Battening Down for the Christmas Storm

Aside from the fact that I do have to get work done even during the holiday weeks (albeit somewhat less work than usual on account of so many people being on holiday that we get fewer requests than usual), the weather has given us plenty of incentive to stay home. In particular, there is a series of winter storms coming through, including one predicted to start dropping snow on us in Fernley on Christmas Eve.

( Reason #1 For Staying Home )

We did manage to get out yesterday to buy a pallet of firewood from Big R (now labeled as 1/2 cord; I suspect someone told Big R that you're supposed to sell firewood by the cord, not by weight). It's sitting in the utility trailer behind the Big Orange Van until we can get it unloaded.

Fixing a Hose

The slightly warmer (i.e. above freezing) weather we've had the past two days gave Lisa an opportunity to try and fit the replacement hose into the radiator system on the Astro. It fits, but not the way she would like it to fit. We simply can't find the shaped hose that we need for that location, and even the GM service manuals don't give a part number for that particular hose. We may need to go to a dealership with the service manual, point at the diagram, and say, "We want that hose #201 in that drawing, whatever it is." However, the hose she got does seem to do the trick for now. We went to O'Reilly and bought more coolant to deal with what leaked out during the repairs, and Lisa started the minivan and ran it sitting on blocks for a while. The temperature came up, but not too high, and heat came from both the front and rear heaters, and it did not start leaking, fizzing, and steaming. Tomorrow she'll put the "doghouse" cover back on and we'll drive it around Fernley a little bit to test it out.

Of course O'Reilly would send me about the time we got home a $5 off coupon that would have been ideal for applying to the $17 jug of coolant we bought.

It's a great relief that it appears that the coolant leak was a split in a rubber hose and not something more serious.