The weather here in Melbourne is pissing me off. It's cold, wet, and miserable, which matches my mood perfectly. Yesterday I decided to do some more work on my white Subaru, as I slowly move towards getting it back on the road, hopefully next week.
I drive the 400 mile round trip every fortnight to visit my ma, and as much as I love driving my mighty Ford Exploder, it's 20 miles per (imperial) gallon highway fuel consumption is frightening when I'm paying $6.50 (AUD) per gallon, so I'm keen to get the Subaru with it's 30+ MPG on the road, lickety split.
Luckily the little Subaru is in really good nick, being a "one owner" car up until last year, and then the new owner continued with regular servicing, so it still drives like an almost new car.
Subaru's are beautifully engineered cars, with the exception of their cooling systems, which often causes the early demise of the species. Anyone who designs an engine with the thermostat at the lowest point of the engine has got rocks in his head, and "burping" the air out of the cooling system after flushing and replacing the thermostat and coolant is a fcuking nightmare.
Luckily for me, this isn't my first time at the rodeo, and thanks to Andrew, I was able to apply a trick he taught me a couple of years ago, which allowed me to burp the cooling system in a few minutes. I took it for an hour's drive (I've got an "Unregistered Vehicle Permit" so I can test drive it after effecting repairs) and the needle never went over the halfway mark on the temp guage, so it's good to go for another couple of years.
Today I'm thinking about doing an oil and filter change, but the rain is currently coming in sideways, which is pissing me off, laying under the car on a wet driveway wasn't much fun yesterday, and I'm not really looking forwards to a repeat performance today...........
