wgjones3
07-14-2004, 02:35 AM
The heat index was 104 today. My girlfriend's car decided that a new thermostat was in order around 9 last night, too late to run to the parts store and grab one when it was nice and cool and dark outside. Last night would have been a perfect night for the job, too, since it was so cool and since a simple thermostat replacement takes about 15 minutes. Oh, but the car was pushing 7 years with it's original 5-year antifreeze and I got the brillient idea to flush the system out and "do it right" since I was going to be working on the car anyway.
9 a.m. The parts store opens. I call, get a quote on the thermostat, and head that way. Some jerk in an H2 must have though I didn't need to get there alive, though, because he pulled out in front of me (on a 55 mph road) so close that I couldn't stop, then swerved into my lane as I attempted to pass to keep from hitting him, nearly running me off the road.
9:15 a.m. I arrive at the parts store, still mad from my encounter with the H2 (actually, mad isn't the word--I was ready to throw down, which the guy must have realized when I locked up my brakes after he crawled on my bumper at 55 mph). I get the thermostat, ask the guy to look up the cooling capacity on my girlfriends car, then purchase the proper Dex-Cool antifreeze. I had no idea antifreeze has gone up as much as it has in the last few years. The last time I changed it in my car, I paid $2 a gallon. Today, it was going for $10.
9:30 a.m. Feeling that I've just been ripped off at parts store A., I head to parts store B. They have some new "wonder-antifreeze" with a 5 year warranty for $7 a gallon. Okay, great, I'll take it. I grab the last three gallons and head home.
10:00 a.m. Ever try draining the radiator on a '97 Z-34? Basically, you have to pry some wierd wiring harness away from the radiator support and then use a pair of channel locks to pry the retention clip open and pull off the lower hose. So I did. My face got covered in pink Dex-Cool antifreeze. It flooded my mouth, got in my eye, got all over my clothes.
11:00 a.m. Thermostat is in, but I'm having the srangest problem. Seems that in flushing the engine and radiator of the old antifreeze, I've somehow gotten too much water into the system and now there's not enough room for the antifreeze. So I decide that since I used a garden hose to flush the block, I can just siphon the water out and pour in the second gallon of antifreeze. I get the hose, suck just enough water up to get a stream going, and--you guessed it--I get a mouth full of pure antifreeze.
12:00 p.m. Still tinkering with the car. I'm still trying to drain enough water out to fill the proper amount of antifreeze in. I get the brillient idea to take off the upper radiator hose. By now, the engine is hot--I took a test drive to get the thermostat open so I could at least rule that out as a reason why the antifreeze wasn't going in. The guage showed around 180 water temperature. I feel the top hose, it feels like it's full of air. So I take it off, only to have it puke pure antifreeze onto the hot engine. Ever been blasted by a hot chemical steam? I have.
12:30 p.m. The car wins. I give up. Since I've only got about 33% mix of antifreeze to water, I offer to do all this again in the winter just so I can button the car up and get on with my life. I call for a second opinion, just to make sure the 66% water mix won't boil inside the engine and create hot spots--and ultimately premature failure. Here's what I find out. The cooling system on that car is so much smaller than normal, I've actually got about a 90% mix of antifreeze and 10% mix of water. An hour and a half of scorching in the 104 degree heat over a car that's been running at 180 degrees to find out nothing's wrong.
4:30 p.m. I have a migraine from the steam bath I got at noon.
6:30 p.m. I go out to dinner with the girlfriend.
8:30 p.m. We leave the resturaunt, head toward my place, and drive smack dab into a funnel cloud. Within 1/8 of a mile from the car is a wall of dust and a swirling mass of debris. I scream for her to pull over, we switch seats, I get behind the wheel of the car, turn it around, and plant the nose toward blue skies. The only problem--the road I'm on makes a 180 and we're heading head-first into the storm again. I see blue skies to the south and tell her we're heading south, she reminds me that the gas hand is nearly touching E. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH As a newspaper goes flying by the windshield and the trees lining the road start whipping back and forth like fans at a ball game doing the wave, I cut south again and tell her to call a friend of mine who lives on the west end of town. She calls, he's home, we head that way, only to get stuck behind some nimrod who is parked in the street watching the storm!
I don't even remember (or think it's appropriate to recall) what made the guy decide to move, but it didn't take him long to move, and I drove like I was running a race. The whole time, winds whipped up debris all around us. To get to my friend's house, we had to drive back into the storm. I got turned around and took the wrong street. When we finally got on the right street, it looked like a tree-trimming service had decided to dump its waste there. We get in, get into their basement, and watch as the clouds directly over the house start swirling--and keep swirling. Lucky for us, however, the meteorologist on the TV in their basement kept showing the radar image that showed NO CLOUD ACTIVITIY over our town. Lightening flashing, winds whirling, a scene that looked like it was out of a Hollywood blockbuster--and in 20 minutes, the storm was over. No damage anywhere that we could see. No hail. No nothing but a few frayed nerves.
The whole time, I kept thinking that God would protect us, and He did.
Now, I'm thinking about giving up this writing gig and taking a job as a storm chaser :eek:
9 a.m. The parts store opens. I call, get a quote on the thermostat, and head that way. Some jerk in an H2 must have though I didn't need to get there alive, though, because he pulled out in front of me (on a 55 mph road) so close that I couldn't stop, then swerved into my lane as I attempted to pass to keep from hitting him, nearly running me off the road.
9:15 a.m. I arrive at the parts store, still mad from my encounter with the H2 (actually, mad isn't the word--I was ready to throw down, which the guy must have realized when I locked up my brakes after he crawled on my bumper at 55 mph). I get the thermostat, ask the guy to look up the cooling capacity on my girlfriends car, then purchase the proper Dex-Cool antifreeze. I had no idea antifreeze has gone up as much as it has in the last few years. The last time I changed it in my car, I paid $2 a gallon. Today, it was going for $10.
9:30 a.m. Feeling that I've just been ripped off at parts store A., I head to parts store B. They have some new "wonder-antifreeze" with a 5 year warranty for $7 a gallon. Okay, great, I'll take it. I grab the last three gallons and head home.
10:00 a.m. Ever try draining the radiator on a '97 Z-34? Basically, you have to pry some wierd wiring harness away from the radiator support and then use a pair of channel locks to pry the retention clip open and pull off the lower hose. So I did. My face got covered in pink Dex-Cool antifreeze. It flooded my mouth, got in my eye, got all over my clothes.
11:00 a.m. Thermostat is in, but I'm having the srangest problem. Seems that in flushing the engine and radiator of the old antifreeze, I've somehow gotten too much water into the system and now there's not enough room for the antifreeze. So I decide that since I used a garden hose to flush the block, I can just siphon the water out and pour in the second gallon of antifreeze. I get the hose, suck just enough water up to get a stream going, and--you guessed it--I get a mouth full of pure antifreeze.
12:00 p.m. Still tinkering with the car. I'm still trying to drain enough water out to fill the proper amount of antifreeze in. I get the brillient idea to take off the upper radiator hose. By now, the engine is hot--I took a test drive to get the thermostat open so I could at least rule that out as a reason why the antifreeze wasn't going in. The guage showed around 180 water temperature. I feel the top hose, it feels like it's full of air. So I take it off, only to have it puke pure antifreeze onto the hot engine. Ever been blasted by a hot chemical steam? I have.
12:30 p.m. The car wins. I give up. Since I've only got about 33% mix of antifreeze to water, I offer to do all this again in the winter just so I can button the car up and get on with my life. I call for a second opinion, just to make sure the 66% water mix won't boil inside the engine and create hot spots--and ultimately premature failure. Here's what I find out. The cooling system on that car is so much smaller than normal, I've actually got about a 90% mix of antifreeze and 10% mix of water. An hour and a half of scorching in the 104 degree heat over a car that's been running at 180 degrees to find out nothing's wrong.
4:30 p.m. I have a migraine from the steam bath I got at noon.
6:30 p.m. I go out to dinner with the girlfriend.
8:30 p.m. We leave the resturaunt, head toward my place, and drive smack dab into a funnel cloud. Within 1/8 of a mile from the car is a wall of dust and a swirling mass of debris. I scream for her to pull over, we switch seats, I get behind the wheel of the car, turn it around, and plant the nose toward blue skies. The only problem--the road I'm on makes a 180 and we're heading head-first into the storm again. I see blue skies to the south and tell her we're heading south, she reminds me that the gas hand is nearly touching E. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH As a newspaper goes flying by the windshield and the trees lining the road start whipping back and forth like fans at a ball game doing the wave, I cut south again and tell her to call a friend of mine who lives on the west end of town. She calls, he's home, we head that way, only to get stuck behind some nimrod who is parked in the street watching the storm!
I don't even remember (or think it's appropriate to recall) what made the guy decide to move, but it didn't take him long to move, and I drove like I was running a race. The whole time, winds whipped up debris all around us. To get to my friend's house, we had to drive back into the storm. I got turned around and took the wrong street. When we finally got on the right street, it looked like a tree-trimming service had decided to dump its waste there. We get in, get into their basement, and watch as the clouds directly over the house start swirling--and keep swirling. Lucky for us, however, the meteorologist on the TV in their basement kept showing the radar image that showed NO CLOUD ACTIVITIY over our town. Lightening flashing, winds whirling, a scene that looked like it was out of a Hollywood blockbuster--and in 20 minutes, the storm was over. No damage anywhere that we could see. No hail. No nothing but a few frayed nerves.
The whole time, I kept thinking that God would protect us, and He did.
Now, I'm thinking about giving up this writing gig and taking a job as a storm chaser :eek: