A domestic man...

So now that I am home for the next few months on my offroad hiatus, folks know that I may conceivably be available to work on odd jobs and projects. My honey-do list is about a mile long, but that did not stop my mom from asking for help to install her new receiver hitch on her very  not new Acura and assembling a hitch-mounted bike carrier.

I started this post yesterday, but then internet issues prevented further drafting.

What should have been maybe an hour or so of work took the better part of the day, primarily because I was involved and things tend to not go smoothly. The rest of the weekend that I salvaged was devoted to getting my new Cooper tires mounted on the stock rims and the Duratracs shifted from the stock rims to the spare set of steelies.

 So the hitch wasn't bad. One bolt goes through the factory tow point with some 1/4" metal shims (3). Two go on one side of the tow loop and one on the other. Then you line up the hitch and drill up through the trunk pan to allow for two more bolts to be affixed to either side. Again no biggie. The toughest part was removing the spare tire, believe it or not. She's had the car since 99 and apparently never had a flat. The bolt to release the tire had rusted and seized. I put some english on it and snapped the damned thing. Oh well.

Hitch is mounted in probably 15 minutes, allowing for reading time and tool collection essentially.

The carrier took a little while longer, just because the assembly wasn't exactly intuitive. At one point I thought we had a problem but it turns out I had selected the wrong carrier to mount in the first position. I swapped them after confirming which gets loaded first, and we still have a problem. Everything fits in the down position; unfortunately, it wouldn't fold up without interfering with the bumper.

 Now all we needed was a receiver extension. I have one for a 2" receiver. Unfortunately, my mom got an 1-1/4" receiver. And no one makes one as we found out. Of course, we find this after driving to Home Depot, and then to Lowes, and then finally to The Hitch Man out in Waldorf. I knew I couldn't just send my mom out to find it because she never would. So we drove in my truck. She thought of the experience as bonding. It was more like my mom giving me stream of consciousness dialogue for the better part of 2-1/2 hours round trip.

I knew ultimately we would need to go to the Hitch Man as I had stumbled upon his store (which is called that) while donating some bicycles to the Salvation Army in Waldorf. He's across the street off of the MD 5 Business road, Leonardtown Rd (?)

I was intrigued and went in. He had all sorts of DIY ready fabrication elements for making one's own trailer, or, as would be the case, bastardizing  your own 1-1/4" receiver extension. As he explained on the occasion of this visit, they don't really offer them in this size because the extension reduces the rated capacity of tongue weight and trailering capability by 50%, and since the 1-1/4" is already rated below a 2", it is impractically reduced. My mom's hitch was rated as 2,000 lb towing and 200 lb tongue weight. You can do the math.  For a bicycle or two, she should be fine.  But now I had some welding to do. So much for getting her stuff knocked out first thing on Saturday.

 It was probably about 4pm by the time the metal had cooled down, and I got the thing painted and the carrier re-mounted. She was happy though. And I guess that made me a good son.

I had little energy left at this point to try to tackle the nursery; however, getting these rims fitted with some rubber would help free up some space in the garage. The Coopers have probably been stacked in there for going on 2 months. I intended them to be the summer tires to relieve the Duratracs from some wear and tear up and down the highway, as the compound which makes them perform exceptionally in extreme cold (Snowflake on the Mountain symbol) also makes them a bit susceptible to premature wear in hot weather. Fortunately, they've not been wearing down too badly given the delay in opportunity...and funding...to get them mounted up.

 It was going to be a bit of a pricey endeavor because I was effectively getting 8 tires mounted and balanced plus an alignment.

I was not happy with the franchise that I visited also charging a "Difficult Mounting" fee due to the size of the tires. Granted, 285/75/16 is not my stock size, but it is maybe 1.5-2" more in diameter and a few pounds heavier. It was a bit over $300 for the whole episode. I will be swapping the tires on and off myself, but I don't possess the know-how or the means to mount and balance a tire. One can dream though. Maybe I'll hit the lotto and add a ridiculous garage onto the lot. It will be bigger than my residence, much to the chagrin of the Mrs.

 I basically just went and got lost for 1-1/2 hours over at Potomac Yards while waiting as there were apparently quite a few customers ahead of me.

 Steve B was kind enough to have already painted these steelies gunmetal grey before I picked them up from him on Craigslist, which is how we initially met. Funny now that I've gone wheeling twice and camped once with someone from Craigslist. I'm just glad he didn't murder me instead. There are murderers on there sometimes. It's not even funny.

 Now, I subscribe to the Frontier/Navara enthusiasts group on Facebook. I'm sure that if a few of those guys saw how I keep my interior, they would likely faint...and then when they regained consciousness, they would report me to Truck Protective Services. I really h ave tried to clean this off, but it is so persistent and ingrained that now the mud refuses to come out under ordinary means. I took some time Sunday to try to do a little bit of detailing. I've noticed that when I take my truck in for service, they don't even bother to put the plastic down. They also refuse to do the little vacuuming and window washing that used to come with oil changes. I guess they look at Veronica and are like, "She will not improve."

 I at least took some time to wash the exterior again, and get all that blue protective coating off of the white lettering. The windshield got cleaned for the first time in 2014.

That's pretty much all that happened.

I am seriously contemplating removing all of the carpeting out of the truck and bedlining the floorboard. My goal, with some electrical relocations, is to maybe get the interior to a point where I can maybe hose it out or at least damp mop it to get the mud out. It might even mean that I'll have to invest in some of those neoprene seatcovers for a bit more moisture resistance. We will see. I'm asking around of others (especially the Jeep crowd...blasphemy I know) for benefits and drawbacks. We probably all recall some of the missteps that have arisen from me emulating Jeep behavior.

Til the next time.