Key Won't Turn, More On the Continuing Saga of My Car.

Order_242, (Wiki.) Hola Chile.

Ian Cooper

I’ve blogged about the continuing saga of my car before.

The big thing, in my humble experience, is not to panic when something goes wrong.

A good case in point was the other day. It was minus fourteen Celsius, with a wind chill of about minus twenty.

I stuck the key in the ignition and it wouldn’t turn. This happened a few days before. The car is a 2002 model. I paid about $2,100.00 three years ago. Sooner or later the thing must inevitably be towed away for scrap value. In the meantime, if something goes wrong, I try and think it through, gather as much information as possible, and desperately try not to throw money at a problem when a little knowledge might save a few bucks.

My mother was in town—she lives twenty-five kilometres away, so I got her to take me to the smoke-shack and the bank. She has CAA and she can get me a tow if necessary. I called the dealership, and the ignition lock cylinder, according to the parts department, is about $143.00.

I got them to put me through to the service department and the service writer told me that it generally takes a half an hour of labour to change the cylinder.

How that relates to keys with the transponder chip in them is a good question, because the cylinder has to match the key. I only have one key, it’s cold as hell out there. Snow lies in heaps all about my car, and working on the thing in the apartment building’s parking lot isn’t all that attractive.

As soon as I hang up the phone, I think of ten more questions I should have asked. Yet I would sure hate to be a pain in the ass to them guys.

I hate being cooped up in here. Call it maturity, call it a kind of quiet Canadian desperation, but panic wasn’t going to help me.

When all the world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, (whatever the frick that is) then a smart poverty-stricken basterd turns to the internet...right?

Okay. Here’s this guy saying how to turn the key when your steering lock becomes engaged. Mine wasn’t at first, but by the time I was done wiggling the steering wheel, trying over and over again, inserting and reversing the key, the steering did become locked. Here is a trouble-shooting list.

Here’s another guy talking about removing the bottom cover and lightly tapping on the rib of metal that surrounds the lock cylinder—don’t be whaling away on this relatively soft metal casting with an iron-worker’s hammer and maybe that would work.

The question is what exactly is the problem? But hitting the button on the remote lock feature quickly shows whether the battery in your two-piece keyset is working.

Arguably the lock or the key is simply worn. If I had another key, it might actually work better. This still does not address a worn cylinder, although it might put off spending money on a repair for a while.

My ignition failed in my own driveway—and yet we all need to go to the grocery store, and not everyone has CAA or a cell-phone for that matter. (I don’t.)

It all comes down to poverty, but after discussing it with the gentleman at the dealership, I decided that if the lock is screwed, tapping on the end of the key isn’t going to hurt it any further.

The question is how hard? And for how long? If you’re still smashing and pounding away a half an hour later, Buddy, it ain’t going to work.

Calling the tow truck and having her hauled to the dealer is a good default option. A hundred and forty for the part, a half hour of labour…that’ll be about eight hundred bucks, right…??? By the time we're done here...

So I tried the car again. The key would not turn.

Then, using a snow scraper, which is plastic and not all that heavy, I just tapped and whacked and banged lightly away on the end of the key in the ignition switch. I don’t particularly want to smash the key out the end of the cylinder, neither do I want to dislodge the cylinder…what I think we are trying to do is to free up some sticky pins in the lock cylinder. (Maybe.)

I used a little electronic cleaner, and shoved the key in and out. And of course the little bugger worked.

It’s interesting when the thing fires up, but all I could do was to take her for a ride. It’s a bit stupid to shut it off away from home—or I could have taken it to the dealership and arranged for repairs. This saves the price of a tow, or calling my mother and going through the hassle of finagling a free tow. 

I’m a grown man and that’s sort of coat-tailing your own mother, right?

When I got home, I took the key out. I put it back in, and it wouldn’t turn. So, I whacked on it with the scraper, and got it to go again. I started the car and switched it off.

Now, if you were truly desperate (and I’m not, not so much, anyways) you could buy a cheap aftermarket lock cylinder and do this with the transponder chip in your keyset.

I don’t claim to be a great mechanic. What I am is cheap—and resourceful.

Basically we just bought ourselves some time. We went to the liquor store and we're feeling pretty impressed with ourselves.

And that is a good feeling, ladies and gentlemen.

The smart thing to do is to take the thing in to the dealership first thing Monday morning.

END

A Dream of Racing.

Night Cruise.

Weird Anecdotes.

(We’ll leave you with that. – ed.)

Honey Trap.

Helen and Jill have a plan.

Ian Cooper


Here's the blurb for Honey Trap, and a short excerpt.

Helen has taken a fancy to a retired soldier in her neighborhood. Just looking at him causes a flutter in Jill’s tummy. They’ve also been wondering what it’s like to be taken by a real man in a place swarming with pimply-faced boys and dirty old men with beer bellies. Conspiring together, the life-long accomplices set a honey trap for Phillip, who hasn’t the foggiest notion of what is about to hit him. It’s the party of a lifetime for all concerned. 

A short and erotic story.

Honey Trap

Ian Cooper

Scene One

Helen and Jill were on the way to school. They were lucky in that they only lived a few blocks from Sir George A. Macdonald Collegiate and Vocational Institute, what people around there called Crowbar High, and that the morning was neither wet nor cold. It sure beat forty minutes on the bus twice a day, which was what some of the rural people had to put up with. The stiff breeze coming from the southwest held the promise of wet snow. So far this year they had only seen a few flakes. Some sort of vortex was supposed to bring two to four centimeters by morning, which at this time of year would be mush by ten-thirty. A heavily-treed part of town, the cold wind was blocked to some extent.

They were just coming down Helen’s driveway. Jill lived further from school, and the pair had sort of been inseparable since childhood. The trip had become all too routine over the last four years.

A figure came out of a front door up the block, turning to his left and going along up ahead of them. He was on the left side of the street, they were on the right.

Jill was chattering on about her shows. Thursdays were her big night as she called it.

Helen was only half listening as Jill gushed on about that Steven Stimpson guy and one or two others.

Any one of them would have done for poor old Jill, who looked fine but who obsessed about everything from her waistline, (this at seventeen and seven months, waiting for nineteen and legal drinking age with bated breath), her hair, her lips, her skin, and as often as not her breasts. These were either too ponderous one minute or too small and set too far apart the next. Jill was narcissism personified, not that Helen didn’t suffer from a touch of that herself. It was just that she had a slightly better perspective.

Helen had never heard Jill complain about her spleen, for example. Helen at least knew she had one. As to whether she appreciated it enough, it was kind of hard to say.

The man up there had just moved into the neighborhood, maybe a year or a year and a half ago.

He was tall, handsome in a lean and dark sort of a way. People said he had caught a sneak thief in his garden shed, knocking him on his ass as folks around there said, and holding him by the scruff of the neck until the police could take him into custody.

He certainly looked the part, although there was just the trace of a limp—the right leg was a bit shorter or something, Helen thought. He looked to be about six-foot three or four. He stood up straight, something not always true in the lankier men of that height. (Tall women were worse of course, not realizing their true gift.) 

A lot of them slumped along like giraffes. His erect posture kind of said it all. He had his hands in his pockets, strolling casually along in his hooded woodland camouflage jacket and faded blue jeans. The fawn tone of the leather hiking boots was a nice match for the season. That guy had no belly, she recalled from seeing him shirtless out on the lawn during the summer months.

There were two types of males in this neck of the woods, or so Jill had always thought. They had the usual crop of lecherous, drooling boys. Most of them had no job, no car, no money, and lived in a back bedroom at their folks’ places. The rest were drooling, lecherous old fuckers with big bellies flopping down over their six-inch belt-buckles and the smell of sweat, tobacco and alcohol hanging about them at all times. Their brassy, obstreperous and none-too-attractive wives were always keeping an eye on them, hanging about pretty much also at all times. Those guys all seemed to have just a little too much money and no real idea of what might be done with it other than speedboats and in-ground pools and vacations to Disneyland with the kids. Her own father being a case in point when he thought Mom wasn’t looking.

Helen stopped on impulse, as the fellow crossed in front of them, turned right at the next intersection and headed towards the downtown area. With a raised arm and a gentle touch of the back of her hand, she held Jill.

“Are you doing anything very important today?”

In Grade Twelve, Jill was the oldest and therefore the most responsible of her siblings.

“Duh. Yeah. Mister Sokololovich’s chemistry quiz. Remember?”

Oh, yes, that’s right. The usual Friday pop quiz on the previous week’s lessons.

Sokololovich was a pudgy balding man, easily thirty-eight years old, with rounded little silver glasses that he peered through like portholes onto a brighter world, a world of promises which appeared to have been un-kept so far in his drab little life.

Promises un-kept—interesting.

“Do we honestly believe Avery Jackson is going to ask either one of us out today?”

Or tomorrow, or the next day?

Helen bit her lip.

“Of course.” Jill smiled brightly against the desolation that was her soul. “Ah, no.”

Avery was the desirable male in their senior class, and most likely, the whole town.

Possibly even the whole tri-county area.

“Yeah.” Helen remained unconvinced.

Her eyes slid back to Jill’s profile for a second. Mister Sokololovich they could handle with a little sweet talk and some eyelash-batting. It would be a sacrifice, to be sure—but they could do it.

Jill read this thought as if by a kind of osmosis, the only problem was why? Why would we ever want or need to do that? Helen walked on, albeit a little slower now.

They were just coming to the intersection, as the breeze whipped up dead leaves and a small wave-front of flurries swept in from off the lake. The patterns of snow on the road surface were kind of fascinating in their own right.

“But that’s not until what, eleven-thirty?”

Her friend stopped dead again, grabbing Helen’s chin and turning her head firmly around to look her in the eye.

“Why? What didst thou havest in mind-eth?” Oh, Helen, of dangerous mind and relentless pursuits.

Uh, oh.

There was that old familiar look in Helen’s eyes.

“Oh, no. No, Hell.” That had been Jill’s private nickname for Helen ever since that summer at Camp Skubegong, when they were like all of thirteen and fourteen years old.

There were four or five of us. We swam out to the sandbar, took off our bikini tops, waved them over our heads and dared them nasty little boys to come on out there. That was the first time they had ever used the power.

The power.

It was a secret that only women shared.

Helen grabbed Jill by the shoulder. She stared at her friend for a long moment.

What is this, frickin’ telepathy?

In their knitted tuques and form-fitted pea jackets, wearing the hideous but ubiquitous school skirts, slugging the obligatory backpacks, with everyone in black leggings and soft, cute little boots these days, they would be totally anonymous.

“What, what? Say something.”

But Helen had been wondering what it would be like to be taken by real man for a change.

End of excerpt.

Here is Honey Trap live on All Romance Ebooks.