Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.No mechanical task too complicated for the new Jim by J. G. Fabiano Every now and then I forget I have the mechanical aptitude of a Manatee. Winter has a tendency to induce this amnesia in me because I rarely have the opportunity to prove my ineptness during the cold months because my wife won’t let me bring any of my tools into the house. However, like I do every year, I make the same mistake. This year, as I was taking my lawnmower out of hibernation I remembered the drive belt that made the mower self- propel had broken late last season. I intended to send the machine out during the winter months but, after the first snow, all thought of a lawnmower left my consciousness. As I stared down at the machine that would become one of my closest companions for the next nine months I thought how tough could changing a belt be? I then took out my green tool chest, whose tools have not been changed since my father bought them right after he purchased his first home 50 years ago. It is not that I can’t afford new tools but why replace something that isn’t broken? It also demonstrates how rarely I use my tools. I found the two screws that held the cover over the self-propelling apparatus. I chuckled because I thought of the technical term ‘apparatus’. Maybe my abilities have improved with the years. Maybe I would become more patient and more focused, which would allow me to fix things. Maybe my wife would see this and allow me to fix things in the house instead of hiring a contractor to do what I should be able to do. Maybe my whole life was about to change. I reached for the Philips screwdriver and, to my surprise, it was the right one. I dislodged - God, I love that kind of talk - the screws and carefully removed the cover from the pulleys that would soon hold the new drive belt. I placed the two screws in the housing assembly so they would not get lost, rolled my mower back into the corner of the garage, and off I went to one of my scariest places on Earth, but, that was the old Jim. The new Jim would love Home Depot. I used to hate just driving into the parking lot of Home Depot as it is usually filled with pick-up tricks driven by people who seem to know what they are doing. Walking into the store I found myself looking over the main entrance to see the sign that said: "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." But, that was the old Jim, not the handy new Jim of Summer. Strolling down the lawn mower section I looked for the drive belt that would fit my lawnmower but was shocked to see there was an entire wall of drive belts. No problem. The new Jim had written down the name of his mower and even brought the old, torn belt with him. I found the belt I needed by measuring its length and width, checked out with the rest of the handy people and back home I drove. Once in my garage I pulled out my wife’s car so I would have room to work, told her I would be about a half hour putting the new belt on the lawn mower and she could start making dinner any time after that. As she walked back into the house I saw her smile. I told her the new Jim would not be delayed on this new day. Then I discovered that the installation of the drive belt would not be as easy as I first thought. The problem was there were three pulleys that the belt had to be wrapped around. This would have been easy enough except that one of the pulleys had a large rod through it that was attached to the driving mechanism that moved the wheels. For the next 15 minutes I tried to figure out how to wrap the belt around the main pulley but couldn’t come up with a solution. As a last resort I consulted the mower’s instruction manual, which showed me the rod had to be removed from the pulley in order to install the belt. At first I thought this a little impractical but, after a careful study of the manual, I started taking apart the wheel assembly from the mower. I was very careful as I dismantled it, making sure I would keep all the parts in a designated corner of the garage. I even set out the pieces in the order I took them off. Remember, this was the new Jim at work. After removing the wheel assembly I was shocked to discover I would now have to take apart the drive assembly. The manual told me to remove the retainer ring and the spring pin. The retainer ring took me another 15 minutes to remove. Since it had been attached to the machine for the past nine years and had suffered through massive amounts of grass cuttings, doggy doo-doo and water damage, the retainer ring had become part of the drive shaft. The only way I was able to remove the thing was to break it in half. I realized another trip to Home Depot was not far away. After I had removed the retainer ring I couldn’t even find the spring pin and assumed it had sprung off somewhere into my garage. I then removed the dust cover and the pinion gear. Understand I have never seen a pinion gear in my entire life. It looked like some sort of gear that was heavy enough to run my truck. Like the retainer ring it would not budge. I could turn it around the shaft but I could not get it to slide off. After half an hour I found out it was held in place by a hair pin. The only hair pin I had seen before this had the name ‘Bobbie’ attached to it. I removed the pin and attempted to slide the drive shaft away from the pulley in order to attach the new belt. Like the retainer pin, the pinion gear and the hair pin the shaft would not move. My wife then stuck her head into the garage to see if it was okay to start dinner. Since my head was under the mower and surrounded by loose parts she was unable to discern my reply. No matter how hard I tried the shaft would not budge. Like I had done with other mechanical tasks in the past I took out my favorite tool; the hammer. I then proceeded to pound the hell out of the shaft in order to push it through. This was comparatively simple because it was a comparatively large hammer. I then attached the belt to the pulley, pushed through the shaft and attempted to put the thing back together again. The first thing I had to install was the pinion gear. To my dismay it did not fit. It seemed, when I pounded the shaft through the mower in order to install the belt, I had widened the end of the shaft to the point where it was too large for the pinion gear. Sweat appeared on my brow. I thought it best to step back from my ravaged mower in order to view the overall scene and plan my next move. Of course, I forgot about the small pile of perfectly placed parts on the garage floor. The next second I was flying in one direction and the carefully assembled small parts of the mower were flying in pretty much every direction. The only thing I was able to find was the pinion gear, which made a rather large dent in the fender of my truck. After I had torn the retainer ring in half I knew I was destined to return to Home Depot. As I entered I looked up over the entrance of the store for that sign again about abandoning all hope. Again I walked over to the lawnmower department, this time not looking for any spare parts but a newer, better, simpler lawnmower. By the time I got home my dinner was stone cold! The End.
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