Monday October 18, 2004
(Yeah, yeah, what else is new - right?) Actually, I had been doing pretty well until the pain threshold was passed on Friday and then I was doing rather foggily even without pain meds, so I cut back on the number of sedatives I am ingesting and then - I was awake due to pain at 4 am. So I gave in and took Tylenol 3 and was very surprised at how quickly it worked. Like almost immediate pain relief. Must remember to remember that pain is not a good thing if it can be addressed. (I have long and short term plans for doing just that.)
Last week I took the trusty Jeep in for testing and was aghast at the terrible results compared to the first time it was tested in Ontario in 2002. For instance, CO went from 0.02 to 2.19. Really! 100 times worse. And HC (HydroCarbons) from 2 to 91. The CO reading caused the FAILURE, but the HC was pretty close.
Because my Jeep is possessed (See continued below), during the emission testing the coolant started leaking. They informed me that it was doing this and I said that it does that sometimes. They continued the test and it wasn't until they were backing it out of the bay that I saw (on the remote monitor) steam coming out of the engine compartment! Overheating is a bit different from leaking don't you think?
And it failed the test.
Most times this summer the coolant bubbled out and the engine wasn't overly warm. I started to regard this as a non-urgent problem. A weekend or two ago I drove to Perth and back and no overheating or overspilling was to be seen.
After a bit of pondering and some babying of the beast I went directly to Japan Auto Services to consult with the owner there about what may be the problem. He thinks he knows. I'll find out tomorrow. But in the meantime, here's some things I have learned about emissions testing in general and in Ontario.
The Drive Clean program in Ontario has a Repair Cost Limit program with some disagreeable (to me) requirements namely that the repairs must be done at a Drive Clean authorized garage and that a Drive Clean diagnostic must be performed before the repairs are done. The diagnostic alone costs $175.
After waiting for the engine to cool off, adding fluids, driving a few blocks and having to repeat this not once but twice I figured it was now reproducible and headed for Japan Auto. First to finally fix the overheating and then to get advice on the emissions problem, thinking a good mechanic armed with the old test results and the new failure might be able to fix it for less than the RCL ($450) and without my forking out cash immediately for the diagnostic test. (It helps that I have all the repair invoices for the past 13 years.)
I'm glad I thought that way because, despite the demonic spirit deciding to depart so I couldn't get the overheating to repeat, I learned:
- The testing should have been stopped when the overheating started.
- The abnormal emission results are very likely due to overheating.
- The culprit may be as simple as the cap on the reservoir not sealing anymore.
Tomorrow's the day. Fingers crossed.
For a couple of years now my baby has been having a problem with intermittent and undiagnosable fits of spewing coolant with and without concomittant overheating of the engine. The first time this was looked into THIS mysterious piece of plastic was dislodged from a hose.
Nobody knew what it could be. I wasn't too happy about something falling apart inside my cooling system, so I kept it, planning to scan it and send an email to the Car Talk show on NPR and see if they knew. (These guys are hilarious BTW. If you get a chance to listen to them - do.)
The problem seemed (seemed, mind you) to be alleviated, so the scan never got sent. Understandable given the other things that were going on in my life then. And then the problem reappeared this summer and nothing was found that could be causing it.
When I consulted my Haynes repair manual (everyone who owns a car should have one IMO) I recognized the mysterious foreign object as the post that was previously attached to the bottom of the reservoir bottle with indicators for FULL and ADD levels. (No wonder I was never sure whether I had enough or too much fluid!) Very poor design that omitted a screen above the outlet from the bottle into the cooling system.
I also noticed that there appeared to be little pieces of this 'thing' missing. Not to mention whatever it was that held it on the bottom. The conclusion reached was that there was some stuff floating around that once in a while managed to clog up the system. I resorted to carrying around jugs of coolant and water and kept an eye on it.
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