Stuck on No-Go

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Last Monday and Tuesday I took time off to finally fix my much-neglected car.  The old 1995 Toyota Corolla has been in need of attention, and so with a little bit of money, and strategic auto-shop shopping, we did what it would take to make some repairs.

The repairs were:

- Stop oil pan leak.
- Replace two old tires, one of which had the steel showing and wobbled and leaped around at freeway speeds.
- Flush and repair radiator.
- Replace old, rusty water and coolant with new liquids.
- Replace the thermostat, which amazingly enabled my "check engine" light to extinguish.
- Repair small leak on the bottom of the fuel tank.

My place of employment was not happy, but missing work was necessary.

On Wednesday (yesterday) I returned to work with a car that purred like a kitten as I made the three-quarter hour drive to "The Yard."

On the way home, it turned out, Murphy (Murphy's Law seems to be following me around, this week) was not finished with me.  The temperature gauge shot up, and steam rose out of the radiator until there was no fluids remaining in it.

After five hours of checking hoses, fans and the radiator itself, with the help of friends and family, it was finally realized that it was my water pump.  I was experiencing a coincidental nightmare.  The water pump could have gone out at any other time, but decided to wait until right after I poured a butt-load of money into the car, and missed work to do it.

Then, the battery went dead.

We bought a new battery, and a couple bottles of fluid, with the help of my parents after they arrived on the side of the freeway to assist me.

A law enforcement officer never paid me a visit to offer assistance, interestingly.

I limped home, stopping every ten minutes of driving to allow the car to cool for over a half hour, then starting it and filling the radiator with 50/50 premix to go another ten minutes.  I arrived after three stop-and-wait-and-pours, and I got home closer to midnight than I preferred.

Once in the shop, it turns out my timing belt is stretched out, too - which explains some of the funny actions of the car.

So, another work day missed, more money poured into the car that has become of black hole of late. . . but after this the car should be good for at least. . .

Never mind, I don't want to make predictions.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary