Princesskasren’s Neighborhood

Lady M Pic Share
Originally uploaded by ♥Lady M♥.

This was a payday week and so of course, the truck picked Thursday to develope a bad leak in the radiator.  It was leaking a little last year and I put in some of that radiator no-leak stuff.  I tried it again on Thursday afternoon and I watched as I poured it in the top and it ran out the bottom.  I guess that was that.  I decided to go ahead and replace it which was pretty much standard procedure until I got to the odd (from the future!) transmission cooling line connectors.  I'm used to the old kind that you just use a wrench on.  These are some kind of new fangled quick-connects.  I looked on the internet and couldn't find ANYTHING that remotely looked like it.  When I called the first auto parts store, they'd never heard of such a thing.  The second place had heard of it and thought they had a tool to unlink the connector.  I took Friday off from working so we could just focus on fun, but today I got back to it.  I took pictures of the connector to take with me to show to the guy at the parts store:

I'd tried using a pair of needle nose pliers to sort of squeeze the connector thinking that was it.  Then I tried to OPEN the tabs by pushing on them with the needle nose pliers, but that still didn't work.  The guy looked at the picture and the only time he'd seen this was on brake lines but he did say that I was right by squeezing.  You squeeze, then you have to pull/pry at the same time.  He didn't have the tool because they only have one and he thinks they already sold it.  Sounds expensive anyway.  What he did show me was a whole row of replacement connectors so if I break it, he can replace it.  I went back and used the squeeze/pry technique and it worked, but on the second line it did bend the plastic a little so I went on and picked up the replacements he had.  They were only like two bucks.  That being done, I was able to just lift out the old radiator and drop in the new one and then hook everything back up.  I should have changed the hoses too while I was at it, but I'm already spending like $170 that I really didn't expect to spend this payday, and certainly not on the truck.

Here's the old one:
Uhh... hint - about radiators - you shouldn't be able to see THROUGH them:

The replacement looked more realistic:

(as long as he does that with the engine off, we're okay).  So you'll notice the fan hood is missing.  That was one of the first things to take loose and of course, it doesn't come out in any way, shape, or form.  You can just move it all around, but not take it out.  At first, I worked around it but scratched my arm while trying to hold it AND work, and then I remembered that on one of my old cars, I physically CUT it out and then when I was done, I just patched it back together.  Here is the new expanded view, courtesy of my reciprocating saw:


I'm going to give it a few days and then I'll use nylon ties to put it back together (like a weave) and then I'll just reattach it.  Worked great before and should work great now too.

After that, we worked on the raised bed to add the critter protection to the bottom:

Tomorrow we'll drop it in place and since the truck is working again, we'll go get the dirt to fill it up.

Jamie made a FANTASTIC dinner while we were working along with dessert which was awesome.  All in all, a really productive day.

Have you been keeping up with this? Maybe or maybe not. I've only kept up with it a little. I've heard jokes on podcasts about "We'll finally be able to divide by zero without an error!" While MAYBE nothing bad will happen, the amount of "scary" press out there is impressive. This is just the kind of thing that Stephen King and other science fiction writers write about where the ending is never good. I guess I'll start keeping up with it, if nothing else but to either be relieved or to jump about the "They told you so" bandwagon. I do like, however, how the SCIENCE mags all say "It will be great" and "There is nothing to fear", but articles from The Christian Science Monitor warn that you may as well get your business in order for your final days here on the earth as we know it.

If you want to know more about it, check out THIS site.

Just a bunch of crazy people?  A few people don't think so and even though their case was thrown out, it still makes you wonder.  (Government Seeks Dismissal of End-of-World Suit Against Collider)