Gremlins!
As I mentioned earlier today, having just come into some money (a whopping $80 in fact), I decided to go parts shopping for KITT. Well, just after wrapping up my little “Hey, you guys aren’t so bad” post regarding Advance Auto Parts, I go there and have a lousy experience. <laughs> Figures. But it didn’t piss me off; it was just silly. So silly I wanted to laugh while I was in there. But first, the gremlins.
While still at the office, I called ahead to make sure the auto parts store had the hatch lift supports I wanted. They said they did. Cool. So after work I go out to my car and pop the headlights on (since it gets dark so early now), and what do I see? My left turn signal indicator in the gauge cluster is stuck on. Not flashing, just on. WTF? I get out and go look at the front, and it appears my left turn signal is burned out. But then I flip the signal on, and I can see the light flashing up front—just dimmer than it should be. If I turn the headlights back off, the gauge indicator goes off, but when I signal, the front lamp doesn’t flash at all. What the hell’s going on?
Anyway, that green arrow staring at me from the dash is getting annoying, but I have no choice because I have to have the headlights on. The Chilton manual says that the turn signal bulb is the same as the taillight bulb I’m about to buy, and they come in packs of two, so I decide to hope that it’s something about the bulb. Get to the store, find my light bulbs and my RTV silicone, then go up to the counter to request my hatch supports and pay for it all.
This is where it gets silly. I wait in line for twenty minutes, watching two of the store’s three employees taking longer to do stuff than I’ve ever seen human beings take, in addition to the fact that half of the things they’re doing should not be done while there are scads upon scads of customers waiting to check out. One guy appears to be the manager and, while he talks like he knows what he’s doing, he’s not very efficient. The other guy is apparently a new hire, as well as the store’s resident Spanish linguist. Which is fortunate, because the people in front of me apparently don’t speak a word of anything else.
They’re trying to return something. The guy behind the counter doesn’t seem to know how to handle that. He calls repeatedly for a manager key, sounding like a wounded little boy each time. It seems as though he is unprepared for everything. He can’t find this customer’s records. He can’t get the register open. He can’t make change. He doesn’t have enough cash in the drawer. This is when the manager-type dude comes over and they start dorking around with the cash tray, counting money up and switching everything out, while two lines of seven-plus customers each just keep growing and growing. It’s craziness!
Of course, when I finally got up there, I sent the guy on a wild goose chase looking for my hatch supports, and guess what? He can’t find them. Witness the hilarity as New Guy pleads for Manager Guy to help him. Manager Guy gets all snotty with New Guy and tells New Guy that the parts are on the shelf right where they’re supposed to be. Both guys go back there and Manager Guy is promptly made a fool of as he realizes the parts are not where they should be and furthermore, the stuff isn’t in numerical order like it’s supposed to be. Eventually the concensus is that they don’t have my hatch supports, even though the computer says there’s two back there. By this time I’m afraid the Guile-lookalike behind me is going to punch my head if I take any longer, and I’m certainly not buying some damn inferior supports just ‘cause they don’t have what I want. I buy my light bulbs and RTV sealant and leave.
Had a fun ride home, even though the traffic was heavy. Car never got hot and the fans never even came on—I like it. Performance-wise, in terms of what’s under the hood, I have to say that KITT has been solid thus far.
After dinner, I decide to try and solve my light problem. I replace the turn signal bulb up front. It doesn’t fix the problem. Bugger. I put the old bulb back in. Start getting more and more suspicious of my headlight switch. I already suspect it for occasionally causing my headlight doors to fail to close for 4-5 seconds or more when I turn the lights off. I find that if I really push down sharply on the “off” button, they’ll close up right away. If I don’t do that, and they stay open, I can tap the already-pressed “off” button and then they’ll close. Perhaps my goofy signal problem is related to the damn switch. If so, it wouldn’t be hard to replace. $10 at Advance for an AC Delco unit.
So I got one chance left to make something productive happen tonight. I decide to replace the burned-out taillamp in the back. To do that, I’ve got to remove two-thirds of the entire rear trim assembly, unscrew five wingnuts and pull the taillamp housing off from the back. I manage to do all this with ease (discovering a number of mismatched screws and other goofiness in the process), pull the socket out of the lamp housing and see why it appeared to be burned out—THERE’S NO BULB IN IT. Gee. Pop the new bulb in and lock it down. Stuff the housing back in and turn on the headlights.
Voila! Now, not only do I have 100% functional taillights, mysteriously and surprisingly, my front turn signal problem has mysteriously vanished. I know the latter has nothing to do with my replacement of the taillight, but as long as that gremlin is gone—even temporarily—I can rest easy. Tomorrow or Saturday I’m going to go to a different auto parts store and pick up some hatch shocks, then fit them in. I’m on a roll now. Replacing a damn taillight sounds easy, but when you’ve gotta remove pieces of your hatch that you never thought you’d be removing, it turns into one of those “I hope I can get this all put back together again” moments. But it all came apart and went back together just fine, and I didn’t even break the pulldown motor while I was in there. 
Now it’s time to go search ThirdGen.org to see if anyone else has had that wacky turn signal problem. Perhaps that’s one gremlin I can head off at the pass.
Categorized as Cars/Knight Project