Spring has sprung and so have I.

Yesterday, I discovered that there is a reason it costs so much to have suspension work done on a vehicle. It is difficult and it is dirty. Even before we got the bronco from Katie's sister, it has had weak springs in back. The result was that it rode substantially lower than it was supposed to in back, causing the headlights to shoot up into oncoming driver's eyes, and also causing it to be very squirrelly at highway speeds. Not a real major issue, but certainly one that needed to be addressed. A couple weeks ago I ordered add-a-leaf springs at a fraction of what it would cost to replace the entire leaf spring assemblies. These 'helper springs' are added to your existing stack, in between the largest spring and the remainder of the original springs. That part itself isn't too hard. The difficulty comes in removing the spring assembly from the vehicle. In order to do this, you must first take all weight off of the axle, which the springs are bolted to. This means jacking the vehicle up and putting jack stands under the frame. Then it's a matter of removing the wheel (easy) and unbolting the spring assembly (far more difficult) Since the bolts in question aren't regularly loosened or tightened or really paid any attention at all, and since they are down where all the mud and the crud and the moisture is, they get nice and rusty. Between rust and caked on dirt, they are a pain to get off. Copious amounts of WD-40 and scrubbing at the threads with a wire brush, got the u bolts (which attach the springs to the axle) off. The nuts on the end of the bolts that attach the spring assembly to the body were another matter - Jerry ended up using his oxy-acetylene torch to heat the nuts so that we could remove them. All in all, it wasn't that terrible a job, it just took the entire day for us to get it done. I'm pretty sure that, knowing what we do now, we could probably get through 3 of them today. Thankfully, we don't have any other vehicles in need.

I am leaving Thursday, to travel to the Flathead Valley, where I will be helping to ready my grandparent's home for their return on Saturday, and also to prepare a photo memorial for my aunt Laurie's memorial service. I also intend to create a much extended one just for the family.

I haven't done a photo montage/memorial since my employment at First Presbyterian ceased. I immediately offered to do aunt Laurie's, even before there was talk of one. It isn't that I am any great master, but the ones that I saw prepared by different funeral homes, while doing A/V work at the church, were always a sad combination of shoddy and cheesy. I want aunt Laurie's to be tasteful and engaging. I asked mom to order a good scanner, so that I would be able to get good clean scans of different pictures and negatives, and I'll use GIMP to make the images look as good as they can. I imagine that everything will work out just fine, but I'm a little nervous about all of it.

Well, off to complete the rest of today!

Blessings.