Dominance versus assertiveness..

Many things have been happening in my life over the last few days. Primarily, I adopted a dog, a rescue Jack Russel Terrier. We’ve been calling him “buddy” and teaching him tricks and learning about his breed.  One of the things I’m learning about this breed, is the difference between the dog traits: dominance and assertiveness. Dominance has to do with pecking order and social hierarchy. Being dominant to your dog lets it rest easy, knowing the pack is being “led” and that things are in order and taken care of. If your dog becomes dominant, you come to know them as “Jack Russel Terrorists” and they take control of the house and can show nervous and destructive behavior. Assertiveness is easily misled to be dominance, however assertiveness is different. Assertiveness is the display of tenacity, Pit Bull Terriers have a legendary assertiveness trait. It’s the trait that will drive a dog to complete a task regardless of other influences. It’s what the terriers have been bred to do, to chase the rabbit down the hole and keep on digging.

We’ll for the last few days I’ve been trying to coax the front left and right rear brake drums from the spiders suspension. After about two days of trying every hair brained thing I can think of… including some nasty use of prying tools (destructive behavior). I was starting to question if I was in charge of this re-build or if it was really the spider who would set the pace of things.. I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t just a bit of me  puffing my chest, setting my sights on such a lofty goal. Precious few days to turn trash to treasure, and I couldn’t even get the F*#king brakes apart.

Finally I stopped in on Jaan and borrowed some pulling tools, we commiserated about tenacious parts I and got some much needed encouragement to get back into the ring fighting.

The slide hammer I got, wouldn’t fit the alfa drum so I reached for the puller. I tightened it frighteningly tight (you could see the tension in the system) Sprayed everything with its 100th coat of PB Blaster penetrating oil, Triple checked the adjusters were all the way out, and I pulled out the Acetylene torch and got the area around the studs as hot as I could (the  steel sheet-metal ring around the stud pattern started to puddle!) in  effort of loosening the aluminum drums hold on the steel studs and letting the puller do its work… Nothing.. I whacked it with the rubber mallet while it was hot, hoping to shock the system, move the penetrating oil around, allow the tension in the puller to pry things loose… NOTHING.  This B*#ch would not be broken so easily.

I moved to the rear drum and tried the same techniques, Dan was watching me and we were nervously chuckling at the abuse this thing was taking, and just how much fight it was putting up!

Finally, with the puller in good tension, and the system HOT, I gave it the miracle whack with the rubber mallet and POW! the whole assembly sprung free with all components in seemingly good looking shape. A victory to be sure! But that front drum was still to be dealt with, I gave it the full runaround again with the torch, and the puller and the mallet, hoping to duplicate my success. Nah, wouldn’t budge. I finally had to leave for the night, my daughter still hadn’t any dinner and I had engineering work that was left to be done. As painful and morally defeating as it was to leave with the drum still attached, I couldn’t let this struggle throw the rest of my life out of order. Before I left, I put the puller on,  and torqued the system good. I then gave everything a serious dousing with penetrating oil hoping that the studs would “marinate” under tension all night long and decide to loosen their death grip on the drum.

The next day was busy, I had only around 45 minutes to spare at the shop and I wanted to return Jaans tools. I quickly checked the drum with the mallet and the puller and it was still not going to budge.  The studs had a pit-bull grip on the drum and it appeared that no amount of sweet talking or cursing would ease it free. I pulled out the torch kit and applied copious amounts of heat to the aluminum drum,  just as I turned off the torch to reach for the mallet.. POP!  Just like that it was over.

17 days down the rabbit hole and 27 left to go..

3 Responses