There comes a time when good things must come to an end, and unfortunately for me that time was last week. And the sad part is I had just spent an hour a few days before re-soldering the clock.
But even with the end of an era, there’s a silver lining. Certainly sooner than I had planned to buy a new car but all in all I’d say things worked out okay. Say hello to my new ride!
After months of driving around with a broken clock on my 2001 CR-V, I decided enough is enough. Time to fix that stupid clock. If someone else is having a similar issue, hopefully this will help.
To access the clock, you’ll first need to remove the center air vent. Under the air vent there are four clips that go into the dashboard. Pry your flathead screwdriver under the center air vent to remove the clips and pull the unit out. The clip locations are shown below (I’m showing the underside of the vents):
You’ll want to be careful when you’re pulling the vent out and be sure that all the clips are loosened. I accidentally broke a clip that wasn’t loose when pulling mine out.
Once the center vent is pulled out, you should see two connectors. One goes to the hazard lights, the other to the clock. You can unplug the clock and remove the two screws holding the clock in with your phillips-head screwdriver.
Be careful when unclipping the front cover to the clock, as the buttons may fall out. Once the front cover is off you should see the clock LCD and the PCB.
When looking at my clock only the far left connection was cracked, but the soldering was pretty thin as well on the others shown. I went ahead and soldered all the connections below for good measure, as I didn’t want to remove the air vents again just to re-solder.
Once all your soldering is done, you can test the clock by just plugging it in and turning the ignition on. If it doesn’t work, be sure to check your soldering connections. Otherwise you can connect everything back up, and screw it all together.
Woohoo! I now have a working clock again!
Some of you have mentioned monetary compensation. I’m not in this for the money, and not really interested in any direct donations. However if you’re still interested in giving back, you can use my Amazon associates link to buy something off Amazon, of which I’ll get a small percentage.
So I have returned from my weekend journey to Georgia, and it has been an interesting trip, so I’m not really sure where to start.
The Ghetto Bowling AlleyI suppose I’ll start off with the most interesting tidbit of the trip. The ghetto bowling alley. On the night of my arrival, we had decided to go to the local bowling lanes in Toccoa Falls to bowl a few games. Clint had told me before what to expect, but nothing prepares you for the sight (or experience) once you are actually there. These lanes had to be at least 30 years old, and did not work half the time. As is evidence in the photo you see, their “bumpers” were made up of those flexible plastic drainage pipes. Also, none of the pins really matched so you would get the occasional blue, yellow, green, or some other odd colored pin mixed in with your white. The lanes would malfunction frequently (we actually got to bowl 1 1/2 games because they moved us to another lane as ours kept messing up), and the lanes were uneven. Needless to say, it was by far the most interesting bowling lanes I’ve ever been. Although, even with all of that going on I still managed to bowl a 169.
In other news from Toccoa, I’ve posted some photos from Toccoa on my Flickr account of the scenery of Toccoa. You should check it out. Toccoa is kind of rural, but makes for some nice scenery as it’s nestled in the northeast Georgia mountains close to South Carolina.
On the trip there from my Grandparents, I had decided to surprise Rick at work just kind of randomly. He didn’t know I was going to be in Atlanta, so I thought it would be funny to stop in and say hi without him knowing. I had been trying to find out when he was working all week from Jeremy, but finally got his schedule from Sadie. Although, I didn’t hit the right Applebee’s the first time, I got directions and headed to the second one which I knew was his once I saw a green Ford Taurus parked backwards in the parking lot. When I walked in and asked for Rick Watts, and the girl working up front started yelling out, “WATTS!” pretty loudly, since he was in the back. The shock and surprise on his face was pretty priceless though, as he stood there stunned repeating, “What are you doing here!?” several times before I actually got the chance to say anything. After that we just sat down and talked while I ate lunch. I do feel kind of strange however, I’ve never given Rick a tip for his services before…
Although, the most frustrating part of my trip wasn’t until my journey home. Something ripped through my tire about 30 minutes outside of Birmingham and caused me to have a flat tire which took me about 1 1/2 hours to change. It should not had taken that long, but it took a while to get the lug nuts off and then the tire got stuck, which took me the rest of the time to get it off. During that time AAA didn’t show up, but a state trouper did and even he couldn’t get it off. Oh well, at least I’m back in Birmingham now…
You don’t ever know how much you love something until it’s gone. I put my car in the shop today and I miss it already. Sure, it’s 5 years old and has a few dings here and there. But it’s my car with its own personality. Its green (which is the perfect color I might add…), small, compact, and gets great gas mileage for a small SUV. And it has awesome pickup too!
The car rental place set me up with a Jeep Laredo, and I really don’t care for it. It’s too new, and gets pretty much the same gas mileage as when I was driving the truck. And it feels big too… which I don’t like. But, I guess I really can’t complain too much since at least I have something to drive while my car is in the shop… and it’s only for one week! But I can’t wait to get it back!
Also, not that it’s of any interest, but I thought I would let you know anyway. I’ve finally put up an archive (not that anyone would want to look at) although, it’s one number off… so just add “1″ to whatever month it is you’re looking at. Also, I’ve almost finished the projects pages except for the graphics portions of it…
I must admit, it’s been quite an interesting week… or weekend, or whatever. But I can only say so much. I really don’t know if that many people read this, other than a select few but I guess it’s here for those of you that are interested, or bored, or just don’t have anything better to do.
Here am I, a college senior contemplating life… imagine that? God has impacted me a lot this weekend in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine. Yet oddly enough, I am okay with it. I was reading through Philippians and happened upon this verse which just kind of struck me out like a lightning bolt out of the blue, “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” (Philippians 4:11) Do I still have questions? Yes. Will they ever be answered? I honestly can’t say. Yet even through all that, I can be content, because I know God will provide for me, even when I don’t deserve it. I was also read the following verse as well, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33, see also Psalm 37:4) Now, I don’t think that if I put God first in everything He’ll just give me whatever I want… I certainly don’t expect that. But if I seek after God, my desires will become His desires, and that to me is just truely amazing. To be so closely in tune with God that His desires become yours. That is what I want to strive for, to seek God first in everything I do, then naturally everything else should fall into place. It’s just amazing what happens when you do give everything to God, all of a sudden you know everything is going to be okay, even when you still have doubts. It’s something I wish I could really put into words…
I’ve also come to realize what amazing people God has placed in my life. My friends are just amazing and are there for me when I’m down, and are there to pick me up no matter what condition I am in. I am really undeserving to have such friends that have to put up with me, because I know I’m not simple to deal with, but I’m thankful that they are willing to give up their time… for me. I pray that I will be available to do the same for them if they ever need it. I’ve also come to realize how amazing my Dad is. I mean, I like my Dad, and I always have. Even though we didn’t always get along he really has always been there for me, and always gives up time for me even with his busy work schedule. It just astounds me sometimes…
Anyway, sorry you had to read through all of that. I just wanted to jot some of my thoughts down so I could go back and look at them at a later date so I won’t forget anything. If you did read through all of that long post… yeah sorry about that. I know it’s not very entertaining but God’s doing something… I just don’t know what yet and it has me all excited. Anyway, on to other news…
My car got hit last week. But tomorrow, I might be finally putting it into a shop so I have to deal with that and get a rental car at the same time. It’s just been interesting to deal with insurance and all that, real excitement there. Also, we (Samford Band) get to go to Georgia Tech this weekend. I’m all excited about that, except that I have to drive the truck all the way over there so I’m going to have to drag someone along to keep me company. Any volunteers? Clint might show up as well, considering that Toccoa Falls is void of any entertainment apparently. So I’ll be glad to see him at the very least.
And if you did happen to read through all of the above, congratulations, and yet I apologize again for a third time. Just let me know what you think about all of that and if you have any suggestions (verses, opinions, ect.) or at least let me know that I’m just not talking to myself all of the time!
…one week later. So I have a test in my Art 200 class today, and planned on leaving a little early so I could show up and have a few minutes of review study. So I go out to my car, and you can probably take a guess at what’s happened. Nothing.
So now I have to get my car taken to the shop on the worst possible day of the week. I just hope it’s fixed pretty soon, because I have a test tomorrow night so I either need to find rides here and back or get a car from my parents until I get it fixed.
So yesterday was just one of those days. I had left band slightly early so I could try to make my lessons on time on the other side of town. So I walk out to my car and try to unlock, and it won’t unlock with the keyless entry, so I just assume the batteries in the key unit are dead. So I manually unlock my door, and put the keys in the ignition and try to crank and nothing happens. No lights, the engine doesn’t turn over nothing. I figure, no problem since I can get a jumpstart and be on my way. Jeremy was busy with a lesson at the time so I called Mike to come help jumpstart me. So we were outside for around 30 minutes unsuccessfully trying to jumpstart my car.
It gets better. So then I pick up my phone to call my student to let them know I won’t be able to make it, but my screen was dead. Completely black. I couldn’t make any outgoing calls unless I already knew the number. So Jeremy finally finishes with his lesson and I call him to make sure I can get a ride back if I can’t get started. So then I call campus safety as a last resort, and they were somehow finally able to get my engine going, but by this time it’s 6pm and my students are by now 30 minutes away so there’s no way I could make it. So now I had to go home and find some sort of software that would allow me to pull everything from my phone, my contacts, ringtones, everything so that I can hopefully transfer it to a new phone.
I think my mouse batteries are dead too. What’s next?
