Well, after sending a very lengthy, very detailed and very stern e-mail to my insurance agent last night, I promptly received a call from her and had the whole thing straightened out. Remember the original $520 annual premium I was quoted to insure KITT? I got that back. Apparently the dummkopf woman I spoke to yesterday who gave me the $847 figure was incorrect. (Gasp. Astonishment.) Additionally, I’m getting a $15 credit for the week they had KITT on the policy before I even had the friggin’ car here. AND, I have the names of the only two people I should ever agree to speak to at my insurance company (besides my agent, that is), so I don’t wind up dealing with idiots again.

So KITT’s back on the policy for a reasonable rate (reasonable enough to satisfy me until my policy comes up for renewal or I find something better, anyway), the insurance cards are in the mail, and the coverage becomes active tomorrow. WOOHOO! That means KITT can leave my neighborhood! <laughs> I have to put my actual valid license tag on it, and then next week, when my parents bring down the title, get a permanent Florida registration.

Despite not being insured, last night I took KITT out for a ride around the community—twice. With the windows down, and the Flowmaster 80 Series exhaust growling and snarling like a caged animal, I made three loops of the entire property, just cruisin’ around, enjoying the breeze, listening to AM radio for no real reason other than the fact that my CD player broke, and just having an incredibly good time.

Yeah—my CD player broke. The previous owner installed it about a year ago but said he never used it. I popped a CD in (one I didn’t care much about, heh heh) yesterday evening to test it. It started right up. I played the CD for a while and then ejected it. About a minute afterwards, the ejection motor in the player started to run for no reason. It ran for about fifteen seconds, then stopped. Henceforth, when I’ve attempted to put a CD in, the motor won’t accept it—and I get error code 99 on the display.

Welp, time to junk the radio head unit!

Not right away, though. I’ll continue to play with the unit and see if I can make it work again, and if so, try to figure out what causes that problem (so I can possibly avoid it next time). But I do still want a new radio head unit. I’ve been over at Crutchfield looking at the “under $200” section, and I’ve found a couple of CD/MP3 units that I really like. The cool thing about them is that they have an 1/8” stereo “aux” minijack right on the front panel, so I can plug in any damn thing I want—from an iPod, to my minidisc player, to a laptop, to anything else you can think of. This is cool because in the future, when I get the full-fledged Knight Rider dash, the vox box readouts will be wired into the car’s stereo system, so anything playing through the stereo will cause the graduated readouts to flash. Thus, if I have an easily-accessible aux jack on my radio, I can produce voice from any source I wish, on-demand, without any screwy wiring. Nifty, eh?

Last night, after my second cruise around, I pulled out the Chilton manual from the rear hatch and started reading. Some of the stuff I was planning to do looks much easier than I had thought…and some of it looks harder. But nothing, so far, looks insurmountable. I am proud of myself for one thing, though—I’ve already encountered and troubleshooted (shot?) my first problem.

My car has the rear hatch pulldown motor, similar to the units you used to find in ‘80s Lincolns and Cadillacs. You know—you just lightly shut the deck lid, and the motor pulls it down into a latched position for you. No need to slam. (And if you do slam, you’ll be paying $150 for a new motor!) I noticed a strange issue with this motor last night. I popped the hatch via the release button on the dash, since I don’t have a key for the lock cylinder on the rear filler panel. I went back there to open the hatch, and the damn motor wouldn’t let go of it. I pulled on it gently, not wanting to break it, and suddenly the pulldown motor started to run again—like it was trying to re-close the hatch. I had to quickly pull up rather hard to force the hatch striker out of the motor’s grasp. It didn’t sound very nice, to say the least. I have a feeling that if I do that too many more times, the nylon gear in the motor’s gonna say bye-bye.

But today I discovered how to fix this problem. Apparently this condition exists because my rear hatch supports have failed—that is, the gas shocks that help lift the humongously heavy hatch and keep it open. Mine don’t work at all. You lift the hatch, and it just sinks—right onto your head, in fact, if you don’t watch it. (The previous owner was kind enough to throw in a tension rod to prop the thing open with.) But while reading some technical articles today, I discovered that bad hatch supports will cause the “clinging” condition I’m experiencing with the pulldown motor. The hatch is so heavy, if the shocks are bad, even when you pop it it just lays there on the motor. After a few seconds, the motor thinks that you just closed the hatch again, since the striker is still in place, and it lowers it back down. All I need to do is buy new hatch supports, and voila. In fact, with the stronger aftermarket supports you can buy at any local auto parts store, the hatch will even pop all the way open when you release it—sweet! The car will be acting more like KITT already! (Just don’t pop the release in an area with low overhead clearance!)

I also noticed this morning that my rear defogger isn’t functioning, but I’m hoping that might also be fixed when I replace the hatch supports—since the supports actually act as bridges for the wiring to the defogger unit (they have contacts on each end). The defogger switch works and auto-offs as it’s supposed to, but the unit is uniformly not working—it’s not like just one or two of the lines are out—so it must be something electrical.

The other repair that I’m already prepared for is replacing the burned-out bulb in the right rear taillamp panel. I was having trouble finding a store that stocked part #2057 since our local auto parts places are so lame, until I realized that #2057 is the same taillight bulb used in my ‘98 T/A—and I have a spare in a drawer at home. Sweet! Free parts! (Well…”already paid-for parts,” at least!)

Ahhh…I’ll tell you, I’m not much of a mechanic—but I derive an incredible sense of satisfaction from figuring out how to fix this stuff.

The only problem is, I keep finding more and more stuff I want to fix. Fixing stuff = spending money. That = bad. Ah well! I’m meeting with some guy this evening to see about designing him a website, so more money may soon be rolling in. I think I’m going to have some fun with this guy. My standard rate is now $40/hour. I will create a prototype page that establishes the base layout and colors for the site, ask him to sign off on it, and then proceed with building the rest. If at some point after that he decides he wants to change some layout/color thing that affects all the pages I’ve done since, I will bill at $60/hour to implement it. And there is no ongoing after-the-sale support of the website included. If you want anything done to the site down the road, you can contract me for it and you’ll pay the standard rate—assuming I even have time.

Wow…this update has gone on a REAL long time. Better get back to work. Blah.