Passing the Time on a Saturday Afternoon

Today was a boring day with nothing to do. Except fix the cars, finish the ceiling in the basement, paint the shelves in Adam's room, finish up some spreadsheets for work, clean out the front landscape areas, and be all nice and cleaned up in time for "The Importance of Being Earnest" at Cornerstone at 7:30 p.m.

No problem.

First order of business is fixing Deb's Camry, because it's been my "backup" car since she went off to college. And since my "primary" car needs some brake / exhaust / tune-up work, I need to make sure my backup car is working before I tear apart my primary car. Especially since the backup car only needs a new radiator, which is a relatively simple job.

Should only take a couple hours.

So ... step 1: remove those pesky cooling fans from behind the radiator so I can actually get to the radiator. Then, find the nice little drain plug at the bottom of the radiator. Turn it til it starts leaking fluid all over the garage floor.  No, that's not right! First, create a kind of funnel underneath the drain plug to direct the flow so that the fluid doesn't pour all over the metal framework. Put the funnel thing underneath the drain plug, then

With the drain funnel in place, the fluid flows cleanly away from the frame...

put a pan or something underneath the car to catch all that lovely fluid.

Then disconnect all the hoses, including the transmission fluid cooling lines, so that I can pull out the radiator. I grab some rubber stoppers for both sides of the transmission cooling lines because otherwise transmission fluid will end up all over the framework. Oh, and put some shop towels underneath the transmission lines as they are being disconnected because they will drip a lot faster than it is possible to plug them.

The old, leaky radiator. Gotta pull off some hoses before it gets recycled.

The engine compartment looks kind of lonely without the radiator in it. And those hoses are just dangling, unused, with no purpose. They look very sad.

(Personally, I get very excited just looking at an engine compartment. Especially when I know what all those parts are supposed to be doing!)

Look at all that stuff! Just makes me giddy to look at it.

Once the radiator is out, put it on an old towel or a piece of cardboard so I can stop and just stare at it as though I know what I'm doing. Which I don't. No, no! I mean, so I can pull all the hoses and things off of it. Because I'll need those to attach to the new radiator. Because I don't have the time or inclination to go out and buy new ones. Because the radiator was quite enough, danke.

Oh, and those clamps...

Close-up of what Michigan weather does to metal.

This is what happens in Michigan to metal in the winter. The winter absolutely destroys metal around here, especially little things like clamps that sit near the bottom of the car and get snow and salt sprayed all over them, all winter long. When the owner is too cheap to get a car wash every week.

Now I go back and take a look at the empty spot where the radiator used to be. And feel the emptiness. Observe the rust. Check my savings account to see if it's possible to forget this whole adventure and just go get a new car.

Then sigh, and get back to work.

The radiator is gone! (The grille-looking thing at the bottom is the air-conditioning evaporator.)

Because Joy is Mine! I went down to http://www.napaonline.com and purchased a brand-new radiator for a bargain-basement price (~$100) and I've opened the box and laid it down on the ground and -- it looks so pretty with the orange and yellow stickers, with the yellow plastic caps over the inlets and outlets. And it's so shiny!

The brand-new radiator, right out of the box.

And in less time than it takes to mention it, I've popped that new radiator in place, plugged all the hoses in place (using the new clamps I happened to have in ,y personal auto-shop inventory), filled that puppy with new coolant, and I am 

All put back together, clamps on, fluid-filled, ready to go.

heading down the road to give it a test!

NOTE: No, nothing else of consequence was accomplished today.