"place your text here." A true sign of quality and attention to detail. Packaged in a crackly clear plastic bag with a sticky sealing strip, some thread, and two blunt needles, it does all it has to do. Unless providing good instructions is something it has to do, then it falls short. YouTube to the rescue.
Honestly, I’ve been driving it off-and-on throughout the repairs, something I’ve never done before. Each fix makes it better and better, but what member of the human race isn’t always craving more? I can honestly say, in a world of deals, your best bet is to stay away from most anything I’ve ever bought. There was the Holley re-manufactured carburetor with mismatched internals and the wrong choke and two separate chrome alternators. “New, not re-manufactured, no core needed, one-wire installation.” Those were great selling features, and all for ninety bucks, I should have known better than to buy two of them. The first one wiped a bearing out fairly immediately, and the second one had this issue where it would spike up to around eighteen volts and fluctuate there for an unsettling amount of time. I’ve still got the shiny cases, which actually present quite well, but now they’re filled with genuine AC Delco hardware. I don’t have a clue if the parts are made in Michigan, Mexico, or on Mars, but they now spit out the right numbers to keep my lights, radio, and sensitive ignition components happy. Today’s deal is less money, with no moving parts, but it’s a fix for the most utilized part of the vehicle: The steering wheel.
Even though the S10 is a work beater, it still has to do a few things right. It has to start easy, idle well, not leak in the rain, smell okay, and be somewhat comfortable. After two hundred and some thousand kilometres, the steering wheel has seen it all. It’s not sticky, but it has so much dirt on it that I’m afraid that if I clean it, it will be sticky underneath. The normal solution would be a cheap, chrome, three-spoke wheel from Grant, but since I’m not dealing with airbags, the next best thing is a grip cover. For twenty bucks shipped, I picked this sleek black imported unit up off of eBay. Upon close inspection, it’s actually genuine leather. It’s soft, it’s natural, it once was part of an unspecified animal, it’s universal within size limits, and it’s cheap. It’s the perfect thing I need to make an S10 feel like an Escalade. Sure, the seats don’t match each other or the console, and the rubber floor mat somehow keeps collecting French fries from an unknown source, but those aren’t things that I have a hands-on approach with constantly while driving. They don’t call it “behind the wheel” for nothing, right? After a solid hour-long binge on YouTube, I think I’ve got what it takes to tackle this project. It’s connect-the-dots sewing, really. I wanted to have the install done by the time I typed this up, but I’ll be doing it outside where the air is hot, and the sky is smokey, and I think it can wait a few more days. If this goes well, the sky might be the limit on DIY deals. Who wants to read about me fumbling through the installation of an eBay or Amazon turbo kit? Shakespeare did pretty well with the comedies and tragedies. Maybe there’s something there?
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk
