Spent a good 4 hours this morning and afternoon working on the truck. About 3 months ago the left rear window mechanism failed inside the door frame and the window would no longer go up or down. It had failed in the down position of course, but I did manage to figure out how to get the window back up in the closed position and then duct tape it in place. I left it like that until now thinking that I would really like to take a crack at fixing this one myself, since the other two failures had cost me nearly $500 each for parts and labor. I had found a couple You Tube video's that showed how it was done so I figured why not give a try. I mean really, how hard can it be? So I bought the part a couple weeks ago while in Nebraska and have only been waiting for someplace indoors where I could do the work.

    George and Marge let me use their garage for the operation after moving their two vehicles out of it this morning. By following the video I soon had the door panel off and the old mechanism out. About the only problem I had was the one extra screw holding the door panel on that they failed to mention. But that may of been because in the video they were working on a front door panel not the rear. Anyway; got it all taken apart and then started putting it all back together again. It was pretty straight forward until I got to hooking up the wiring fittings to make the window go up and down. I plugged everything in just like it had come apart, but the switch was running everything backwards. What had once been up was now down and vice-versa. I tried just turning one of the two  clip ends over and plugging it in that way, but there was really only one way they would fit together because of their shape. I ran the video a little bit longer to see if I had missed anything and they there explained that between the 2004 and 2006 model years there had been a change in the wiring harness and that there was now a separate electrical wiring 'pigtail' piece that you could order that would make the switch run in the right direction. By this time though I had everything installed and the door panel nearly put back on and figured... screw it, I'm smart enough to figure out which way to push a rocker switch in order to get the window to go up or down in the right direction. So I was basically done in less than an hour and a half with a savings of somewhere around $350 dollars. Yeah!

   Of course it then took me more than an hour of hard rubbing to get all the duct tape sticky stuff off of the window and the door frame where I had put it on in order to hold up the glass. With several months out in the hot sun it pretty much baked that duct tape onto the window and all of the trim. It eventually all came off though, so it was pretty much a success.       Oh..... did I also say that I had to plug the battery charger in after running the battery down enough that I couldn't get the truck started up. Guess that dome light and all of the window movement up and down really eats into the battery charge.

   Took another shower after moving vehicles back to where they belong. Was planning to meet up with my younger sister and her partner this evening for dinner and didn't think the smell of Goo Off was all that attractive to the nose. A very nice dinner, Mexican food yet again, down at El Tejado. We had a great time talking about my adventures as well as some of theirs. It wasn't enough time though so we are going to get together again early next week and talk some more.

    Headed up to the regular Boulder contra dance after dinner. Made pretty good time considering I didn't leave Denver until nearly 7:30. So I really only missed the first dance tonight. Had a good caller and really good music with a pretty nice turnout considering it is summer and there are so many other distractions to be doing. The son, and his wife, of one of my first cousins came up to experience contra dancing for their first time. They did really, really well and seemed to be having a lot of fun through out the night. They must of enjoyed it at least a little bit because they stayed from the lesson at 7:15, all the way to the ending waltz at 11:00. Most newbies end up leaving the dance, usually because they are out of shape, or because the dances generally get more complicated at the end of the first half. So they did well to make it all the way through. I do think they were a bit surprised at how physical it is though. There was some definite sweating and hard breathing going on at times. I'm hoping that they will come back a time or two more because then they'll be hooked on it for good. They did say that they were going to be talking to their parents about maybe giving it a try after they have gotten a bit more use to it. .

    Pretty tired now, and my feet hurt. It is times like this when a hot tub would really feel good. Tonight though.... I'm just going to go to bed instead.