These Bronx guys

I grew up in a rural Pennsylvania automotive culture where everybody drove, so an engine swap was no big deal.  You always knew someone in the middle of some big home repair, but it was always being done at leisure in the barn in Summer or in Winter, in a heated, dry garage. Every tool you owned was within reach. Electricity, good lighting, soap and running water was assumed. The well-off guys even had those rolley wooden platforms to lay on underneath the greasy frame.

Not in the Bronx.

We’ve developed a whole subculture here of street corner mechanics for whom no job is too large as long as alternate-side parking cooperates and the rain, of course, holds out. It’s amazing to me.

It’s like a high pressure TV game show: the light is failing, legal parking is like sand through an hourglass and the only tools you have to work with are the ones you carried here yourself. 

Forget light. I ran into this guy Saturday night when he was working right here at Lincoln and 135th at sunset, buttressed by more battery powered torches and flashlights than I’ve seen outside a hardware store.

And get this. With only a helper and two repurposed tire jacks to pump the heavy steel assemblage into place, he was swapping out the entire rear differential along with the axles and wheels. HOLY freakin’ smokes. That involves the rear brakes and brakelines, too. 

For those who cannot appreciate this it’s not quite open heart surgery. That would be a full engine swap involving a rolling crane and a chain lift to heft the 300 pound engine block out from under the hood. 

But this was no trifle either, it’s the automotive equivalent of a full-bore ball and socket hipjoint replacement on a dirty cot in the backyard with a time constraint and that ever-failing light. And what happens when he needs a small part he forgot? He can’t exactly leave it and wander over to the local auto supply. He has to think through every aspect of this out ahead and then get it right the first time.

I just walked by again last night and he’s back together again, albeit held together with a fuschia bungee cord. lol

I’m so impressed. These Bronx guys have cojones the size of a Manhattan auto repair bill.

Then again, he’s registered in Pennsylvania.