Broken Buttons

The footwell of the passenger side of a 2006 Ford Ranger. Visible is the fuel interrupt reset button and the fuse panel. The interior plastic panels have been removed. On the fuel interrupt reset is a big red button.

Today I managed to break one of the company trucks by bracing my foot wrong as we went through an intersection. Turns out a certain vintage of Ford Rangers has a device in the passenger footwell that detects if you been in an accident by, essentially, having a ball bearing pop out of a socket inside the device if it’s jostled too hard. This kills the fuel flow to the engine until you reset it. This would be fine, except you a) can kick it on accident, and b) ours promptly broke. Normally, you can press a button down to pop the bearing back into place, it resets, you restart the car and you’re on your way.

That wasn’t how it happened today.

Instead, we had to try to keep it pressed down. So I got to be folded over in the passenger seat trying to keep this button pressed down hard enough to trick the sensor while my coworker drove. And any jostle or bump that got my finger to move in the slightest meant the car seized up and stalled. We basically had the engine die on us every couple hundred feet during the entire drive from Fremont to Wallingford, where the shop is.

As you can imagine, it was super fun and a barrel of laughs for all. /sarcasm

It also provided me with a unique opportunity later in the day. I was sent off to pick up a replacement part, and when I got back to the shop I was tasked with installing it. This took a while, and was the source of some anxiety, as i don’t do a lot of work on cars. But I got it figured out, even the part where I had to drill holes in the sheet metal using a flimsy, kind of vague, paper template (which was really fun once I figured out where they needed to go). I’m not sure if I secured the wiring as much as I’d have liked to, but that’s just to prevent rattling anyway. So now the truck starts again, and the device is behind an interior panel, so no one can accidentally kick it in the future. Hooray!

Not every engine was so easy to get running again today, though.

Right now I’m at Tuesday night writing group, a tradition I greatly enjoy. However, pretty much as soon as I got here tiredness decided to donkey kick me in the face. I’ve spent the last hour and a half unsure of what to work on. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get my brain to latch on to an idea and start rolling. It’s like when we were cranking the truck’s ignition earlier today while the fuel interrupt reset was broken. I can feel my brain cranking and chugging, but the spark isn’t getting the fuel it needs to start everything moving. I can’t get into motion, and so here I sit, cranking a key and not sure what’s wrong.

I realize we all have off days. But usually I can think of something to do, and get passionate enough about it to do it. Maybe this blog post is it for me. Or maybe this blog post is me holding down the button as I chug in fits and starts towards the finish line. I’ll have done something tonight, even it if was graceless and awkward. And maybe tomorrow the reset button will work. Or, if I’m really lucky, I’ll know what part I need to swap out to get my creative flow to run smoothly every time in the future.

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