It never ends! (by alaric)

Indeed, it gets worse.

Remember we're borrowing Sarah's parent's car because ours' brakes failed?

Well, it keeps running hot - the coolant temperature gauge was getting alarmingly high when driving in town traffic. So before going out today I tried to find the bonnet release to check the water level. We don't have the car's manual, or a Haynes manual for it, so we had to search about as best we could, to no avail. We rang Sarah's parents, but just left a message on the answerphone, so we went out shopping. As long as I took routes that maximised time on dual carriageways so the speed kept up, the temperature would be fine. At that point, I was suspecting the cooling fan may be at fault.

However, the car started to make nasty grinding sounds when I dropped into neutral at traffic lights (it's an automatic). So we pulled over, and rang Sarah's parents again; this time we got through, and they explained where the bonnet release was (it was where I'd first looked for it - but a bit tucked away!). Popping that open, I found that it was quite low on transmission fluid, but it was too hot to check the water level; the tank was too opaque to see the level without opening it, which would be dangerous without waiting for the engine to cool down.

So we went off walking to find a petrol station to buy more transmission fluid, and some water in case the water level was low when we came back and opened it. The first petrol station we came to had one of those little Tescos on it, which was useless - it had aisles and aisles of food, and a few shelves of very basic car supplies; engine oil and lightbulbs.

So we journeyed on to a 'proper' petrol station which had a tiny shop, a good eighth of which was full of useful car stuff, including automatic transmission fluid. I picked that up, plus three litres of water, since Sarah was hot and thirsty.

Back to the car. Put 200ml of transmission fluid in, opened the water, and found the expansion tank totally empty.

Doh.

In goes just over a litre of water, and it was up to the MAX level. So we drive on. The car now doesn't make any nasty noises when going into neutral, and seems to be running a bit better in general.

With all these delays, we're now having to rush straight to the nursery to pick Jean up; but on the way, the temperature gauge keeps creeping up again, and when we have to go into the little 30mph roads towards the end, it approaches the red warning section and a steamy hissing whistle emerges from under the bonnet. We pull up at the nursery, picking Jean up just as the staff are starting to go home, and sit and wait while the engine cools down enough to open the water expansion tank again.

When I check, I find it empty once more. I suspect that it may have been REALLY low on water; when I filled it up before, there was lots of bubbling as air worked its way up through the system and came forth, so perhaps the litre I put in was only filling the expansion tank because of trapped air, and running the engine had cycled it around. So I fill it up again, run the engine a bit (you have to do this to check the transmission fluid level, which I do), and the water's still there. I check underneath the car to make sure it's not leaked out.

And so we drive on. But the car's not happy. The transmission is a little odd, with the car 'twitching' every now and then, or shifting down a gear for half a second every now and then. And the temperature still rises alarmingly. So we pull over into a pub near our house, and leave it cooling down while Sarah runs to the toilet (she'd been holding it in for a while now) and we have some dinner; since not having been home between shopping and picking Jean up, we've not been able to get dinner started.

So after a while I go out again, and lo and behold, the expansion tank is again empty. I top it up again, but this time I'm rewarded with a wet trickling sound, and the water level in the tank goes down before my eyes. At the same time, a puddle emerges from beneath the car.

Bugger.

Further peering down inside reveals that I can see water running down the back of the engine, although its source is hidden in shadow and obscured by engine parts. It might be a hose (easily fixed), a "core plug" that protects the engine from coolant overpressure or freezing by popping out to release the pressure (easily fixed) or a crack in the engine block (written off car). Either way, it may be hard to diagnose without lifting the engine out, since the leak seems to be on the back of the engine.

We carefully drive it home, downhill all the way keeping the revs as low as I can. Tommorrow, Sarah's parents come up in our van, ostensibly to drive home in their car and leave the van with us. But there's no way their car's going to be ready to drive all the way back to Essex unless we fix it over the weekend. And if Sarah's parents go home in our van because their car is dead - we'll have trouble getting Jean to and from nursery...

A Week of High Jinx (by sarah)

This is getting ridiculous it really is!

Last Thursday we had to leave earlyish in the morning for our hectic long weekend in London/Guilford, I went to finish cycling the machines so everything was clean before we left - ie washing machine, tumble dryer etc.... and lo! no electricity. Arrrggggg!!!!!Quick check showed that the RCD had tripped. A quick check settled my dread of fridge and freezers - things still frozen! Relief!

But not for long as we reset the RCD and it goes again!

We are by this time running out of time, a third and forth time show us through elimination that it is the dishwwasher thats doing it. Worrying about that I go to fill our bottles with water for the journey. Not wearing any shoes I noticed to my horror the now familular feeling of wet squelchy carpet under my feet - a little checking shows that the bloody thing has leaked again dispite the cowboy repair guys assaurances - this time straight onto the extension lead its plugged in on - at this point we thank the heavens for nice residual current detectors, we unplugged it - warn our house guest and rush out, knowing it will be just one more thing to deal with when we come back 🙁

The blower in the car deemed that week to stop working and as the front windows do not wind down it was hell - I had packed little plastic ice cube things that I regularly gave to Jean to suck to help keep her cool - though she was a lot cooler than me and Al. Once Ealing was found I was disembarked to sit with baby in an air conditioned Pizza Hut whilst Al went in by him self on the train.

That night saw Jean mega waily - she hadnt wanted to eat becuase of the heat so at 2 in the morning I found myself feeding her whilst Al slept (he was to drive us to Guilford the next day so it was important he got sleep).

On the way to Guilford we sat in some traffic and appeared to have people throwing stuff at the car? Thank goodness the windows dont open or it would have hit Al!

Then things were pretty much fine until Sunday morning when as Als said the brakes went iffy - if its brake fluid thats the cylinders gone if its oil then bearings? But both wheels at once!?

We were going to take the van back but my uncle said it wasnt motoway ready as the bearing still needed fixing, this ment we had to borrow mums car which though fine on the way home as mentioned in Als post even though it too has only just past its MOT 🙁 I got ill on Monday, along with my already infected insect bites!

We also opened our back log of post to find that banks were moaning we hadnt payed bills we'd never recieved and that we had been charged!

Tuesday Al was ill and I fell down a rabbit hole - oh and it turned out the small fridge hadnt been shutting properly so we lost a load of food 🙁 but pretty uneventfull really. Yesterday, Wednesday we were back on the roll of bad luck. First of all I put the kettle on and it seemed to be boiling but not switching itself off! I was peed off as it was obviously broken, then I went to do the washing and lo! It was grinding round and didnt appear to be drawing any water in - it broken too?! Then to the mystory of some lights working some not - was one of the curcuits out? But surely lighting's on a lighting curcuit? The freezers continual hum told we still had power - what I didnt reallise was that it was about half power. This was bad as I found the grill full of meat fat (from house guests who probaly didnt realise it would be such an issue - ie forgetting Al veggi!) so I had to cook the potato bread over the toaster - it took an age!

We also had to sort out the fact that Al's paycheck was wrong and we hadnt been paid everything:( Today - well where to start!

We got a letter from the a debt collector becuase the stupid phone company (mobile wont mention in fear of being sued or something) have for a third or is it a forth time? mucked up the direct debit! Several phone calls later and the rude person at the phone company told us thats not what their screen says etc... when they bank said it was their mistake!

Then to the cleaning out of the pool - it had been accidently left with just a bit of water in by house guests who didnt know the dire consequences of this action - mind you we werent expecting it to be that bad! Green and brown slime - ah nature a miraculous thing! So we set about cleaning it which has led to yet another 'incident'. The hose pipe attachment in the sink appeared to be fine but then when we came back in it had been spraying water everywhere! So once again the kitchen was soaked 🙁 - this is now the fith!!!! bloody effing flood/leakness to happen 🙁 🙁 🙁

This time the windowsill flooded and the kettle, microwave and sterilizer where soaked and are now drying, oh and the toaster!

Still it meant I got to clean the windowsill properly though I did manage to put my foot onto a cracked tile in the process (me not being able to reach unless I climb onto the window sill) which broke showing that half the window sill is over abyss! Al has now banned me from cleaning windows!

I decided that with or without kettle I was having a cup of tea - so on with the saucepan. Finally it boiled - I made the tea and took it into the lounge area were the mug fell off of the handle! 🙁 I'm afraid that at this point I swore - jumping clear of the boiling splash. At this point Al rushes into the room to say that I had left the window in the bedroom open, this was bad as it was where I had imprisoned the kittens whilst we sorted out the chaos. He could now only find one of them 🙁 However, kittens were later both discovered in my wardrobe sitting on the jumpers! It has a hole in the back of it I had completely forgetten about!

Technology jinx (by alaric)

On Sunday, we were due to drive back from Essex (stopping off to pick up Minnie)... but while driving back to Sarah's parent's place that morning, I noticed that the brakes were really really feeble. As in, the pedal would go all the way to the floor without much resistance until the last part, and the car would come to a gentle stop rather than screeching to a halt.

When we got out, we saw that the rear wheels were all covered in an oily liquid that had emerged from the axle. Bah.

So we borrowed Sarah's mother's car for the journey home. It's a bit smaller than ours, and we had a lot of stuff, so it was a bit of a squeeze!

Then on Tuesday, we went out to pick up more cat litter from Stayte Services in Stroud, and as I was parking in their car park, the car stalled.

Which is an odd thing for an automatic transmission to do.

It wouldn't start again.

After a bit of sitting there groaning with our heads in our hands, it did start again, but quickly stalled once more. I began to surmise that letting the engine cool down had helped, so we left it a while, started it up, and this time I kept the revs high so it wouldn't stall again, and reversed it into a parking space. In case the problem was due to something in the fuel line, I left the engine running (with Sarah watching over it) while I went in and purchased, but it had stalled again by the time I returned. It started again after a cooling period, then I had a nervous and fraught drive home, trying to keep the revs up in slow traffic and so on. It's been fine since, though - I suspect it was just overheating in some way.

But then Wednesday morning, I got up to find the ADSL was down. So I used dialup to check for emails, and to complain to the ISP. The fridges and freezers were all running their compressors at once, and Sarah complained that some of the (flourescent) lights weren't working; and the UPS kept switching to battery mode. Checking the logs revealed that the mains voltage was around 170v instead of the usual 240v; and before long it cut out entirely, so I dragged the generator out and started it up to run the computers and the fridges and freezers - which, given enough voltage to run their compressors properly, were soon at a decent temperature, and the compressors shut off again.

The power came back, but I stayed on the generator for a while, until I was sure it was OK.

Interestingly, when the power came back and the ADSL router powered back up (it wasn't on the generator), it managed to obtain a link immediately; perhaps it was only failing because it was running on a reduced voltage, and its power supply was thus failing to provide proper power to the thing in such a way that made it unable to get a proper link. I'd expect a switched-mode power supply to still provide clean power in such situations (the computers were all quite happy on 170v), but you never know what corners might be cut in cheap equipment!

Either way, right now, I'm feeling a bit cursed...

Interesting sites (by alaric)

I came across:

Guide to Zone 6 by Quin Parker on Haddock.

This guy's decided to go to every station in Zone 6 and write a little review on each. They're quite funny.

Then following random links from there, I wandered to:

Cinnamon Thoughts - Colorful Optical Illusion which is a nice visual trick.

Motorway Cow Bridge (by alaric)

Well, I've just ported my nice image upload to blog script to run from a Web form (rather than a script on my machine that uploads via SCP), so that Sarah can use it too (and I can use it from random locations).

As a test of it, here's some pictures of a strange phenomenon we often see when going to pick Jean up from nursery - at about 5:30pm each day, Junction 11 of the M5 is visited by a parade of cows (you have to look closely to see them - I didn't want to crop the images, so you get the full context):