Car Adventure!

Around June of this year my dear car broke down. The problem was that the coolant was leaking into the engine block and when I drove it the engine would overheat. There were times I was stuck somewhere with an overheated car. The solution at the time was that we would just refill the coolant up every time I went to drive the car. At times I would have 4 gallons of coolant in my trunk ready to go when needed.

Near the end of June it got so bad that I was using 2 gallons of coolant a week. And is me checking the coolant before I drive to work and drive home. Also the coolant for the Alero is not just the general coolant but special GM coolant. Meaning it was about $15 for one gallon which would turn into 2 gallons because we would have to make the coolant 50/50 ourselves by adding water.

So after a month or so of carpooling with Jon to and from work and my car sitting on the side of the road. Jon researched and got much advice from friends on what to do to fix the car he started to take the engine apart himself. With some help of friends and family. You are probably wondering why we just did not take it in to a shop and they could fix. Well if Jon did the labor himself it would cut the price from about $1300 to $600.

To fix the problem Jon had to take apart the engine block and replace this long thin piece called the headgastet. And also had to shave down the heads of the block in order to get it running correctly. Well when Jon and Davey opened up the engine this is what we saw. . .

That peanut butter looking stuff in the engine really should look like black oil not peanut butter. So if you mix coolant and oil together you get PEANUT BUTTER!! :)

Even Davey thinks that it was not a good sign . lol

Well after they got it taken apart and cleaned off. Jon was able to go and get the heads shaved and bought the part in which we needed to not get peanut butter ever again. :)

It took us about a week or so to get all the right parts together and ready to go. Then Jon and his Dad worked on the car for about 18 hours putting it all back together. Once they got the engine put back together they had to flush out the coolant system and the oil in the engine. When they did the first oil change they emptied out about 2 gallons of fluid from the engine. The engine is normally only suppose to hold 4 liters of oil. So we changed the oil a couple more times to clean out all the peanut butter from the engine. Then we took it for a test drive. The car ran perfectly! It did not over heat and the A/C worked which it did not work when it was having problems.

Then we let the car sit for a few weeks and Jon did the last and final oil change. The oil came out the color so we were done fixing the car! YAY! I have my car back! Well almost, I have to now register my car since it was up in August. lol So once that is done we are done fixing the Alero!

And thanks to Anthony for letting us use his car while he was in Europe. :) It has helped us a lot while we were fixing my car. Also thanks to everyone who had helped Jon and I on the Alero. We could not have done it with out the help. Thanks!