Workarounds Are Great Fun!

About halfway through the bathroom remodel, I went to start the truck one morning. I put the key in the ignition and turned it when I felt something strange. After one or two clicks during the rotation of the key in the ignition, it felt like it just gave out and the key was turning freely. Something had obviously broken, and I couldn't start the truck. I immediately thought, "Uh oh, FATAL failure!" How can I drive it if I can't start the engine?

The key will turn into the "On" position, but the "Start" position is never engaged, thus the truck doesn't start. I put the truck in neutral so I could push it out of the garage because I needed something on the wall the truck was parked really close to when I realized, "Wait! If I pull it out, I won't be able to push it back in the garage." (Our driveway is sloped.) Luckily, I hit the brakes early enough that I could still close the garage door. So, for the the past two months, we were forced to deal with only having the Rav4. It really wasn't that bad on us, it was just annoying to have a 5,000lb hunk of steel in our garage that I couldn't move.

A few weeks ago, my brother and his family came out to stay at our house for a few days and my Mom and Dad came over as well. My brother and my Dad went outside with me as Rob was showing us his truck and I later showed Dad the problem my truck had developed. My Dad in his infinite automotive wisdom figured that if I put the key in the ignition and turn it to "On", open the relay/fuse box under the hood, pull out the relay for the starter motor and jam a piece of wire into the two leads for the starter motor, it'd start the truck. Lo and behold, it did! Thus, starting my truck became a process where I did just that. Every time I started the truck, I had to pop the hood. The few times I went to the gas station and had to start my truck this way, I wondered how many people thought I was driving a stolen truck. I used this method for about 2 weeks when today after church, I decided "Enough of this nonsense."

Actually getting it fixed properly would cost too much, but Dad had mentioned it'd be pretty easy to wire up a push button to start the truck instead of using this method all the time, so today I went to the auto parts store and bought the stuff I needed to do just that. Some 12 gauge wire, connectors, and a marine push button for a boat's outboard motor. After about an hour of sweating, here's what I ended up with.



After I got that installed, I figured, hey if I'm going to Mickey Mouse this thing, I may as well own that I'm Mickey Mousin' it right? So I convinced Cass to cut me out a stencil with her paper cutter machine and spray painted a label for it.