“Changing spark plugs is not Rocket Science. Most Muggles can perform this procedure quite easily, given the proper tools and motivation.” — Anonymous Dog Scientist

Nothing at all profound happened to me today, which is the case for most days.

I got up (late), ate my oatmeal, and drank my tea.  I then ran an errand this morning that is supposed to result in a surprise birthday present for someone in about two months.  Stopped and had a coffee by myself.  Came home.

Oh, while I was drinking coffee on the outside patio I was able to observe the local cops lie in wait at a gas station across the street, a perfect vantage from which to pull over Miscreant Muggles for minor traffic infringements.

There was another guy pacing around with his drink near me.  He was unshaven and wore a white t-shirt and jeans.  Of course I was unshaven, too, so there was nothing remarkable about that.  He was staring at the police cruiser and asked me if I knew what was going on.

“Nope,” I replied.  “In fact I’m waiting here until they leave because the plates are expired on my truck.”  Lest he think I was a Malcontent, I added, “I’ve paid all the fees and everything (which I had), but I don’t have the sticker yet.”

“Then you should probably leave now, while they’re hassling that other dude.”

He had a point but, after all, I hadn’t finished my coffee, and I was happy enjoying a brief interlude of solace in the morning sun before I headed back to the maelstrom of suburban life, with its broken sprinklers (we now have at least two to worry about) and HOA Nazi’s on the prowl (“Your palm fronds are dead.  Why are they dead, and what are you going to do about them?”).

So as sound as his advice was, I decided to finish my coffee and take my chances.  It wasn’t as if I was like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape riding a stolen motorcycle toward the Swiss border, I was simply in my truck with an aged-out sticker, and I was sure because of the angle at which the cop had parked, he wouldn’t be able to see my rear plate.

I was right, and I drove all of three minutes home with just the slightest of headaches beginning to form.

Because the notion of thrift had been deeply ingrained in me from a very early age, it is nearly impossible to actually take an entire day off and relax.  I must, absolutely must, accomplish something practical, or I have sinned grievously.  Even though I now know that’s a crock and will probably lead to an early grave, I still feel obligated to make the best use of my time most days.

Except when I’m at my place of employment, but that’s another story.

I thus figured I would spend a couple of hours in the early part of the afternoon catching up on the deferred maintenance for my poor truck.  It had not only endured two heavily laden, nearly non-stop coast-to-coast drives within the last five months, it had also suffered through the worst part of a Philadelphia Winter and had been subjected to unknown indignities by Daughter at the same time.

An oil change was the least I could do for it, and I was going to throw in a new air filter and plugs for good measure.

Since I’ve drained and refilled oil a bazillion times with countless vehicles in my life, that part of the service interval was almost a complete piece of cake.  The main challenge was keeping myself from becoming covered with petroleum products while preventing those same products from gracing one of the few unblemished areas of the driveway remaining, and removing the oil filter itself, which I apparently welded on last August the last time I did this.

After a few moments of consternation with the filter, I managed to loosen and remove it without losing any of my digits on the knife-sharp tin cover surrounding it.

I would have liked more oil to have drained from the sump, but I’ll keep an eye on the level the next few weeks since I fear this engine might be burning a bit of the brown stuff, rather than leaking it.  That would be just my luck, but it did pass smog on Tuesday so all is not lost yet.

Next, I changed the air filter.  Fortunately I had to remove only two snaps and one screw to access it.  Unfortunately, it was filthy and appeared as if I neglected to change it last go round.  Oh, well, worse things can happen, I suppose (like the engine burning oil).

Finally, I was ready for the last bit in this three-part play:  The Changing of the Spark Plugs; or, Where’s Roger Rabbit (it’s actually Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but the way I mis-remembered it at first works better in this context).

The first step in changing the plugs is locating the plugs.

I could not locate the plugs.  I could open the hood.  I could see the battery.  Shoot, I’d even already changed the oil.  But those damn darn spark plugs were nowhere to be seen.

And as I discovered, not being seen was the key to solving the mystery.  I zeroed in on several assemblies that looked suspiciously close to some kind of fuel injection / spark plug thingies (that’s a Snap-On technical term), but I couldn’t be sure.

One lunch break and a quick internet search later, I determined I had, in fact, located said plugs — they just didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before.  And to make matters worse, a couple of them seemed to be completely inaccessible without essentially removing the top part of the engine first.

“Houston.  We have yet another problem.”

As I scanned several on-line forums, the prevailing wisdom seemed to be to leave the job to the professionals and to wait to the factory-prescribed 105,000 mile change interval.  With that in mind, I’ve got about three years and 40,000 miles before I really, really have to worry about completing this job.

But then I found a post which very clearly illustrated how I could, in fact, take care of this procedure in about an hour.  Plus, a number of other posts made extremely chirpy claims about how much better their trucks ran when they replaced the plugs.

Cue guilt feelings.

But since I had already reached my two-hour work allotment and had managed to change the oil, filter, and air filter (i.e., accomplished something), I did what any self-respecting mechanic would do at that point:  I went inside and took a nap.

After all, those plugs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Tomorrow is Another Day.

– Dad