Bump for Weekday
Well I suppose someone once said all good things must end, but I’d argue that this was a great thing and thus shouldn’t...
Truth be told I was only on Oppositelock as an author this year. I have a dichotomy of being a #completegoof :) or starkly serious. My roots with Kinja-verse run much deeper than you know and frankly longer than I realized.
My first foray into Jalopnik was at writings of one Freddy “Tavarish” Hernandez. At the time I don’t believe I had made the account, hell I wasn’t on a burner. I was the writer of Filled To The Brim published in 2015:
Filled To The Brim
When I was in the later years of high school I worked at a 2 bay, drive through oil change place after school, during the weekends, and over the summer holidays. We had limited scope of work as we didn’t have lifts, and none of the workers there were certified mechanics. So we stuck to oil, transmission, diff, and coolant changes among the minor things you’d find during a full serve gas station stop. We weren’t flawless, but we did decent work for the majority of customers.
One weekday we pulled in a 2nd Generation (‘91-’95) Ford Taurus Wagon into Bay #1. I was doing under hood, manager was doing cashier/paper work and of course we had a guy in the pit. I guided the middle aged woman driving into the bay and the manager greeted her and a senior woman (her mother or mother in law most likely) who was shotgun. The manager goes through the normal routine; park, engine off, pop hood.I open the hood and things looked mostly normal, I do not hear a peep from the tech downstairs in the pit. I take out the dipstick, wipe it, re-insert and pull out and notice something very unusual. The level was over filled, not by a little bit like say 1/8in, more like 2-2.5in over the full mark. At this point I take a knee to consult the tech downstairs and notify him of the situation. I am greeted with extremely wide eyes and whispers to me that “There is oil everywhere down here [on the car].” So I try to get the managers attention who attempting to sell the engine flush. He gets irritated at me as I try to interrupt him, but cuts the conversation short with the women. Both of us notify him of the situation and he checks the oil and brings the dipstick to the woman “Ma’m your engine is WAY overfilled!!!”She then tells us the story; She noticed that in the parking garage/place of her apartment that “kids” were draining the oil from cars (most likely enthusiasts doing an oil change marathon for neighbours/friends).
Paranoid that they had drained the oil out of her car she had gone and bought a couple of jugs of oil. She had then proceeded to fill up the 3.8L Essex V6 until she saw the oil level at the fill neck! Confident there was now oil in the engine, she drove the car. Probably do to the huge bunch of blue smoke, she had determined that there was a problem with the oil and brought the car in for a change. She had never consulted the dipstick, probably out of ignorance.We regrettably informed her that we couldn’t take the liability of working on the car due to the fact that there might be internal damage. She requested that we drain some out but the manager stuck to his guns and said that if it had got here it could make it to the mechanic. So we rolled her (preformed no service) with the engine still overfilled and told her to go a couple blocks to a mechanic.
I still feel sad about her situation as she was clearly on a limited budget and didn’t have anyone with mechanical knowledge to consult with. If you have the mechanical gift please pursue it and help others.
The joy of seeming my story sandwiched in there. The subject of conversation in part of the 700 comments. “Oh, What a feeling!” - Toyota
I would have been working in the grey for part of 2016 as my Jalop certification came at the hands of Kristen Lee late in the year when she included my post in Countersteer. She swam through some 300 comments and found me in the netherrealm:
During that time I engaged in many great articles. I hold one in regards as my very favourite though. It came at the type-age of freelance author David Obuchowski; his first post. I’m not one to share articles but I had to send this to my friend. It was simply amazing:
Naturally over the course of the year I was enthralled with the articles he put out and was very engaging in the comment section. His post for the Podcast for The Search For A Lost Plymouth Road Runner At The Center Of One Family’s Hopes And Heartbreak culminated in my Magnum Opus of Jalopness:
I had seen CarsofFortLangley around Jalopnik and I knew he was on Oppo even though I rarely visited. I knew he would be the best user to at the very least assist me with this. I tracked him down on here despite being grey and sent him the link to the comments. Both CoFL and I were in contact with David and CoFL ultimately took the reigns for the meet. By god he actually left his wonderful family during his vacation to come see a bunch of foreign canucks:
Additionally this is where I learned the identity of the late Mergio Sarchionne, FCA commenter extraordinaire! I stopped in on Oppositelock a few times and unfortunately was unable to attend meets in 2019 due to my work schedule.
I limited my engagement on Jalopnik around the Spring of this year after things really shook up with staff departures. I noticed a change throughout the previous year on the site in terms of content tone and commentary. It was a direction I took issue with.
If Jalopnik wasn’t going to provide me the content and interaction I wanted then perhaps it might be worth travelling the path of Ferruccio Lamborghini and create my own content and interact with like minded individuals. I would need to practice research and writing about technical subjects for my next license regarding work anyways...
This would lead to a rather short authorship here on Kinja Oppo. My most viewed and interactive article was when I took the piss out of EA and the remaster of Need for Speed Hot Pursuit [2010], before it released. It was stuck on the popular post sidebar for 3 consecutive days and I really don’t know how or why it was racking up views:
I’ve lamented here on Oppositelock enough about Jalopnik and the whole state of transformation by the Herb. I’m salty about this because I actually do give a shit. Both Jalopnik and Oppositelock has been something greater than a bunch of words and pictures on a screen to me and I’m sure you all hold the same regard. I’ve met up with people because of my time on here and it’s a damn shame that this avenue through the accessibility of Kinja is being terminated.
I would like to thank you for reading, starring, commenting on any of my posts these years I’ve been on Kinja. It’s been a trip people. May we have a successful host migration. *See you on Hyphen*
