With the rising prices of gas I have decided that I need to do/learn more of my own car maintenance. I purchased a few new parts for Colleen’s Civic to replace other parts that were past their due. I am hoping they will help extend the longevity of the car itself and help it to get even better gas mileage. The parts that I purchased were all very easy to change by myself. The car now has a new air filter, new distributor cap and rotator button, new spark plug wires and new spark plugs. I have yet to switch out the idler pulley and belt, which will not be as easy as the other parts. These parts were not designed for someone to maintain that has my size hands and somewhat inadequate tools. But I will need to figure out how to change out the pulley and belt as Colleen does not have any AC while the broken parts are still in the car, and believe me, that thing can get pretty warm inside of it pretty quickly. Hopefully I will get everything switched out soon and Colleen’s car will be running better and we will save a little more money.

I also have decided to do some maintenance on the Toyota Highlander. We had been hearing a nice high-pitch noise coming from the rear passenger wheel area. It sounded like a brake issue, when we applied a little pressure to the brake pedal the sound would go away or when we were going fast enough we wouldn’t hear it. We only heard it when we were just coasting through a parking lot or slowly moving through traffic. So I purchased four new rotors and two sets of brake pads. I also purchased a new air filter while I was at it, but didn’t need spark plugs as the truck is only at 48k miles and all the info says no new plugs until 120k. Anyways I have never changed brakes/rotors before so I figured I would wait until we went to Iowa where the father-in-law has a very nice setup for cars and car repair/maintenance.

Now the drive out to Iowa in the Highlander was somewhat uneventful. A few days before we left Colleen started claiming she could hear water sloshing around inside the Highlander and said it sounded like it was coming from the glovebox. I didn’t ever hear it but eventually I did see/feel the water dripping from under the glovebox. It seemed like the AC was not properly draining and was now draining into the vehicle. Well we didn’t really know the cause and I couldn’t see a drain hose anywhere, so we decided we would put a towell down and hopefully take a look at it in Iowa at Colleen’s parent’s place. Well, by the time we arrived at her parent’s house the towell was soaked and so was the entire bottom of the vehicle. Which, by the way, a wet vehicle (and I mean WET) does not have a good smell to it after sitting in the sun. Anyways we made it to Iowa and now we could relax, get ready for the baby shower and eventually take a look at the Highlander.

We arrived in Iowa Friday afternoon and the baby shower was not until Sunday. This allowed Colleen’s dad (Dennis) and myself to change out the brakes and rotors saturday. Since I had never changed either of these parts, Dennis walked me through the process. Surprisingly it was not nearly as difficult as I had thought it would be. Once the correct tools were found (basically the correct size sockets and stuff like that) the process was somewhat quick and easy; however, it is not a clean process. After a bit of work everything was changed (except the rear brake pad as they were still in very good condition) and the vehicle had renewed stopping power. What was even better is that the annoying sqeaking noise is now gone and the vehicle does not shake when stopping. But that was enough car work for one day and we didn’t look at the water problem until Monday. Monday after work Dennis cleared out some of his classics and made room for the Highlander to get up on the lift. Once under the car the drain hose was pretty easy to find. I climed up onto the lift and got in the cab with a bucket while Dennis shot about 25psi of air up the drain hose. As I sat in the cab, I heard a very ugly gurgling. Then I heard the spilling of water onto the garage floor. Nothing more ended up spilling into the cabin but quite a bit fell to the floor. So now we know what to look/listen for and how to fix it.

So I learned a bit about car maintenance and will hopefully be able to save some cash in the future on those expenses. Plus now the Highlander is drying out. Hopefully I will figure out the Civic’s AC repair as well. But I guess fixing cars isn’t too entirely different than fixing computers. I guess many people are just as intimidated to open a computer and I don’t even think twice about that (although sometimes it may have been a good idea to do so). Anyways, not an entirely exciting post but it was at least something, hopefully you weren’t too bored.