Well Sears had my car for a total of 2 days to complete the surgery it required. Day one involved them not getting to the car until about 11am, and then finally giving up around 4pm when they realized that the bushings supplied were the wrong ones. Apparently the metal sleeves weren’t of the correct diameter and wouldn’t fit on the bolts for the steering gear. So I wait until the next day after being told that the car should be ready by around 1pm, I get there at noon. Car is still being worked on, won’t be ready until about 1:30. So I go watch the new Fantastic Four movie…
The movie I am sad to say was fantastically mediocre. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the likes of the X-Men, Spiderman, and most recently Batman. I could forgive the plot, although it seemed much less alive than other superhero origin films… the effects were fine, but the character development was complete horse-shit. I’ve seen extra’s in a zombie picture have more character development than those of the movie. It’s not even a case of assuming the audience knew the comic book, as they completely BLEW the origin of Dr.Doom. What really annoyed me is that one of my favorite actors, Michael Chiklis was completely throttled. There were some scenes where he was able to shine, but not nearly enough to carry the movie. Its as if all the characters were confined into a 1 cell comic ala The Far Side and not allowed to explore the characters a little further. For lack of a better term, the whole picture, plot, effects, acting just seemed downright anal. Whoever’s idea it was to put this to the screen in its release format should seriously consider a new line of work…
Perhaps a tracer?
So I get out of the theater around 1:30 and head back to Sears. They’re still working on it, I’m told all that’s left to be done is an alignment and that should take 20 minutes. 20 minutes turns into an hour or so, and then I am notified of a new problem. The outer tie-rod sleeves which are used to adjust the toe-in and out of the wheels were shot and snapped. I eventually escaped around 4:30 with a car that once again rides like it is on rails.
Now I’ve started to de-badge the car, it looks like Stren 8lb with Goo Gone does the trick. So far its looking pretty good, I just need to take the Dodge R/T’s off the doors. I’m going to leave the I N T R E P I D on the trunk lid, but as all the other badges just looked like shit (including the new one I got just last year) it made no sense to leave it on the car.