the jeep, during the rebuild this summer. now it's apart again. somewhat.
today was an expensive day. a two-hundred and fiddy-eight dollar day, to be exact. it all started when i checked the coolant in the scrambler and discovered it was about half a gallon low. i've been keeping tabs on it for a couple weeks, since my fairly-new radiator has sprung two leaks already. i've been trying to nurse it along til i had time to fix it, but it's just too damn risky, since i just spent thousands getting it running (including the engine rebuild, above.) on the 10 minute ride to work, it spit out all the coolant i put in, leaving green streaks on the fenders and lots of steam billowing out of the grille. being away from the farm, no loaner vehicles for 90 miles, and with the red truck in the hospital, there was no time no time for recoring or soldering. a new one, although pricey, was the only viable option. this antichrist radiator had to go.
during lunch, i did a little hunting and found a replacement at NAPA for $228. ouch. when it's the only one in town, you gotta take it in the ass. thank gawd NAPA actually had it. mike, my fellow manager, was really cool and let me borrow his 20-year-younger jeep wrangler to pick up the parts. after driving it, i am lusting over a new vehicle, particularly a jeep. if they actually start producing the new scrambler that's rumored, it's ALL MINE. but not now, not this post. that's a whole nuther story.
so ANYWAY, i get back to work with the radiator, new cap, and 2 jugs of antifreeze, and...that was supposed to be it. switch it out later. like at 10 pm or something. in the dark. then mike (again, being very cool) offered to stay even longer (for a grand total of 10.47 hours or something close to that) so i could switch radiators now. sweet. i decided it would be a better idea to do it off the property, since big brother could watch the whole process in their cushy offices in buffalo, and they probably wouldn't appreciate it.
so i limped the jeep next door to kmart. nifty. close enuff to run back & forth, far enuff away to keep big brother happy (albeit still in full view of the cameras.) i started plugging away with the rag-tag collection of shitty tools that delta sonic had to offer. actually, if you're gonna change a radiator on your lunch break, do it on a jeep CJ, cuz they come apart and go together like toys, as if jeep engineered the whole vehicle this way cuz they knew you'd be doing plenty of repairs. it was going along quite nicely (it damn well should, seeing how the whole thing was stripped down only a couple months ago) and all was well. i had a jug cut open to catch the coolant, which initially was doing its job--and good thing, too--cuz not 10 minutes into the project this dude in a suit comes over and introduces himself as the freaking general manager or whatever of kmart. he was a bit concerned about what the hell i was doing in his parking lot. he was actually really cool about it. after seeing that i had a catch can for the antifreeze, he basically said, "don't make a mess and don't hurt yourself." i thanked him for his understanding and away he went. just in time, too, cuz my next move was to yank the lower radiator hose, which sent about 2 gallons of antifreeze gushing all over the parking lot. (it was a bit messier than i anticipated.) i caught about 2% of the coolant in my pathetic plastic jug. oopsie. thank gawd the chairman-and-CEO-of-kmart-corporation-or-whatever-he-was didn't come back cuz he most likely wouldn't have appreciated the results. at least they won't have to trim the weeds along the edge of the lot now cuz they'll all be deader than hell in about a day or two. i quickly flushed the asphalt with water and got back to work.
the rest of the installation went really well, and the new radiator and cap look dead sexy. all told, from the moment i started making phone calls to the moment i washed my hands afterwards, it took about 2 1/2 hours, with less than half of it being installation time. pretty slick. and to top it off, i even had a chance to run it thru the wash later to get all the antifreeze off of it--and it was everywhere, as you might imagine. i also powerwashed & dressed everything under the hood. i'm really happy overall, aside from spending all that damn money that i don't have. i hate not having money. i hate not having a reliable car. i hate working twice as hard as the shmucks who come in here to have their expensive cars detailed. grr. but damn, that radiator looks good, and that's something a scrambler man can appreciate. more next time--if you're still reading this. 'night.
