2020 Hindsight, Part 2: Vlad the Impala

 I always hated driving, which is a shame, because I've always liked cars. I played racing games, I was eight years old for the premiere of Pixar's Cars, and a few trips to local car shows in my early years instilled a deep love for classics (especially anything made in 1967).

However, by the time I was fifteen, I wasn't at all excited to drive. It was intimidating, and a few harrowing experiences in driver's ed didn't help. I was practically coerced by my parents into getting my license, because on my own I wasn't going to get it done anytime soon. I couldn't explain it--I loved cars from the outside, but for some reason getting behind the wheel only filled me with anxiety, not joy.

Fast-forward several years, and not much had changed; except, of course, that my love of 60s American muscle was now matched by a newfound love for 80s and 90s Japanese cars. I still drove the family car only as a last resort, and during the school year I'd rely on buses or rides from friends, lacking my own vehicle. I realized that having a car would be a tremendous functional benefit, but I didn't know how to deal with the crippling anxiety that came with the driver's seat.

Eventually, in about February of this year, I had an idea: I normally handle anxiety-inducing situations with excessive preparation beforehand, so why not apply that strategy? To be comfortable with a car, I'd have to understand the car on a deeper level. I needed to get my hands dirty and start fixing things; that way, I'd accumulate knowledge of most everything that could go wrong, and how to guard against it. And in order to spend that much effort on a car, I'd need to own it in order to make myself care more for it.

I looked at several options and was disappointed each time, ultimately deciding to formally buy the family car I had been taking to work. After all, we already knew what problems it had, and besides, I was beginning to get attached to it. Thus, the weird brownish-gold 2002 Impala I'd been making fun of for years formally became Vlad. Vlad the Impala. My chips were placed.

Just look at this nasty headlight. One of many things to fix.

While it's true that confidence can come from preparation, it also comes from experience, and I got more of that than I asked for this summer. For someone who faces severe anxiety about driving, you can bet I wasn't thrilled when the following things happened within the space of two months:

• My first tire blowout on the highway (a bad one at that--the tread separated from the sidewall all the way around the perimeter of the tire)
• Being completely blinded with spotty traction by a freak torrential rainstorm
• Witnessing two accidents right in front of me
• Emergency coolant warnings after a radiator hose started leaking like a sieve
• Getting road-raged at after misunderstanding the traffic flow of a very confusing parking lot
• My turn signals unexpectedly fritzing out, along with all the gauges on the instrument panel going completely haywire

By the end of that, I was starting to get more desensitized to the perils of driving, which was its own strange kind of comfort. Ordinary road hazards seemed like nothing by comparison, and I could turn my attention to learning the mechanical workings of the car. Fortunately, I had a highly experienced family friend to show me the ropes and help me start personally working on my vehicle. Here's the laundry list of stuff we fixed or upgraded along the way:

Old wheel on the right, new wheel on the left.

• New wheels and tires--dressing up the car a little bit worked wonders on its overall appearance. In addition to spiffy looks, wider wheels came with improved traction and handling, and I got comfortable with using jacks and impact wrenches to change wheels. I even learned how to measure the wheel well to determine what width wheels the car could accommodate. 
• Replaced leaky coolant hose--I didn't do this personally because I was at work, but it had to be done.
• Replaced hazard light switch--this is how I learned how to take off the dashboard, which came in handy for the stereo later.
• Replaced main ignition switch--this was actually the source of the turn signal/gauge cluster problems, because all the electrical systems run through it.
• Refinished headlights--the polycarbonate headlight casings were so yellowed they seriously impeded nighttime visibility, so I popped them out and sanded them down by hand during my quiet nights off. Imagine me in the backyard, crouching like Gollum over my headlight assembly with a spray bottle and sandpaper at 3:00 AM.
• Fixed bench seat hinge (the center console flips up as a sixth seat)--the hinge was busted, so I took it apart and discovered it was actually horribly designed. Doomed from the start. so we welded on an extra piece of metal, bored some new screw holes, patched up the old joints with epoxy and sank longer screws through the formerly stripped and broken holes. It's pretty indestructible now. Yay for engineering!
• Entirely new suspension--Vlad handled like a boat, with exaggerated swelling motions after every dip in the road and ridiculous body roll in every turn. We knew the old struts were shot, but little did we know that both sway bar end links had also failed (which explains the sideways roll). It was supposed to be a simple job, but stubborn bolts and unexpected surprises turned a two-hour job into five. Surprises like the next entry:
• Driver's side CV axle--nothing like lifting off your wheel to discover nasty blobs of grease all over from your ruptured CV joint. There goes another ninety bucks.
• New stereo head unit--the stock CD player was broken and had no aux port, so I figured I should upgrade the whole thing rather than driving around with my sad little bluetooth speaker on the dash. Turns out the stock speakers actually sound pretty good when you can use them; however, GM made a really stupid design choice by routing the emergency warning chimes through the stereo, so I had to scrounge up a special wiring harness with a pigtail to its own little speaker box in order to preserve the warning chimes. Not cool, Chevy. At least the new stereo sounds great, and it was a good opportunity to break out the old soldering iron.
• Backseat reading light switch--the clicky switch housings for the backseat lights are pretty weakly designed, and one popped apart. Once I found all the tiny components, it was easy enough to glue together. I was half worried I'd get the cops called on me as I sat in the car with a flashlight in my teeth at 4:00 AM dismantling stuff with a screwdriver, but fortunately that didn't happen. The other side has now broken the same way, but I haven't fixed it quite yet.

8 hours of sanding = clean happy headlights!

If half of that didn't make any sense, I don't blame you; a few months ago, I would've agreed. The point is, Vlad doesn't handle like a pirate ship anymore, and I learned more about repairs and maintenance than I ever could have hoped in such a short time.

So did the plan work? Yeah, sort of. Navigating to places I haven't driven to before is still a source of anxiety, but everything else isn't so bad anymore. On familiar roads, I just roll down the windows and listen to the engine. I found the solution that was right for me: in order to not hate driving, I had to start with loving my car.

Hic Manebimus Optime!