At ten in the morning, Maryna calls me, "Austin my car died, can you come give me a jump?"
"Sure," I say, fortunately we both happened to be on OSU-Tulsa's campus at the time. Then she says, "Oh, the radio is working..."
"Well, then it isn't the battery. I'll come look at it." I drove over to where her car was. After looking at it a bit, I guessed it was the starter. "I think it is the starter," I say, "we'll have to fix it tonight. Take my car for now." We came back after we had finished working for the day. I popped the hood and tried jumping the car just to rule out the battery. Then I went about the busy business of finding the starter. I didn't have a clue what I was looking for. I gave Dad a call, he was a motorcycle mechanic once upon a time and he knows a lot about cars too.
"Hey, Dad, the starter went out on Maryna's car.... what does a starter look like?" I proceeded to explain the symptoms and Dad concurred that it was most likely the starter. Then he explained what the starter looks like and roughly where it would be at on the car. I still couldn't find it. There was nothing matching the description around where it should be at.
"Well, ok, I can't find the starter," I say to Maryna, "let's see if we can get a replacement from the parts store, then I might have a clue what I'm looking for." She laughed. We went to the first parts store, they wanted $193 and didn't have one in stock. I was determined to get this fixed without delay. We drove up the street and Maryna spotted an Autozone that I didn't know was there. We went in, the guy at the desk fixed us up with a new starter. It was $123 with $40 core, and they had it in the store. I pulled it out of the box. Ok, so now I have idea what I'm looking for. Maryna and I went back to the car, and I started by jacking the car up and taking her left front tire off to unhook the battery cables. Once that was done, I started crawling around under the hood. I still couldn't find the start - I am no mechanic, that's for sure. After another call to Dad with me describing where the oil pan and transmission where at he managed to describe where the starter would be in relation to these things. I crawled further under the car and eventually looked up and saw the starter. "Wow," I said into the cell phone, "that is going to be a lot tougher than I thought it would be." It turned out to be under the air breather and snorkel. After taking those off, the starter was mostly accessible from the top side. The only exception was loosening the bottom bolt - which I did from underneath.
After taking the starter lead and the positive connectors off, I removed the bottom bolt on the old starter. It got stuck on the last couple of threads. "Damn," I exhale.
"What is it?" Maryna asks. She had been watching up to this point.
"The bolt is stuck on the last thread," I answer.
"Let me see if I can reach it," she reached down into the car from the top and started working on the nut. With her smaller hands she was able to make the last couple of turns slowly - but she got it out.
Then I started trying to shake the starter loose - but it wouldn't budge at all. Finally, Maryna spotted the top bolt. I went to work with the ratchet. We finally extracted the 4 inch bolt, a quarter rotation at a time, over the course of twenty minutes.
One person can take a starter off a car. Replacing a starter is a two person job. I held the starter in place while Maryna started the bolts - the first one missed, we had to take the bolt out and start again. We switched places, Maryna held the starter in place while I started the bolt... voila. I worked it in until the bolt was finger tight. Maryna got the bottom bolt started. Once it was in far enough to hit it with the ratchet I took over. I tightened both bolts, reconnected the leads, reconnected the battery and un-jacked the car. Maryna turned it over and it started the first time.
No American women I know would help fix a car. It is good to have a wife who will go to the mat with you when there is no money for a mechanic. When we finished, we were both covered in grease up to our elbows, laughing and cutting up.
