So….I finally finished my flowerbed project. As you can see Clare helped me out with the digging out of the weedy stuff. Yesterday I finished the end, and dug out the Irises. I cut the up and planted them in the bigger bed. I even tossed some of them, as they had multiplied into far more than I could ever plant around our house. I raked the yard up, and did some trimming of the rose bush. I also swept up the front porch, and made it look all nice and ready for some Spring planting of flowers. The only thing I have left is the small bed on the left of the porch, and I’ll do more with that when I plant the other flowers…..as I think it’s going to be mostly perianals.
So it turns out that the problem was the transmission all along. Let’s start the story from the beginning though. I went out this morning to take a gander at the shift linkage. To check that it was in fact in park. I disconnected the linkage from the arm. Pulling the arm toward the front of the car, it clicked three times. Bingo! That -was- the problem with it thinking it was in drive when I had it in park. So I fixed that…
Once I got it back together and started the car, I put it in drive and it was mad slipping… rev to 3500 rpm and it would start to catch in 1st. So at this point, I was pissed. I rechecked everything again to make sure it was ok. When I opened the resevoir cap, DAMNIT, there was that tan muck again… the resevoir was completely full of it. I check the motor oil dipstick and even checked the top of the engine by opening the oil cap on the head cover. Nothing… completely clean motor oil.
I decided at this point to check the transmission fluid. I tried this the other day, but I think my “wick” wasn’t long enough. I got a napkin from in the house and rolled it into a 12″ or so long “wick”. I snapped the red collar off of the transmission fill tube and removed the plug. I snaked my homemade dipstick down the fill tube until it wouldn’t go any further. When I pulled it back out, there was about an inch of the very muck that is floating on top of the coolant resevoir!
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something is foul with the transmission.
So I guess I’m calling the folks who did the tranny rebuild in the morning and see what they can do to help me. Thankfully, there’s a warranty on it, but I’m not sure how much that’s gonna cover.
So, yesterday I finally got outside again to do some work on the front yard. I raked the birm (the section between the sidewalk and street), and then looked at the flower beds in front of the porch. I have some irises that are very overcrowded on one side of the steps, and I have a feeling that they didn’t bloom last Spring because of it. I have a bed in front of the porch, but it has this weedy stuff that grows every year…it’s just a ground covering, nothing that’s overly pretty. But it’s a PAIN in the ass to dig out, as it is a crawling weed all connected together, and there were large roots that I had to pull out of the ground too. I edged it out with the shovel, and next pay check I am going to go buy some rubber edging to keep the grass out of the bed. I didn’t get it all finished yesterday, so with any hope it will be done today with the Irises split and transplanted in the other bed. And I figured next month I when I buy my flowers I will put some perinials in there to fill it in, as the Irises don’t stay around for long. My other goal is to clean up the front porch, as their is the usual leaf debris from Fall and Winter. That and I kinda just stacked my flower pots behind the brick, and they need to be cleaned out. Moonshadow spent most of the day outside with us yesterday as well. She did pretty well hanging out on the porch, and enjoyed checking out what was going on in the neighborhood. Clare helped me out in digging up the flower bed, and their will be some pics of her on the site soon. She also had Brad running around on the hill accross the street playing soccer with her new big pink ball. Brad spent all afternoon working on his car, and you can see his blog for the downfall of the VW. Well, I think it’s time to get back outside. It’s not supposed to be as warm as it was yesterday….and hopefully it won’t rain.
So much for “forgetting about it”. I took the car for a spin after I was 90% certain that I’d cleaned out most of the muck from the cooling system. At this point, I’m not even sure that what I’ve done “did it”. I got the car close to home and it began the squeal. I figured I’d stop and get it in the driveway to try to figure out what it was. When I put the car in reverse, it went no where. Now it won’t start because it doesn’t think it’s in park.
Talked with my dad and he advised checking the gear selector linkage. I’ll do this in the morning when there’s more light. If that isn’t the problem, I don’t know what I’m going to to.
One flush wasn’t enough for the old veedub. I’ve flushed it a couple of times now and there’s still a small amount of muck that shows up in the resevoir. I flushed it clean one time and added the Bars Leak. Now we go through a whole ballet to get the stuff to work properly. Currently, we are on “run engine for 30 minutes” number two (out of three). After the last run, there is only the tiniest bit of muck floating in the resevoir.
When I first cut the heater hose, a liquid that looked an aweful lot like motor oil came spilling out. I suspect at this point that there is a gasket leak (though the oil level in the engine has not gone down yet). Maybe I’ll get lucky, it’s small, and the Bars Leak will do the job. I’ll have some photos in the photo gallery soon.
Speaking of photos, I also snapped a pic of the new knife block, so you can see what I’m talking about. I’m still in awe at the engineering of this thing. We’ll see how long it lasts, but it sure seems like a good idea.
Anyway… the pics of the car in the gallery are from after the initial flush (before the application of Bars Leak). Don’t get too alarmed yet. It looks much the same as the previous shots, only the muck in the drain pan is darker (making me really think that it’s motor oil). After the final flush and fill, we’ll see how screwed up it is. I fear this is going to take a while. The Bars Leak stuff says to let the car completely cool (1-2 hours) between each run. This sucks, but I want the thing fixed and I don’t have the cash to replace a main seal or head gasket. *crosses fingers*
After this is done, I’m going to find myself some fine alcoholic beverage and sit on the porch and try to forget about it. Freakin’ nightmare…
Thanks to Mark James at famfamfam for the excellent icons now seen in the eastowners menu. He has an excellent selection of mini icons at his site. I had to convert them to gifs (and add my own matte color) so they would show up right in Internet Explorer for the site (sad), but other than that, they are excellent icons.
Whoa, it’s NICE outside. Char and I spent a good portion of the afternoon tooling about while Clare was at home with the babysitter. We had a coffee at the bookstore and went to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up a couple of things. Char’s scale broke, so we picked up an inexpensive replacement, we scorched a pan a few months back so we replaced it. Cuisinart has some really nice inexpensive pans at BB&B, and we picked up a neat knifeblock since we outgrew ours.
The knife block is neat. It doesn’t have slots, but has a whole bunch of small rods packed into a square frame. This let’s you put whatever shaped knives you have whereever in the block you like. It’s a really neat concept and was less expensive than other knife blocks, so we decided to give it a shot. Besides… we had two 20% off coupons, so we saved a little cash.
Tomorrow is Veedub Day. I’ll be flushing the cooling system. Wish me luck. Hopefully, I’ll remember to snap some more pictures.
So….went to the YMCA and did some cardio while Clare was shaking it down in dance class. I finally accomplished a good time on the Cross Ramp. I did 1 mile in 12 minutes 40 seconds…..very good considering how much I’ve been struggling with my times. My goal is to now up the resistence and keep the time the same. After I keep my times well within reason, my next goal is to do it without having my heart rate above what is considered good for my age and weight. With any luck I will be loosing weight and back into my Pre-Clare skinny jeans. I keep pulling them out, and get really close to wearing them and then fall off the train. Now I just need to get rid of the JUNK in the house to keep me on track. I admit I have no will power, and I know what I am doing when I eat the crapt that is sitting around. I just need to get Brad on the program for the support I need. We are both stress eaters….and binge when things aren’t going well. Which right now they aren’t all peaches and cream. My car is getting worse, and we still don’t have the $700 to fix the struts. Brad is finally getting some overtime in, so with any luck in a few weeks my car won’t creak and groan anymore! Anyway….time for some laundry.
