Category Archives: Cars

If You Want Something Done Right, Do it Twice

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Well I’ve been working with the aftermath of the Honda overheating for a few days now.  I think a few things occured.  There is a hose that goes to the heater core that had been saturated with engine oil, and it sprung a leak.  I was able to just cut the end of the hose off and reattach it, leak fixed.  Thanks Dad for showing me that trick when the Corvette hose sprung a leak years back. 

Well I was driving in town the other day and when I got to my desitination I could hear a hissing under the hood.  I popped the hood and the top of the radiator was cracked.  I had put in some of that stop leak stuff they sell and it did plug the crack in the radiator, so it does work…At least temporarily. 


(click to enlarge) Cracked Radiator.

When I got home I remembered that I had an older radiator for the Civic as a backup.  I got it from a friend I work with who had it laying around.  So I swapped that one in.  It is pretty easy to do in this car.  I took it out today and drove around doing some errands.  I popped the hood and checked out the radiator to see how it was holding up.  This one, was cracked in the same exact spot.  Wonderful..lol.  The stop leak worked again however and plugged the crack, I drove it home with normal temperatures.

Well….I don’t trust the glue holding things together so I checked and apparently this crack is common on these Civics.  The suggestions in forums was to get an aftermarket radiator from one of the local auto stores.  I was able to find one for $80.  I picked it up and installed it.


Fancy New Radiator

So far this one has been holding up, but I am still checking the car after every trip for leaks.  It got up to 100 degrees here today.  The recent heat has put a lot of components under more pressure and stress than usual.  I actually think my radiator has been cracked for at least a year now, but during the cold temperatures it isn’t an issue. 

There is a lesson in life that I’ve had to learn over and over and that is that sometimes, if you want something done right, you have to do it more than once.   I suppose this is along the lines of ‘practice makes perfect’.   Cassie had come up with this saying when she was doing laundry.  She managed to come up with a lot of wrinkly clothes.  I was giving her a hard time about it and she responded with something to the effect of, “Well….If you want something done right, you have to do it twice”.  It has stuck as one of our sayings ever since.


Two Cracked and One New

The car has 280,468 miles on it now and I am not exactly sure how much longer it will hold out.  I’ve been looking around for a replacement, but if this one can hold out to 300,000 I think that should be enough and I won’t need to buy another car until Rincon!  Even if I do have to hold this one together with glue..lol.

 

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Hiking the Big Thompson Canyon (Gone Wrong)

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We are still trying to train for our climb up a 14,000 foot mountain that is coming up next Sunday (yikes!), so we’ve been seeking out spots to practice. We’ve done the Devil’s Backbone in Loveland about 3 or 4 times, and Britton has taken his mountain bike up there too. It is by far the closest hiking we have around here because it is only 25 miles or so away from home. But I was getting a little tired of going to the same place and suggested we climb stairs or something around town. Britton wasn’t up for that and said that we should instead go up the mountains a little further to hike. We knew the Poudre Canyon was out of the question due to the huge fire that is still raging there, so we decided to go up the Big Thompson Canyon instead.


Mountain Road

Well…we got about half-way to Estes Park when Britton noticed that the heat gauge was at its maximum. We started to smell some funky antifreeze or oil and thought we’d better pull over right away. We stopped at a little overpriced tourist shop and popped the hood. The coolant was smoking hot! It was boiling and bubbling in the overflow container!


Britton popping the hood (and me documenting it of course)

At least we were in a really pretty area and we had a place to use the restroom and grab a bite if we needed. But we didn’t really need anything except some time for it to cool down. So we milled around the shop and looked at all the expensive Indian and Cowboy knick-knacks in the shop, thumbed through books about the Old West and played around with some of the natives (ha!).


With some really realistic wooden Indian dolls

Even after all the dilly-dallying, the car was still hot, so I suggested we try to get at least some semblance of a hike in. But there was no trailhead anywhere near there. But I did see a bridge and a small trail behind the shop. I convinced BK to jump the fence and we were off exploring. It was pretty fun climbing up some really steep terrain. We even had to use our hands to keep from falling a couple of times. We hiked around a bit and then linked up with a larger trail and followed it back to the main road where there was a cabin site. Someone saw us taking pictures and offered to take ours on the bridge over the Big Thompson.


Overlooking the Big Thompson River

By the time we got back to the car, it had cooled down considerably and we were able to take a look in the coolant hole. The radiator cap had gotten so hot that it had broken apart! It was just a mess of gaskets and springs! Britton filled it as much as he could with water and a little coolant that we had in the car and we coasted back into Loveland with our fingers crossed where we found a little parts store and a new radiator cap. We think the stress of driving up a steep mountain in 95+ degree weather really wore on the poor old Honda with 280,000 miles.

We managed to get back into Greeley and visit with Britton’s family for Father’s Day. When we got there though, the car was mad and hissing out all sorts of hot steam. Britton thinks he may have fixed the problem, but we’re still not trusting it too much yet. Thankfully, he is off of work for a week and doesn’t need to drive it too much. All in all it was definitely an adventure and much more interesting than climbing some stairs in an air conditioned building 🙂

Here’s a short video of the drive up the canyon before the overheating.

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Fixing Cars and Saving Money

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When you do it yourself, you can definitely save money. But before I take on any project, I try to determine whether it is 1) something I know how to do/fix and 2) whether I really want to do it.

In this case it was  a broken heater core in Cassie’s car (her 1989 Oldsmobile). I knew how to fix it because the exact same thing had happened to my Buick years ago. She was driving around and noticed a huge leak coming from under the car. It was green, so she knew it was an antifreeze leak but not much more than that. At first I thought it was just an overflow issue, but when I saw that it was pretty much completely depleted of coolant I knew it was the heater core.

A heater core is important because it takes hot coolant from the engine and circulates it in the passenger cabin, so your heater has hot air. In the summer this isn’t quite as big of an issue but in Colorado’s extreme winters, life without a heater core would not be pleasant -at all. Also having this leak was draining the engine coolant which could have totally destroyed the engine. So, it was important to get it fixed.


Taking the dash out

I knew how to do it, but it still sucked because I had to completely take the underside of the dash out. With my Buick I had to take the dash out as well, but it’s always a little complicated when you don’t do something very often. Why car makers require you to completely remove the dash in order to get at this core is beyond me. Seems like a better engineering solution could be found. In fact in my 75 Corvette, you can change it from the engine side of the firewall. Much easier.


In the process

At least I had most of the tools necessary and the parts store still carries the part for a 23 year old car in a discontinued brand (Olds).


My tools

After I removed the bottom dash and console, I had to get under the car to install the new heater core. It turned out the old heater core had plastic tubes that had broken and that’s what had spilled the antifreeze. The new heater core I bought had metal tubes that are much less likely to break and spill.


Old core with plastic parts versus the new metal version

The total cost of parts was $40 to fix it. It took me about 4-5 hours to scout for parts, take apart the whole dash, install the new heater core and put all back together.  I called a shop just to see what I had saved and they quoted me at $500. So that made me feel pretty good. My time was worth about $100 an hour! It also made me realize how outrageously high the mechanics charge.

I don’t always try and fix things myself, but sometimes it makes you feel good to know I can and the money in my pocket can pay for a ticket to Puerto Rico and back.


Under the car

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