Jan 3 - a day and then some

It's quiet.  Just me, Sandy and Abby.  Jeffrey left about 6:30 this morning and I followed him out, to make sure that he didn't have any trouble.  Yes, I followed him with the Chevy Cruz ... oh ?  You haven't heard about the Cruz ?

I left here yesterday with Kylie, Megan, Lauren.  The roads were slick, so I took it easy, hogging the bare lane -- the left lane -- when we had the extra lane.  We got to David's about 10:30, unloaded and I headed to Georgian BMW for the fan clutch replacement.  I walked over to MEC and had hardly gotten inside when my phone rang, the service adviser wanting me to see something.

I walked back and looked at the car with him -- oil all over the engine compartment.  Apparently, this being their guess, the PCV had moisture in it, froze, built up pressure under the valve cover and sprayed some oil out through the gasket ... and of course the fan blew it all over the engine.  This must have happened early on in the drive and obviously had stopped, otherwise I'd have had my oil level light come on. 

What to do ?  Apparently this is a common occurrence and requires replacing the PCV for a long term fix.  Of course the valve cover gasket also needs replacing.  All this is expensive, at standard-hours and BMW shop rates.  Well, rather than just have them shampoo the engine and trust that it wouldn't freeze again, I decided to leave the car with them.  They'll have the parts on Monday and hope to have it done then, but no guarantees.

So why did this freeze ?  Could it have been because it was -38C on the drive down ?  Obviously that's a factor !  Just as obviously there's moisture in there that won't purge itself without replacing the darn thing.  The parts are relatively cheap -- both the valve cover gasket as well as the PCV parts but the labour is horrendous.  I did the valve cover gasket myself once, took me an hour as a first-timer.  They charge two.  You get the idea.  It's the standard hours that bother me more than their shop rates.

It's much warmer today.  It's also snowing lightly.  This Chevy Cruz with all-season radials is not very good in the snow.  In fact, I think that I'll go out there right now and move it to the top of the driveway ... it had a little trouble climbing the little hill this morning.

So ... we'll probably still leave here on Monday morning.  The best case scenario is that this work is done and I drive back up Monday night to change the tires.  Yes, I've still got the snow tires on.  Rats.  Without the snow tires we could have figured out a way to pack everything into the Cruz and swap cars in Barrie.  Dummy here left the snow tires on, not expecting any issues, of course.

We'll likely go to Stef's, drop off Abby, go into Toronto for Sandy's appointment, pick up the passport and then back to Barrie.  That will keep us occupied.  Then, whenever the car is ready, be that Monday or Tuesday, I'll drive up and do the tire swap.  If it's late Monday, I'll sleep here for a few hours and then head to Barrie to pick up Sandy.  If it's Tuesday, what I do will depend on when the car is ready.

Onward, no wait !

After Jeffrey left, I got at the tree.  By 10am the tree was out of the house and all the decorations put away for another year.  Sandy's been busy doing laundry, really thankful that she doesn't have that small washer and dryer !

I also did the wiring for the thermostat controlled electric heater backup.  I'll set those at something less than 50F so that they kick in if something happens to the furnace.  Electricity, of course, is still a single-point-of-failure and I'll have to deal with that by putting in a standby generator, at some point.  Perhaps I should do that before we have an extended outage ?

Yes, onward !