the legend of emerald falls

so the coolant leak in my car persists…

…why?

partially my fault. as i stated, i thought i’d have a handle on this by now. sold old gold (literally) to do a pressure test till i realized that said test might make things worse and then i might not have the scratch to get them better again, and in the interim that money went elsewhere. so then i sold stuff on ebay, but when that doesn’t get paid for it doesn’t really do you any good, now does it? plus, that now has to go to some bills that need to be handled, again assuming i actually get paid for the stuff soon.

i was able, however, to afford some dye for my coolant – which turns it into such a shade of neon green it looks like super anti-freeze, which was good ’cause i HAD just been putting in water since i figured there was no need to spring for coolant since i’d fix it before i hit 100% water or something. then came hiccup after hiccup. can’t do test, might make it worse. ebay money has to go for bills. had to get my mid-month money early to buy a car battery. one thing after another has got in the way of me fixing this, so in the interim i put dye in to find the leak (radiator, it turns out) and then started putting in prestone to balance out all the water when it DID need to be topped off since a bmw mechanic said it was just as good as the beamer stuff at less than half the price.

done deal. but that dye made things interesting the other day.

as i said, the dye is neon green. it’s also designed to NOT evaporate so that you can see where a leak is even after said fluid has evaporated. my car has a whopper of a splash guard on it, that will even hold small tools for months on end, let alone dye residue…so the other day i went to the car wash, and as i drove out to let them dry it i parked on a slight decline, which made all the water that had gotten up between the engine and the splash guard run down – and since it had just been dyed green thanks to the dye residue on the splash guard, the guy drying my car got panicky as hell because said dyed water made it look like a literal waterfall of anti-freeze was cascading out of the front of my car…

…i couldn’t figure out why he went to dry my bumper and jumped up so fast!

“dude, shut off your car – you’re losing a LOT of coolant here!”

i popped the hood, but no gusher, no squirting hose, no nothing. keep in mind my leak is so slight i lose about a shot glass worth of fluid every two or three days. NOT enough to visually see as it happens, and certainly not NEARLY as much as it looked like.

so it goes.

i think i might need to call in the pepper trick soon – but at least i got to scare the shit out of some car wash folk!