I started the day with a fresh mind. Despite a bad half-night’s sleep where I dreamed about things installed in my car upside down and fuel lines going everywhere, I was prepared to use scientific method to approach this problem. I got my books out at breakfast, but didn’t really start getting into it until I had the kitchen to myself. Dan was outside with Debbie helping in the garden, then he went out to work on his van improvements, a set of drawers for the kitchen.
With my trusty Haynes manual, book of trouble codes, my notes and my laptop, I set to work. I started out by writing down everything that had happened to date so that I could highlight any trends or hints. That took me a good while just to do that. I chatted with Debbie a while which was a nice break from the study until I went back to it and this time wrote out all the trouble codes that I’d gotten, as well as drawing a few pictures. At this point, I sent the information off to Dad for him to have some breakfast reading.
Debbie put a great playlist on over the house speaker system to calm me as I worked. The rest of my studies I perused the Haynes manual, trying to understand everything there is to know about the MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure) sensor, oxygen sensors, throttle position sensor, exhaust gas recirculation, the fuel injectors, the fuel cut-off relay, the idle air control valve and how they all communicate with the PCM (Power Control Module). It was confusing work at times, the Haynes manual can be quite vague when it comes to describing certain wiring and I’m not sure the wiring schematic at the back of the book is entirely relevant to my car. I must have spent an hour or so agonising about whether I have a canister that stores vacuum and another canister that stores carbons so that they can be released into the combustion chamber at the right time instead of being dumped into the atmosphere. All in the interests of reducing emissions, I began thinking it is one of these world-saving features that is buggering up the Astro.
In the late afternoon, I had an excuse to take a break when the kids came over for a swim in the pool. Dan and Debbie took first stint entertaining Emmi and Ava in the pool while I stayed in the kitchen with Alex chatting. Then I took over from Dan so he could continue working on his van. Emmi and I pretended to be sharks and shot at each other with water pistols and did the normal standing on shoulders trick that she was getting used to. I took a break and helped Dan in an attempt to fix one of the outdoor umbrellas. We weren’t too successful but at least we tried. It was almost cold being wet outside of the pool. I think it was only 40*C instead of the 47*C we’d become accustomed to.
Pool time over, I sat outside with Emmi and Cleo while Emmi ate her dinner. We managed to coax Cleo to eat a raspberry off my stomach as I sunbathed. Back in the kitchen, Emmi did some drawing in her little notebook, impressing me with her race cars and her representation of Dan’s crazy hair. Time to go, I piggybacked Emmi out to Dan’s car so we could look at his progress. The drawers were proper fancy with perfect function, not like the shitty plastic ones he’d been using up until this point.
I delivered Emmi to her car where she gave me her small drawing book. I told her she should keep it but she insisted I hold on to it. I promised I’d look after it until I saw her again. As I waved goodbye, she yelled out the window to me about the different features of her minivan, like the TV inside of it. Cute kid.
I did a little more studying as Dan cleaned up outside, feeling quite comfortable with my setup in the kitchen. Debbie and Peter were getting dolled up to go out to dinner to celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary. Not bad! I took a photo of the happy couple before they left and told them to be back by 10pm.
When Dan joined me in the kitchen, I packed away the books for the night and we made dinner out of Emmi’s pasta leftovers, some fried chicken and some bacon. Delicious. We ate it infront of the TV. Dan looked on Youtube for a video of the Azerbaijan F1 race that had been on over the weekend. My usual Facebook source hadn’t uploaded anything so we had to search and he did the work so I didn’t find out the result.
We got through most of qualifying before Debbie and Peter came home. Debbie had sent me a message saying they were on their way and I’d told her we’d get all the party people out of the house before they got home. We retired to Dan’s room to give Debbie and Peter the house and we watched the rest of qualifying and the start of the race before my eyes got droopy.
Throughout the day, I was happy to have an attentive study buddy in Cleo.
