Sump Oil and Spanners

It's so easy to go take a car to a mechanic. It's so easy to go out and buy filters and oil in an effort to service a vehicle by oneself. It's not so easy to go out and buy motivation though. In fact it's impossible. Even when I know that my car, poor, old Bruiser, hasn't been serviced since January 2011. I bought what I needed to get the job done over a month ago. It sat in a stack by the front door of the quarters since I took it off the back of the ute when I returned from town. I would walk past it numerous times a day but I still ignored it. But this weekend I finally decided to give procrastination the flick and after coming back from a water run I pulled the toolbox out from behind the seat, grabbed a plastic tub and slid a big piece of cardboard under the car and finally undid the sump plug.

I laid under the car for a while staring up at the oil filter and casually watching to oil pour out of the sump. 

'Can't stop now', I thought to myself as I realised that I had just committed myself to servicing old Bruiser.

Eventually I undid the oil filter. I took out the air filter and gave it a good blow out. It was in pretty good nick considering the roads I drive down and the length of time it's been since it was looked at last. I got the fancy filter-undoer-strappy-thing again and went to undo the fuel filter. A radiator hose, the cooling fan and fuel lines were all in my way making it a fickle task and be buggered if I could undo the stupid thing. I did, however, manage to put an impressive dent in it that will probably somehow, at some point, stuff something up and create bigger problems for me than when I first began. But the patience was tested and it failed. The damn thing can stay there.

I crawled back underneath the car with the new oil filter filled with new oil and put it in its place. I tightened it with the filter-doer-upper-strappy-thing and then laid there watching sump oil drip, drip, drip into the tub.

Then I woke up. I could feel the sun burning my legs. Not good. I don't know how long I had been asleep for but it was no surprise that I did because it seems that everytime I crawl under my car to work on it I nod off. The last time was when Dad and I were replacing the cooling fan and water pump (that had decided to fall out on the edge of the northern suburbs of Adelaide making the rest of the way in a very noisy and tedious journey) leaving Dad to do all the work himself while I had a little nanna nap.

After scolding myself I did up the sump plug and climbed up on the bullbar and filled the engine with new oil. Once the level was right I could finally lower the bonnet albeit still a little annoyed at myself that I couldn't do the fuel filter. I packed everything away and then slathered my hands and arms in heavy duty hand cleaner. The oil slick on my upper limbs all cleaned up, I drove back to the quarters to have forty winks on the cool tiles.

The evidence of my mechanical morning didn't wash off my legs though in the shower. I am sunburnt from where my shorts end to where my boots start and there are beautiful, artistic patches of black to compliment my pink, sun-stressed skin. But my car is serviced... only 9 months late and I'm sure the old boy will appreciate it so long as the oil filter doesn't fall off or anything.