Countdown to fall semester: twelve days
It helps, while reading this post, if you have -- in a separate tab, of course -- the Indiana Jones theme playing in the background. For effect. So that you can do this if you wish, I have provided you with this link. Don't let it play yet. I'll tell you when to start it. It'll be an interactive experience.
This morning when I awoke, it was -- surprisingly -- sunny. This was surprising because when I went to bed last night, it was blowing up a storm so nasty that I put my car in the garage for fear of hail (and because I knew I was so tired that I wouldn't hear it hailing in my sleep).
Because it was sunny and barely 70 degrees when I got up, I happily made my coffee and went through my morning routine. I also switched off the air conditioner, as really it wasn't needed, and checked the weather. It was storming in Wichita, but it was slowly moving off to the east. I figured I'd give it some time to do so, but as it was all moving off, I made the decision then and there that if I was going to go down there and "move" my stuff back into my office, today's weather and cooler temperatures was going to be the best day to do it. So, because of that, I told my former star student (who was going to bring me two end tables for the living room) that I would be down there around 2-3 or so, finished cramming everything I could into three(!) different bags -- my backpack, my laptop bag, and another messenger bag -- got dressed and ready, and went down to the garage.
The Monte Carlo, as you know, has some sort of radiator leak. It's not a bad one, but after it's driven it will drop anywhere between a tablespoon and a cup of fluid on the pavement. I checked the garage floor both before and after I removed the car -- nothing. Dry as a bone. Hm, okay, that's good. Not only did it mean that the car didn't leak when I put it in the garage, it meant that I wouldn't have to sop up antifreeze from the garage floor.
So, with that optimism in mind, I set up my GPS for its first official destination test, plugged it into the cigarette lighter port to power it (because its battery life is abysmal otherwise) and set off for Wichita, bags in tow.
(start playing the music now)
The drive down there was mostly pleasant, actually. The GPS worked beautifully, even though it's not like I didn't know where I was going, and it gave me an accurate speed (which is what I wanted to test, really). My speedometer was working just fine, as it has been 95% of the time I drive the car now, and there wasn't a lot of traffic on the road around 1:30PM or so, so I was really able to "open 'er up," so to speak, and for the majority of the drive down there I was going at or slightly above/below the speed limit of 75. No acceleration or braking problems, no overheating, nothing -- perfectly normal drive. It was, to that point, the fastest I've ever driven the car, and a good road-worthiness test of the machine. With its 18mpg, though, I literally watched the fuel needle slowly move across the dial.
No, the drive was fine -- it's when I actually got to school that I had the problems.
When I parked the car, I had to fit it into a fairly tight spot, as two huge minivans were on either side of me. I got it a little crooked, and had to back out and adjust a few times, but it fit. This is no small task for a car the size of a land boat. When I got out, I was idly unloading my bags when I noticed....hm. A trail. Of fluid. Not much, but enough. Right where I had to back up and adjust a few times.
Shit.
I walked to the front of the car, where I knew the leak was situated, to see green antifreeze literally dripping from the car. It formed a large puddle. Not gushing or anything like that, but easily 3-4 cups of the stuff. Shit. Shitshitshit.
(pause the music.)
Now, keep in mind that the car had not been overheating, at all. And I know that gauge works, mainly because the needle on it does move, just barely, when I've been driving the car a lot, and that it's always well below the "hot" range. The "Low Coolant" light was also off, and had not been on the entire time I'd been in the car. But here I was, standing in front of my car's bumper, watching antifreeze drip out of it.
What did I do? I took my stuff inside to my office. I know that when it does leak, it will eventually stop doing so a few minutes after I shut the car off. And luckily, I had enough foresight to bring the rest of the bottle of antifreeze/coolant with me in the car this morning when I left the house.
I did not, however, have the foresight to remember the bottle of radiator stop-leak from the top of the fridge.
Once I got inside and started to put my stuff away/set it back up in my office, I texted the former girlfriend to tell her that I'd brought my phone charger for her to use (since I couldn't find hers no matter where I looked) and that if she could bring one, I needed her to pick up a bottle of radiator stop-leak on the way to the office.
She called me a few minutes later and I gave her the rundown of the situation, and she told me she'd look at it when she got there.
When she came, she did not bring the stop-leak, but she did help me take a look at it. My coolant reserve tank was lower than it had been before when I'd last topped it off (obviously), but I still had a ton of it.
"Well, it's leaking after you run the car for a while, and it's leaking that much after you drove down here," she said. "...you may possibly have a cracked radiator."
Not good. Worst-case scenario sort of not good.
"It's not overheating, though," I said. "And it doesn't tell me 'low coolant' or anything like that. Wouldn't those things come from a cracked radiator?"
I have never seen, nor heard of, a "cracked radiator" scenario where the car doesn't overheat, drives just fine, and doesn't tell me it has low coolant.
I removed the radiator cap to check inside the actual radiator -- and it was full. Like, full up to the cap's edge. Somehow I doubted it would hold that much fluid with a cracked radiator, let alone be full up to the actual metal cap under the hood, so I was beginning to feel a little more optimistic.
So, we bickered back and forth about it, as we are wont to do, for a few minutes. I gave her my phone charger to use until she got back to Newton (probably Friday) and she left. I had other things to do today, so did she, etc. So, I waited in the parking lot, leaning against my land boat of a leaky car, and smoked a cigarette. I poured the rest of the antifreeze/coolant I brought with me into the reserve tank, for good measure, and put the bottle into the backseat to take back home. There wasn't much else I could do -- I knew the car would get me back to Newton just fine with that much coolant in it, and I knew with the possibility of my friends being able to work on it or look at it in the next several days, and with no spare cash aside from what I needed to spend at Walmart on groceries on the way home, I just had to flip down my proverbial sunglasses and deal with it. Plus, as I had told my former student that I'd wait out there for her to get the end tables she was going to give me, I needed to just hang around outside the car so she'd see me in the (fairly crowded) parking lot.
While I was doing that waiting, by sheer luck one of my other star students that I'm in contact with a lot just happened to be walking by after buying his class books at the bookstore. Said student is a former marine, and a former marine mechanic. Note that last part in particular. He was in the same class as the student I was waiting on and knows her, so we waited together and BSed. I told him about the car, and he got down underneath it to look at it.
"Well, I can see the problem," he said. "Where's your radiator overflow?"
"The tank?" I asked. "The tank's up there, obviously, where all the green shit is."
"No, I mean the overflow. The overflow."
"Fuck if I know," I said. "I don't know shit about cars."
This, at least, is partially true. I know a lot about cars -- specs, top speeds, torque, horsepower -- you name it, including the minutiae. But do I know anything about working on cars? Shit no. I can pull apart a computer and put it back together, I can diagnose a software or hardware problem in mere minutes, and I can give out motherboard specs and tell you how to properly install a heat sink and fan -- but working on cars is an entirely different animal to me, and it eludes me.
"Okay," he said. "The overflow valve is what dumps extra antifreeze/coolant if there's too much in the radiator. It hits that valve and flows, literally, out of the car. You appear to have two of them, one on each side. It looks like it's coming from that, not from a hose or a 'crack in the radiator' or anything like that. That's not to say, mind you, that you don't possibly have a leaky hose or a hole in the radiator somewhere, but I can't see any further up there than that. I'd have to get the car on a lift, or something."
And then it hit me.
When I first got the car, it always had the "Low Coolant" light on in the dashboard panel. Until I figured out that this was probably a sensor going in and out (as they tend to do on older GM models such as this one, I've found in my research), I had filled the reserve tank with new coolant until the light kicked off. That's why I had what was left of a bottle of it to take with me today.
It's also probably why, when the previous owners gave it a radiator flush and new coolant right before I bought it, nothing (such as a crack or hose leak) popped up out of the ordinary...because there was nothing out of the ordinary. My drive down to Wichita today was the longest duration I've ever driven the car, and (as I said) up to that point, the highest speed I'd ever driven it. I'd never had it above 50mph on the highways here in and around Newton, not even up on the huge straight stretch near Alco. Because I'd never driven it that long and that hard before, it worked up the coolant in there enough to have it hit the overflow valve when the engine had been running hard enough...hence why it decided to, well, overflow its way out when I parked the car.
And, stupid me, before that revelation hit me, I'd poured the rest of the coolant I had in the bottle with me into the damned reservoir again. Thankfully, it wasn't a lot -- maybe half a liter, if that.
I should also note that my dad thought this overflow valve thing could have been the problem as well, as early as last week, but again, I thought he meant the reservoir tank, not a specified overflow valve for this sort of thing. D'oh. At some times, I can be a damned idiot, and it is always clear that I have a lot more to learn about anything and everything.
Anyway, we hung out for a while, my other former student arrived and I got the end tables from her (two sizes; smaller one just baaaarely fit in the back seat, and the larger one baaaarely fit in my trunk). In return/thanks, I gave her a large manila envelope stuffed with about 20 comics and two trade paperbacks, and she loved them. After we all went our separate ways because it looked like another storm might have been blowing in, I went back up to my office one last time to shut down my laptop (which had been downloading upgrades after being turned off all summer), gave the place a final sweep of the eyes to see if there was anything else I needed to do, and then left.
And here's where the fun begins.
(restart the music)
As I was pretty sure at this point that it was the overflow valve, demonstrated by the fact that it had, once more, stopped leaking very shortly after I'd turned it off, I wasn't too worried about the drive back home. And I had no reason to be, really -- the Monte Carlo performed like a boss all the way back to Newton, and at my fastest (while passing big trucks and the like) I had it cranked up to 85mph.
Note: the speed limit is 75, so when you're passing someone, 85 is about at about the same ratio you'd need to overtake someone at any other speed.
I did learn, however, that the car does not necessarily like to be driven at 85mph, and shimmies and shakes a little while doing so. It's an old car, though. And I'm pretty sure that's because of the misfires in the cylinders. But, it goes, and has the power it needs to have when I need to use it.
As I mentioned before, I needed to go to Walmart on my way home -- to get another bottle of antifreeze (just in case, of course), if nothing else. I did, however, need some minor groceries, so I ended up getting some. The car didn't leak when I turned it off, and when I was done shopping, it had only leaked a little bit (a small circle about the circumference of a mayonnaise jar). Keep in mind, this was after the same length of a drive as I'd done earlier this afternoon, with the outside temperature warmer than before, and the drive was for the most part at a faster overall speed, meaning the engine was working harder.
It drove home just fine as well, and even after I'd taken about ten minutes to unload the groceries and the end tables, it hadn't yet leaked another drop. Looks like whatever excess coolant it had to make it leak a lot dumped itself out of the system in today's trip. I'll obviously be keeping an eye on it over the course of the next week or two, especially if it's going to get worked on, but I think I worked myself up over nothing. Well, really, I worked myself up over my own stupidity and inexperience with owning a vehicle. We'll see what happens, of course.
(you can stop playing the music now, if you haven't already.)
As for the end tables, they're almost exactly what I was looking for, and I can't thank my very generous former student, a good friend, enough for them. They'll work well in the bachelor pad I'll create after the former girlfriend moves out, once I polish them down with some Pledge and get the cobwebs off them.
My other former student, the marine mechanic, has also graciously offered to help me get the futon from Walmart and bring it home, as he (surprise!) drives a truck that it will easily fit into. This, of course, is awesome; I told him I'd let him know, as it's not like I can get it and assemble it until a) the former girlfriend moves out and takes hers with her, and b) until I get enough money scraped together to purchase it, barring any gifts from friends or giveaways from the Freecycle community here.
So yeah, that was the events of the day. Me being a dumbass. No news to report there...
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