Biohazard

One more tale of frustration and woe.

I work out of town week on/week off. Before leaving for this particular shift I decided to do something about the gunky smell building up in the single bay garage my fish is parked in. Everytime Mrs. Teeth&Tires opens that door, she complains about it so...time to get off my but since, obviously, there's still a stink issue. *and there is - I smell it, too.

About the only thing left that hadn't been really detailed was the rear axle assembly. Plenty of crud still caked up on the top of the differential and along the shafts. The rear brakes had never gotten a serious cleaning either as I figured all those parts were getting replaced anyway so why bother? This plan was okay back when the car was living in the driveway but I had kinda forgotten about it when I tucked her in the garage. Can't ignore it anymore; gotta clean the rear end.

So its the day before I leave for a week and the forecast says nasty weather a-comin'. I had pulled the car out into the driveway to help it air-out but just can't leave it out there while I'm gone. What if it hails? I start scraping and scrubbing at the decades-old grime and it just isn't happening fast enough. Time to pull out the big guns and go get a can of Gunk engine degreaser. Stuff worked great and really helped me but now I have a new problem: the car stinks of engine degreaser - which is exceptionally pungent. I rinsed and rinsed to no avail, stressed over it for an hour, and re-attacked the problem with another jug of ammonia. That had the greatest impact on cutting the stench but ultimately, the car got pushed back into it's nest smelling worse than when it came out. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.