel like a man where with the engineering job I mostly felt like I was wasting my life and killing my body with a kind of apathy that came from staring at a screen all day to questionable purpose.

Mike, he pays me over the table to fix it and it's a cheaper deal. Maybe if he checked out what a marque specialist would charge he'd really appreciate me. Surprisingly, though, the parts prices for the old Jag were cheaper than a lot of new regular cars.

Steve