"Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it." - Marcus Aurelius
The plan was to move the kid's grandma's stuff from assisted living to the skilled nursing home yesterday, but while the mind was willing, the old body wasn't up to the task. Oddly enough, I woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn't get back to sleep again after working all those night shifts.
I took a long morning nap, and after collecting my wits, figured I'd better get *something* accomplished. I put the Subaru up on jacks to remove the studded tires and have a look at the rear strut. The rust is beginning to grow.
The driver's side rear strut is trash. I'll probably replace all of them. A chunk of one of the springs fell off in the driveway last summer, so I need to replace at least one of those as well. The local parts store didn't have any struts in stock, and they wanted $120 for a single strut. This will almost certainly be an all-day job that I simply don't have time for right now. Amazon has all four struts for $199. They are likely re-manufactured junk from China, but probably so too are the struts at AutoZone. No reason to pay 2.5 times the price for identical low quality parts.
Below: The bottom bolting looks pretty straightforward to uncouple - two bolts. It's the top of the rear strut that will be tough. I'll probably have to remove the rear seat to get access to those fasteners. Not a job for a tired dude with half a day and no spare strut.
I'm figuring the car will last just about as long as I need it, and will be scrap afterwards. I envision something like this scene for the car when I reach retirement.
The wet/dry vacuum had dried off following my wash-down, so I put that away. It'll take half a day to get the shop straightened out. There is a ton of stuff stored there that needs to go to charity or do a garage sale.
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