Post your "John/Bewber" weekends here...

I've had an interesting weekend with cars. It reminds me of one of John's epic posts where he can't get a break. I'll keep this one brief.

Wife's 99 Chrysler Town & Country with 190,000 miles is the chariot of choice for this year's christmas family visit.
Normally I have a maintenance/repair all-nighter the night before we have to leave. That always stinks.
This year I got started early! Is leaking coolant (needs a radiator) and could use a power steering pump (is whining).

Each of these required its own trip to the store:
1. Replace the radiator.
2. Find out the rad hoses are at end of life, so replace those.
3. Flush system, find out radiator cap is leaking. Replace that.
4. Water pump is leaking. Replace that.
5. Discover the TIMING COVER which also serves as the water pump housing is leaking where it affixes to the block! The heck with that, I'll fix it next month.

I have philosophical objections to using stop-leak but maybe this vehicle would have qualified!

While I was in there I did a dozen other things but I won't bore you with those.

Well at 190K it's hard to fault the vehicle, but sounds like a long frustrating weekend.

Let Bars Leak be your friend. ; )

Good luck on your travels!

bars leak is the devil,. if you see first hand what it does to the water jackets, it clings to the rust scale, impeding water flow,insulating the cyl walls and contributing to a hotter running motor,.
JM2C
JMHO

nick

Have not used that crap since I was 17 and had a spewing 68 Skylark. ; )

phantom 309 wrote:

bars leak is the devil,. if you see first hand what it does to the water jackets, it clings to the rust scale, impeding water flow,insulating the cyl walls and contributing to a hotter running motor,.
JM2C
JMHO

nick

Nick's right. When my VW **** a head gasket last month I asked if I should use Bars until the parts came in, and he said yeah, if you wanna spend more money with me. He then showed me a customers car with a blown water pump. She put that stuff in, ended up clogging the head and bam, a $400 job turned into $2500 as she ended up overheating it so bad she warped the head.

That was the weakest Epic/Bewbs thread I ever read. EVAR!

+1!

I was expecting to be bored to tears with irrelevant nuggets of minutia.

Joel - seriously though - swing by the GM dealership parts counter and tell them that you need a pack of the almond pellets. They are stop leak tablets that are all organic and work OUTSTANDING with all coolant types.

I'm not even kidding.

I once had a '75 Pinto wagon that I had a love/hate/meh relationship with. The cooling system was leaking somewhere (can't recall where), so I put one after another bottle of bars leaks in it until the leak stopped. Being of keen intellect, I knew this wasn't a good plan for the long haul, so I dropped it off one day at a trusted shop a few blocks from work & told the guy to flush & repair it, then took the Shoeleather Express the rest of the way to work. When I picked it up after work, it was interesting to hear him go on and on in amazement at how snotted up the system was... as I feigned cluelessness. Ah, the good old days.

Snotted up.Classic Jim.

I hear neo citron is effective on Pintos

ah Lorne Most US citizens have no clue what neo citran is

Is 'citran' canadianspeak for citric acid?

Nope, it's TheraFlu

I wonder if it would have worked on the leak in the old '75?