ah mercury, we love thee so…

every now and then you gotta get back to your roots…

…and right, wrong, or indifferent this site started a spin-off of an astrological site. and it’s former owner and still chief administrator is a professional astrologer, so he tends to blame the stars for lots of shit, like when i had a car issue the other day…

…and i thinks he might have something there.

so i was on the phone with kramer and i went to get on the toll road. i drive a fast car, and i live within a mile of the fastest road in the united states (i.e. SH130, posted speed limit 85mph) so i enjoy these times. it would be MORE enjoyable if the top dropped on my car right now, but diagnosis on that will happen after the nuptials have been bought and paid for. anywho, i was on the phone with him when i heard a loud chirping noise on the right side…i pulled over to see that one of the screws had come off my splash guard, allowing it to push into the tire, which had shredded it and left a sensor on the dangle. i pulled the sensor, tucked the wiring harness up in the bumper, and made it to a convenience store where i fixed the problem the way people from texas know to fix such things, even on a fine german car…

…duct tape.

but this was only the beginning – i saw the wires poking back out, with a harness spliced in i realized, for said sensor (guess this had happened before?) and so i taped it to the inside of the bumper and figured all was well – but all wasn’t. a day or so later i got this obnoxious light on my dash basically informing me that my corner turn signal was out, but then it would self-correct, only to fail again?!? finally saturday night it kicked on and stayed for all of sunday. on monday i got mr. grey in the air, pulled his front right wheel, and took out what was left of the splash / wheel guard only to find the splice and harness gone and two wires there…that didn’t match the colors i’d seen on the harness (i knew it was a splice!) and while it wasn’t the same colors that went to my turn signal it WAS on the same wiring harness…so my theory was that it was in some kind of loop that now, with the splice busted wide open, wasn’t closing the circuit right or some such shit…

…but every bmw mechanic place i called said that was just coincidence and to check the light closer. that’s where this got really weird.

i taped up the wires so i knew they were cool, used some short screws to attach the wheel splash guard to the main one (no more duct tape!) put everything back together and went to town ’cause i was running a bit late at that point. when i got home i went to pull the bulb to check it and the socket came apart into two pieces.

“and the problem is discovered!”, i thought to myself.

to trouble shoot i pulled the bulb and after wrangling part of the socket off it that came with the bulb and shouldn’t, i put that bulb on the driver’s side and it worked.

so i knew the bulb was good.

but then i clicked the socket back together and tried THAT on the driver’s side, and it worked, too.

so i guess when properly assembled the socket was good.

so then i hooked the set-up from the driver’s side to the passenger side, and all was well. no error light. all working.

so how did the internal part of a light socket, with the bulb in to hold it all together, come apart. one theory is the violent pulling of the tire snagging that wiring harness pulled it just right from behind to make it go all cattywhompus. or there’s always the theory kramer, and admittedly myself, tend to believe: