All,

My cat had 5 kittens three weeks ago. Driving to the office Thursday morning, kind of aggrivated, the trip to central Austin from South Austin is proving tricky as I try to find a reliable route; the highways can be terrible if you don't time it right, I wish there was light rail here.

Anyhow as I get nearer to where I'm going I'm forced to brake hard after an overly apprehensive driver got a green arrow on a left started to take it then stopped fearing oncoming traffic which was already stopped. When they braked I had to brake hard to not hit them. Idiot! Dang!, it was kind of shaping up to be "one of those mornings" no matter how I chose to believe it wasn't.

I made the left and was down the block when I heard a rubbing noise like a flat tire, I pulled to the side of the road and got out; the tire wasn't flat but it was pressed hard to the rear of the wheel well.

"Now how the hell did that happen?...How the hell do I fix that?"

It's one of those times where you know you have to do something but don't know what. I stuck my head under the car and saw that the strut had detached itself from the A-arm, looking closer I could see that the strut mount had cracked off and that only two of the four bolts that hold the strut to the A-arm were present...a clear problem, I reasoned that I could move the two front bolts, that still held the broken fragment of the strut mount, could be moved to the rear temporarily; only one problem, unluckily: no tools. I had the car was at the airport and I took the tools out so they wouldn't get stolen...Luckily I have a good friend, I called Kerry and no sooner he was on his way with tools.

I went around the back of my wagon for the jack, and heard a meow, I looked at the floor right behind the driver's seat and there were all five Kittens, my cat Pip had moved the cats to the wagon as I'd left the windows down, they made me feel a little less like a hard luck case, I'd have to bring them home. I imagined me and the wrecker guy with kitten crawling all over us.

Kerry arrived, saw the kittens and said I was "full of surprises". Soon I'd moved the bolts and was on my way, I even had a tub of Goop to clean up with. Later I went to a junk yard and bought a ball joint with the mount and since I had new ball joints in my garage I swapped both sides, it wasn't hard, the kittens were reunited with their mom, my boss was very cool and all was well, thanks Kerry, you are a true Volvo brother.

Josh

'84 245 b-230 intake, sways, kittens, new ball joints, new blacked out chrome bits.