House Repairs

As some of you know, I've been battling with a car repair issue since Dec 27th. Driving home from the Evil Mother-In-Law's (EMIL) house, the car overheated. I was able to add some coolant and get it back to her house where a repair center is conveniently located a block away. They found the top hose portion of my radiator (the Mazda has a plastic hose component that sits atop the main radiator unit) had some corrosion and leaked out fluid. They also replaced the coil over cylinder 4 which was having some misfiring issues.

Car repaired. Or so we thought. The car's check engine light came on with a notice about coolant temp not being within proper range. It was recommended to replace the thermostat, as it could have been damaged in the initial overheating. Thermostat replaced, car repaired. Or so we thought.


My luck with car troubles is essentially a House MD episode. Some benign symptoms flair up that don't really make a lot of sense and I'm sent to a specialist. They start a round of steroids or antibiotics to try to fix the problem. The steroids or antibiotics unleash all hell by displaying symptoms hidden by the body's immune system. A new diagnosis is made (head gasket, water pump, another thermostat, computer sensor), treatment started, all should be fixed. Then the kidney's go out, the patient crashes, or blood oozes from orifices. Not good. This doesn't make sense with the initial issue? Patient may not live.

Then by some luck (or possibly a second full body scan), someone will say something in a conversation completely unrelated to the issue at hand and the doc realizes what the issue is and finally a treatment that resolves the issue(s) is(are) found and the patient goes home healthy and happy, albeit horribly in debt due to the needless operations, treatments, and additional hospital stays required to resolve the issue.

So my beloved car is back home in the driveway with a new radiator. The tech was driving it around (3 days of 40+ miles and they don't replenish my gas?) and it did it's random overheating thing it liked to do to send my blood pressure through the roof, and the scanner picked up that it was the radiator. Some "foreign contaminant" as Mo from Wall-E would say, had gotten into the radiator (probably from the initial overheating) and would cause a blockage to occur temporarily and the engine temperature would spike.

I wonder what next week's episode will bring?

Dug the head, can you make me a t that says: Simple's Overrated.