Thursday, June 5, 2008

The license plate saga *or* 11 man hours of other people's time to help me

As reported before, changing the old license plates out to put on my new ones has been nothing short of a saga.*Old plate w/Westminster College cover*

The first time I tried, I couldn't get the screws to turn, it was more like I was destroying the grooves in the screws' head. So I called Andy, who I'm sure thinks that no matter what he'll always be my home teacher b/c I'm always calling him for something. (Shout out!)
That first night we stood outside trying to figure out what to do to get the old license plate off, since we'd already replaced the front one. We went to Macey's to get WD-40, applied it to no avail. Hmmph
The next morning Andy came over with his new dremel that he'd bought just for the purpose of helping me. We finally just decided to cut off the heads to the screws so that I could get the old plate off:
Notice in the second picture how Andy is trying to slice some grooves into the screws to try one last time to unscrew the screw remnants. Nope. It was decided that probably the only thing to do was drill into the screws. I placed my license plate in the back window propped up by a Travel Brazil book .
Weeks went by and I consistently forgot to deal with this problem. Then the cop pulled me over, and tried to help me get the screws out, also finally deciding that the way to go was a drill.
I ended up not driving to Wyoming, so I postponed the dealio again. (Slacker!)
On Memorial Day, I drove to Julie Rae's in-law's where she and Brian were. I very greedily enlisted everybody there (and Shirl's copious tools) into helping me put on the license plate.
*Brian turned to me not long after this and said, "Remember how I told you that you'd probably have to drill thru the trunk and that I told you that I better not end up being the one doing it?"

After Brian and Shirl worked and drilled into the screws, creating a nice hole in Right Screw, Left Screw became extremely stubborn and refused to be drilled into anymore. The tip of the drill bit was white hot and then blended into a nice blue shade.
The Simmons family gets a huge shoutout right here because they seriously helped so much.

Brian decided that we should at least attached the plate to the right spot on the car so that the chances of a cop pulling me over were minimal. So, in a very red-necky moment, my license plate was attached with plastic:

*So low class!

I called Andy yet again and asked (begged) his help with Left Screw that was needing the file end of a dremel.
Thursday morning Andy came over and started dremeling from all angles:


Andy dremeled and dremeled until the files were rather file-less. So, off to Lowe's looking for drill bits for the drill, the screws, washers and nuts, and dremel materials. Later on that Thursday, Andy and I drove to Spanish Fork (no plug for the drill at Old Mill).
Andy proceeded to drill and dremel, drill and dremel:
Then, all of a sudden, Andy had created to beautiful holes that the screws we had bought fit in nice and snug:
Isn't this one of the most beautiful things you ever done seen:



There were at least 4 people who gave up a lot of their time to help me with this frustrating rusted screws. Seriously, I've got way too many good people in my life willing to help me out.

3 comments:

Myra Bybee said...

Oh Wow! This was quite the ordeal! Good ole Andy to the rescue.

just a little bit mo said...

Andy is a superhero, after all.
http://bp2.blogger.com/_KXNVpTwxhyE/RiGuzMDjPDI/AAAAAAAAAC8/BOBalm1UjB4/s1600-h/Geology-42.jpg

just a little bit mo said...

http://justalittlebitmo.blogspot.com/2007/04/super-whipple.html
Here's a better link than that last one.