Christmas tree and a trip to the mall

We went to our local tree farm (being out in the country, there are several tree farms to pick from) to slay our Christmas tree.  The "product" of a fresh-cut tree involves climbing on a tractor, being abandoned in a field with a saw and hauling the tree home atop one's car after the tree has been baled. Wondering around in the field looking for a tree means that quite quickly, nearly all trees begin to look the same.  Only once it's home does one notice the bald spots and general crookedness of a tree that looked just fine in the field.  Buying a used car is pretty much the same experience, what looks to be great in the lot with its companions seems to loose its luster once you've gotten it home. Buyer's remorse?  Maybe it's just too difficult to process so much information at one go, so our brain fills in the details, dents and scrapes.  When we're looking at one car, we can the concentrate on the finer details.

Probably won't fall off, maybe?

 We didn't always go Christmas tree hunting, in our family, BC (Before Children, or, BCE, Before Children Existed for the folks with a knot in their kickers and variously colored hair.), we celebrated Christmas sans a tree. Having a $500 dollar car means not having to worry about dents/scratches incidental to getting the tree home, all one needs to do is heave the tree on the roof and secure it with some twine.  No padding or a tarp, just get close and lob.  It wasn't always like this, when we drove an overpriced Honda SUV or pricey minivan, we cared about the roof.  Dents?  Scratches?  Sap? Mud? All of that used to matter when our car monthly payment approximated the purchase price of the Freestyle.

One feature of the Freestule that I just love is the raised roof rack.  This made securing the tree much easier, as I had an easy place on which to loop the twine and make knots.   In the process poorly securing the tree to the car, I looked down and what did I see by an expended hypodermic needle.  It's probably flotsam from a friendly neighborhood injectable drug user, either getting their tree or working in the fields.  Maybe a diabetic?  Most diabetics fanatically keep their sharps safe, so maybe, but unlikely.

A trip to the mall, some more Christmas lights

Limp home mode

The next day, we got the first snow of the year: better than a light dusting, maybe one or two inches. On my way to the mall, after dropping my kid off at work who didn't want to drive in the snow I felt the AWD system kick-in and then my troubles started.  The car went into "limp-home mode".  An Eat 'n Park was close by, so we stopped there for brunch and after eating we'd see if the problem went away, as stopping for a quick road-side reboot of the engine didn't help.  I didn't have my code reader handy, I'm not sure what problem occurred, but we got the combination wrench and check engine lights, as the picture shows.  This can mean either transmission, transfer case or throttle problems.

Former furniture store

Post breakfast, the engine started without an issue.  We needed to head to the mall for some shopping, which was close. If the car became cranky again, the plan was  to have the better half shop while I called for a tow.  I'd have a nice place to wait at the mall for a tow truck and would return to the mall with a working car.
My last visit to the mall was... I can't even recall when I was last at the mall, but over the years, there's been a shift from retail to personal services.  Now, however, the transition now seems to be from personal services to just empty spaces, not unlike the transition many small town's main streets in the area endured in the 1970's as retail fled main street for the mall, store fronts turned into exercise and tattoo parlors before the front windows served to hold news paper concealing the empty insides.

Earlier this year, before the retail season, Sears closed at the mall.  When the Beaver Valley Mall opened in 1970, Sears was an anchor tenant (along with Gimbels and Horne's), maintaining the same location for 40+ years: a dependable source of tools, lawnmowers,

As always, an empty lot around Sears

boots, Levi's and something polyester your grandmother would wear to a cousin's wedding.  The next biggest tenant, Macy's, doesn't look to be sticking around, as the upper floor has been closed and the range of merchandise greatly decreased.  Meanwhile, across the street, Wal-Mart's lot brimmed with shoppers.

Torn seal, failed water pump, back on the road

Oil from torn seal

When my new water pump failed, the ground metal from the water pump tore newly installed seal into bits, causing another oil leak.  Here's what I saw when I removed the pump from the car, over on the right.

Having replaced the very same seal before, I wasn't at all intimidated this time around. Out came the seal puller and in one swift hand-motion, I lost my grip and whacked the back of my hand against the radiator.  I was wearing my gloves, but they don't offer much protection for the back of the hand and it seems that's the most sensitive part. A little more fiddling and out came the seal. 

Torn seal

The tearing was complete, a replacement was necessary.  Getting a clear picture wasn't easy, because it was difficult to keep the background and foreground in focus, but here it is over on the left.  While the old seal apparently wore so that it wasn't keeping a tight grip on the camshaft, this one was completely compromised.  Just like the last time, I put a thin coat of oil on the seal and worked it over the camshaft, using my Craftsman Seal Seating tool (right) and a few taps from a plastic dead blow hammer to make ensure the seal was seated.

Re-attaching the water pump

New pump installed

Once the seal was back in place, I re-attached the three 8mm bolts holding the new water pump loosely and then the center 13mm bolt loosely, then tightened the outer bolts and then put more force on the inner bolt.  I'm not sure why this is the process, probably to make sure the impeller is correctly centered in the housing.  The final torque specification for the center bolt is 18 in/lbs (25nm) which is not much more than hand tight and on the lower end of my torque wrench's scale.  It didn't feel like much so I gave the bolt an extra 1/2 turn, as I wasn't sure if my wrench was accurate and I didn't want the impeller to stop working if the bolt wiggled loose.  But I didn't want to overtighten either as that could crush the seals around shaft keeping the fluid where it belongs.

All back together, recycling the coolant

When I took things apart, I used a basin to catch the coolant fluid in hopes I could use it again and not have the hassle of taking it to the disposal center (c'mon, we don't put chemicals like this down the drain, that would be uncivil) whilst saving a few bucks.  Before pouring the coolant back in the car, examination showed bits of dreck floating about, dreck I'd rather keep on the outside of the cooling system.  My solution was to put a coffee filter in the funnel and have that catch the chaff; however the filter was a bit too fine and I was a bit too impatient. 

The filter was replaced by a paper towel, and in about 10 minutes, all of the captured coolant was back in the system.  I was thinking that the ethylene glycol molecule's size was the cause of the poor flow through the filter, but I was wrong by a factor of 1000.  Our friend C₂H₆O₂ is about half a nanometer and a the average pore size of a coffee filter is about 50 microns, so the chemical should have passed through like a bee through an open window, or air through a residential screen, even if some of the molecules clung together in the filter's mesh.  The slow speed was probably the filter doing it's job removing nasties from the fluid.

I thought I was being paranoid with the filter, but here's a picture of what remained in the pan after filtering.  And, yes, the pan was clean before it caught the fluid.  When pouring the liquid into the filter, I was careful not to disturb the sediments, as I didn't want the filter to break, or more likely, clog.

Job being done, I'm hoping that two's a charm when it comes to water pumps.  It's been about 200 miles on the new pump with no problems, so I'm not worried about the torque of the impeller bolt, or at least I'm not worried that much.

Water Pump, Encore!

When your correspondent last wrote, my Freestyle stranded me on the way home from the Pittsburgh

Frownie

airport.  Something in the cooling system failed (I was guessing the thermostat, which turned out to be half true!) and when I tried to slowly return home, stopping to let the engine cool, my wife guilted me in calling a tow truck and having her meet me for breakfast.  I came to a stop at King's, a chain started by Hartley King, an offshoot of his fuel distribution business.  Kings always played second-fiddle to Pittsburgh's dominant family chain "Eat 'n Park", despite having both better breakfast and desert menus.  For years, as a counter to Eat 'n Park's "Smiley" cookie, King's had the Frownie -- a stroke of marketing brilliance to counter the Smiley -- a brownie with a no-so-menacing frown.  But it went deeper than the frown: the earth-tone brownie matched the Kings décor to the tee, the fudgy bites were more substantial than the nearly flavorless Smiley cookies, like the food at Kings versus E'n'P.   Kings has since been purchased by some outfit on the west coast and is losing it's quirkiness, the menu isn't on the placemat anymore, the Frownie retired to mascot Florida and decidedly 70's faux wood Formica décor replaced by cleaner and brighter tiles and paint.

I didn't have the chance to look into the problem that day and some home things kept me from tearing into the engine for about a week.  When I did get to seeing what was happening, I had the following suspects, in my order of probability:

1. Blockage in radiator
   This would keep the coolant from flowing, since I was not getting heat in the cabin, this would sort of make sense, but I would have expected some coolant flow from the engine to provide some heat.
2. Thermostat valve failure
   I replaced this already, but it could have been the problem, maybe a discount part failed?
3. Water pump
   Least likely, since it was just replaced.

I'm thinking #1 as the problem, since I replaced the thermostat and water pump.  But, the nature of the symptoms (over heating engine, no output from heater) lent itself to being a failed water pump, despite it being replaced just a few months back.  I started by removing the various pipes from the cooling manifold (using a basin to catch the fluid) and to my surprise, saw some fresh oil dripping on the starter, along with a whiff of the "oil and coolant" smell.  Something interesting is afoot, just not sure what.

Note oil drip on starter...

  Off came the water pump.  Flipping it over, I see oil leaking from the weep hole of the pump.

This was odd, because water pumps shouldn't contain any oil.  Then, on close inspection of the part, the nature of the problem became more obvious, looking closely where the pump interfaced with the cam shaft:

Then, it can back to me...  When I was pulling out of the airport, I heard a squeaking/grinding noise, I that was this part of the pump breaking and being reduced back to the metal powder from which it was formed, in the process tearing the seal around the camshaft, permitting the oil into the pump shaft.  Here's what the seal looks like in the engine:

At this point, I needed to replace the water pump and seal.  But the thermostat was OK, right?  No it wasn't, so that will need to be replaced as well.  What makes this more frustrating is my smugness over having the luxury of time to do the research and wait for delivery.  At least I have practice!

Overheating and stranded

I was out of town for most of last week, at a company site in CA.  When I travel to our offices in California, I usually take the early AM flight Monday from PIT to SFO and drive to San Jose.  This flight is usually at 100% capacity.  However, this week, I departed on a Tuesday and found myself in a row with an unoccupied middle seat, and on the way back on the red-eye Friday, same seating arrangement!  Unusual. What was also unusual was the pair of basset hound "emotional support" animals waiting to board the plane I just departed (was too tired to get a picture, sorry!) on Saturday morning.  We have a basset hound, they're great dogs, but they smell, shed and drool more than the average traveler.  While the bassets display excellent temperament, they tend do want to do their own thing and will put their weight into getting their way, so I can't imagine one being on a lap and compliant for even a short flight.

Overheating

When I returned to airport lot, I jumped into the car and made it about 5 miles down the highway to discover the engine heat climbing.  I also heard a bit of a weird noise coming from the engine, a high pitched whine.  I stopped on the highway's shoulder, let things cool-off then got off the highway and stopped again at a gas station, then at a McDonalds, Rite-Aid, Golf course -- each time the temperature made it too close to the red-line for me to be comfortable.  After 2 hours, traveling about 18 miles, I stopped at the King's in Monaca called my wife to meet me for breakfast and then AAA for a tow home. 

I didn't want things to get too overheated, as that could cause the a head gasket to break or worse, the block to crack.  Since I hadn't called AAA in a while for a tow and I wasn't that far from home, this was covered under the cost of my membership.

By this time, I was tired and just a little more than frustrated.  This would be the first time the car left me stranded.  At least I was close to home and could easily get to help.  But still.

There's a few things this could be:

1. Water pump
   The engine was overheating because coolant wasn't circulating through the system.
2. Thermostat
   Coolant was being blocked from flowing through the system, resulting in poor cooling.  Maybe not the problem, in many cases the coolant will still circulate through the heater core before the thermostat opens... But I wasn't getting heat, so maybe not.
3. Radiator
   A blocked Radiator can result in decreased cooling efficiency. 
4. Coolant leak
   Could be a problem... But I found that the system contained lots of coolant and the cooling system was under pressure, so I think I can cross this one off the list.

Recall, that I replaced the water pump and thermostat already.  Could one of the new parts failed?  It would seem so, but that would be a real bummer.  There's some interesting things of note I'm mulling over:

• Heater wasn't working.  This could mean a the pump was not circulating the coolant or the thermostat wasn't opening to let the water circulate through the heater core
• A squeaking noise was heard as I was exiting the airport.  I thought it was the wheel, but maybe the water pump?

I have some yard work to do, so won't be able to tackle this problem in the next day or two. Considering these parts have been replaced once already, I'm not that happy about having to do the job again.

Despite the car problems when I got home, the trip was great.  One of the great things about the San Jose area: all of the great food around the area! The people at the office might think the various Korean hot pot and Pho places are pedestrian, but it's a delightful culinary break for me.  One of the new things I tried was persimmon, a crisp fruit with what I can describe as a sweet, crunchy pumpkin taste.  There's a much musher variety of persimmon as well, but the firm variety makes for the best out of hand snacking.  Can't find any in these parts, so I'll have to bring more back from my next trip.

Happy Halloween! Fixing the Fan Speed Control

Boo!

The Freestyle has passed an important milestone in my household.  Not in dollars spent or miles driven, something more substantial.  My wife likes the car enough to start decorating it.  At first, she refused to be a passenger, in fear of an immediate breakdown or immolation (I feel the need to point out I spelled that word correctly the first try), but after seeing it not stranding me the last few months, I think she's warming up to our newest car -- plus, I think it keeps me in the garage and out of her hair.  I'm told this car is "cooler" than our minivan; which I don't understand because our minivan has a TV.

Fan Control

I'm on to fixing the AC system and part of the job is fixing something that didn't work from day one of my ownership experience: the fan speed control.  The controls offered two options: nothing or high.  Not a big deal, maybe an annoyance at the most.  Once the AC has been recharged (I've replaced all of the parts, just recharging the system remains!) it will be nice to have some control; same for the heat in the looming winter.

Replacing the part was easy enough.  On the passenger's side, slide the seat all the way back to give yourself room to work.  Then, remove a panel covering the fan by pulling out two plastic rivets:

The part in question can be found close to the firewall and center console.  Remove the wiring connector, spin out the 8mm screws.  The part will just fall out.

There's not much clearance and I found the wiring kept getting in my way, I tucked it into the center console.  Insert the new part, making sure it's oriented with the connector release facing you, the connector has some pegs to ensure a correct fit -- there's two screws and two alignment pegs -- twist things back up to "hand tight" and that's about it.  The wiring connector will fit only one direction and returning the protective cover involves pushing the plastic retainers back into place. Done!

The malfunctioning fan is a common failure, the part at fault being the fan speed resistor, which regulates the amount of electricity to the fan, which then controls how fast the fan spins.  This this part works by restricting the flow of electricity, that extra energy become heat, explaining why this component can be found close to the fan it controls, as that provides some cooling.  In this part of the world, something hot will condense the moisture out of the air, which probably contributes to the part's demise.

Old part, note bubbling

Coating the part with some moisture-resistant material performs the important job of keeping wiring on the part from making contact in such a way a short-circuit occurs, which looks like what happened on the failed part.  Notice the bubbling close to the connector, it looks like some water worked its way under the coating; guessing the heating and cooling cycles resulted in the coating separating from the sub-strait thus spoiling the circuitry.

A Small Find

Found the Owner's Manual!

When I removed the panel covering the fan, out fell the original owner's manual for the car and a black Aldi job application.  I'm guessing the book fell from an overloaded glove compartment above.  For the first time I think ever, I needed to consult the owner's manual to find the neutral override switch and needed to use Ford's (excellent) on-line manual service.  While I might never look at it again, It's nice having the owner's manual for completeness's sake.  I'll give the job application to my youngest kid so nothing goes to waste.

Red Bentley

On my way over to Wal-Mart to get some provisions, and what did I see, but a Continental GT parked off by itself, so I decided to give it a little company whist shopping. 

While pulling into the spot, I realized that I didn't have the best idea of where the hood ended on my car.  I made sure I kept my distance between our bumpers and got this picture before heading into the store.

BTW: the AC is mostly replaced, we're in good enough shape to be on the road, lots of notes and pictures I'm organzing into a few upcomming articles -- learned more than I expected about AC systems.

Seat Handle

My Freestyle came with a broken seat recliner handle. The seat has motors to move it fore and aft, but reclining the seat is a manual affair in my trim level and the handle that did this was broken.  The recline of the seat was a bit more than I would have liked, I could have lived with it had I no choice, but I did have a spare $17 to put into additional driver comfort.

This seemed to be an easy fix -- get a new handle, push onto axle, call it a day.  Getting the new handle was the slightly more expensive than anticipated, as I couldn't find an after-market part via mail order that I knew would fit.  Even "hassle free" mail order returns seem to have some level of hassle.  

I would need to contact a Ford parts dealer, so I used my standby Tasca Auto Parts. Plugged in my VIN and a few clicks later, my order was placed.  A few days later, the part arrived at my door and I was even surprised the color matched.  Must have been color information encoded in the VIN, as I didn't make a color selection when picking the part.  I wouldn't have fussed about the color as long as it worked, but it's nice that it matches.

Worth noting that bag says "Majority Content made in USA".  Considering the bag contains one plastic, injection moulded part, I'm wondering what minority content was from outside the good-ol-USA.  This wording was probably carefully selected as a result several meetings at the legal department whose job it was to approve what appears on product packaging.

Here's the old and new parts.  The part broke in a predictable place given how it's used.  Installation was super easy, line-up the handle so the key was oriented correctly and press.  That's it.  I'm now much more comfy as I head down the road.

Aww, Snap!

So, my accessory belt broke again.  The first time the belt broke, I wrote the problem off to possibly the age of the belt.  It didn't seem unreasonable that the belt was not replaced recently considering the overall poor maintenance of the Freestyle.  When I replaced the belt, I didn't determine the root cause of the failure, I fixed the symptom, or second-order problem.

Belts fail due to the following reasons, and primarily the first two

1. Age
   They're rubber + nylon, so after a while, the rubber and/or reinforcing material breaks down, causing the belt to come apart.  Belts in this state can be described as "crispy" as the rubber looses pliability.
2. Pulley Problems
   The belt rides over a number of pulleys to transmit the force of the crankshaft to other components.  Problems such as poor alignment, wiggling (float), or a stuck (frozen) pulley will break a belt.
3. Obstruction
   Stick + belt = broken. This is unlikely, but so is winning the lottery, and there's probably hundreds of lottery winners every day.

Proper Diagnosis

In my case, since the belt was new, #1 was ruled out, but number 2, well that's probably the problem.  I checked the pulleys before replacement, here's my findings:

Annotated Belt Diagram

The tensioner pulley was as stiffer than an old man's back and the AC pulley was noisy and presented some float.  Float, in this sense, is when a pulley moves perpendicular with respect to its axle.  I decided to take a chance a replace the tensioner: firstly, it was cheap (sub $10) and considering it looked the age of the car, I wasn't surprised it wasn't rolling quietly and smoothly.  The next possible problem would be the A/C pulley, the float causing the belt to be incorrectly aligned and come-off the pulley, but that would be considerably more expensive, so lets start with the cheap fixes first. 

Replacing the Tensioner Pulley

Lots of room to remove part

I put the car up and removed the inner wheel lining to get easy access to the tensioner, held to the engine with one 13mm bolt.  I was expecting a struggle, with a very tight bolt, affixed with a double-dose of blue Lock-tite.  A good pull on the ratchet and that was it! I removed the rest of the bolt with my fingers -- almost too easy.  The part then just fell off into my waiting hands.

There's two other pegs (circled) on the tensioner to hold it in place, once mounted to the engine. This is neat design in that the tension cannot be incorrectly mounted and, at the same time, can be held in place with just one bolt, saving assembly time. 

As with the rest of the engine bay, the part was covered in oil.  I'm sure that I'm leaking from the valve covers, and/or the cover over the timing chain and/or the camshaft seals.  More leaks than an onion farm.  As long as I don't have a puddle in my driveway, that's a problem for a different day.

New (l) and Old (r)

Once off the car, I cleaned the existing part, removed the old pulley by removing the 8mm bolt and swapping parts.  My new part included a small adaptor for applications where the part rested on a smaller axle. I'm guessing this part works on umpteen different cars and the cost of a little ferrule in every box is cheaper than maintaining two different SKUs.

Reassembled and much cleaner

Re-assembled and the part was ready for re-installation.  Considering how easy this change was to do, I should have done it when replacing the belt the first time around. 

I'm happy that I took pictures as I went along, as I didn't know in which direction to install the new pulley -- but since I had a picture of the part right after removal, knowing what to do was easy.

Rattling Continued until it Stopped

Installed the belt, nothing notable there.  Fired-up the engine and it ran just fine.  But the A/C pulley was still rattling.  Figured this was OK, drove the car for about a week and the A/C pulley became louder, developing into a legitimate, full-blown racket.  The noise finally went away when the replacement belt broke, so I know what needs to be done to fix the root cause of the problem.  I've never done any work on an A/C system, so this should be a learning experience. 

Disappering Coolant: Fixed!

My testing harness for dashboard warnings lights, which, incidentally can be used for transportation, presented me with a coolant low light.  And, in fact, the coolant was low, so the sensor was accurate.  (I've always been a little frustrated when the first response to an irregular reading from a sensor is to replace the sensor itself rather than the problems being reported by the sensor.) The next question was, where was it going?  A little investigation revealed it was leaking out of a pipe that ran along the bottom of the radiator, connecting the overflow tank to the radiator and pump.  This was less of a mechanical problem and more of a plumbing problem.

I was disappointed in myself because I saw this dodgy pipe while fixing the water pump and thought to myself: "If it's not broke, don't fix it" and just because it looked dodgy didn't mean it actually was dodgy.  I'm guessing that once the system was running at proper pressure, a weakness in the pipe developed into a leak.  Mechanical systems seem to wear as an entire system, so replacing a part exacerbates the wear in others.  After replacing this pipe, the next-weakest part of the pressurized cooling system are the hoses, then radiator and then the engine block itself.

Locating the part itself was a bit of a hassle.  It was only available directly from Ford -- but when you order from Ford you effectively get overnight delivery to a Ford dealer and it so happens there's one just on my way to work.

Out with the Old

Fixing things was straight forward.  I drove the car up onto ramps, no need to lift using a jack and place jack stands.  Drained the radiator into a bucket from the petcock and found my second Imperial fitting on the car a 1/2inch plastic nut serving as the valve for the petcock, gave it a turn and I didn't get that much coolant.  I could still feel the liquid in the other side of the tube so I'll be ready to catch the coolant when I remove the rubber hose. Curiously, I replaced my dishwasher the week before, all of the fittings, hoses, nuts, bolts were Imperial as well.  Maybe the Crown has a lock on plumbing fixtures as well as socket ends?

To do this job, I got a new toy^Wtool. It's a tool specifically designed to open the clamps on radiator hoses.  It was about $18 on Amazon and a bargain at twice the price.  I figured I would need to remove and replace at least six clamps, and some were not easily reachable.  Having the wired extension made removing the clamps easy in that it was able to open them enough to have the stop tab keep them open.  After opening the clamps, removing the hoses was remarkably hassle free. Without this tool, it would have been much more of a struggle.

With all of the clamps opened, I removed the lower hoses, careful to catch the coolant still retained in the system. About another gallon of coolant exited from the bottom of the radiator. Even with my fancy tool, I had trouble reaching the clamp on the lower hose, so I unhooked the oxygen sensor and pulled the pipe still attached to the coolant return hose upward, looking as though I disemboweled my Freestyle.  The last hose clip could now be reached with ease. 

Failed Clamp

Once out of the car, it was also clear that the section of the pipe closest to the water pump took the brunt rust damage.  When tried to remove the fitting around the hose with my tool, I noticed that is was nearly rusted in half and had adhered to to the rubber.  While I didn't
test, I would be surprised if this didn't hold the rubber to the pipe with enough pressure, resulting in yet another leak.  With very little effort I was able to pull the two parts of the clamp away. The nice straight seam in the metal was a bit odd in that I didn't see anything the fitting was resting upon to cause this indentation.

The pipe's integrity was greater than anticipated, as I expected the pipe to simply collapse into pieces, or fracture where they meet the rubber hoses.  Instead, I needed to scrape a little to find the problems: in two places the rust gave away to expose holes in the pipe.  For comparison, I've included a side-by-side picture of the old part and its replacement.

I'm going to guess enough metal remained to hold liquid at STP but not at running conditions.  With the system no longer leaking at the water pump, the system was under much more pressure than before, thus forcing the liquid out while the car was running. The leaking had also corroded one of the hose clamps, reducing it's ability to hold under pressure as well.

I got everything taken apart and the clock struck eleven bells.  Being a work night, I decided to clean-up and get ready for bed.  I was working in garage and it was a warm evening, so I decided to leave the door open and I pushed the bucket of coolant under the car so the cats wouldn't be tempted to imbibe and it would be out of reach of the kids (worried about them kicking it over), as coolant can be re-used.

In with the New

The next day, a little bit of dish soap on the ends and I "test fit" everything back together again, putting a little soap on the ends to make adjustments easier: 

Auto repair isn't my forte (if you've been reading the blog, that's painfully obvious) but plumbing...  I've done enough plumbing to not make the obvious mistakes.  The process of test fitting lets you understand how sets of fittings will work together before actually welding/sweating them into place, making it easy to fix problems.  In the illustration, I've circled the two fittings I needed to turn the other direction so I could reach the bolt head to tighten them.  Here's what it looked like once in the car and I realized I needed to flip things around:

The air filter housing blocked access to the hose going into the water pump, so I removed the 8mm bolt and pulled it from its rubber grommets.  With that out of the way, I reattached the water pump hose, radiator hose, and return hose -- the soap making it easy to position the rubber hoses.  Just like the dishwasher I installed earlier, I "test fit" all of the connections before clamping them into place.  This works so much better than tightening fittings "as you go" because mistakes can be fixed easily.  In my test fitting, I found that I put the bolt heads on the new clamps facing the wrong direction and I needed to twist the hose heading to the water pump about 90 degrees.  Once lined-up I tightened the various clamps (using an 8mm socket) to fix the replacement part into place.  The picture shows use of the hose clamp tool -- it was a real frustration and time saver.

Finishing-up!

It was now I reached for my used coolant and spied a frog, dead and floating about.  I'm pretty sure my cooling system didn't contain any frogs, so this unfortunate amphibian hopped in overnight and couldn't make its way back out again.  I've heard that coolant was supposed to taste good, so much there's an additive to make it less attractive tasting to kids, I wonder other animals can't taste the additive or maybe my garage attracts less fortunate frogs.

Makes you wonder about the prevalence and abundance of life -- it's simply everywhere.  I wonder what bigger livestock has made its way into my garage when the door is left open?  Given the sheer number of deer, raccoons, groundhogs, turkey, squirrels, mice, owls, small children, pheasant, snakes, dogs, and cats spotted in an average week wondering about the yard, I'm betting an open garage attracts more wildlife than I want to know.

State Inspection Complete

Quick update: State inspection is done, along with two tires and an alignment.  Total cost: $397.57, or about $100 shy of the cost of the car.

Here's how we got to that number:

- Two Mastercraft Tires: $215.18
- Installation (balance, disposal, tax): $18.00
- PA State Inspection: $32.00
- PA Emissions Inspection: $35.00
- Alignment: $75.00
- Governor’s Share: $22.39

The inspection was a mere $67.00, the rest of the bill being the tires and much- needed alignment after replacing the outer tie rods.  As you can see in the outer tie rod post, the front-end of my Freestyle sported poorly aligned, well worn, front tires.  These would have needed a replacement for inspection and during that time the shop would have (rightfully and I wouldn't have questioned, as I trust this mechanic) insisted on the tie rod replacement as well.

Mastercraft Tires

Cooper Tire makes the Mastercraft line, where Mastercraft is the "down-market" or discount brand.  Cooper Tire, based in Findlay, OH, due south on I-75 of Corporal Klinger's home town and Tony Packo's base of operations .  Cooper Tire, no longer a public company, was purchased by Apollo Tyres of Gurgaon, India. Despite foreign ownership, my tires were made in the US:

I've had Mastercraft tires on a few of my cars and haven't been all that impressed.  But they're inexpensive and I'm not sure how much longer my Freestyle will carry on, so I'm not sure if the additional tread life of a better tire would be a good bet. Tooling around on them, they ride quiet and the alignment has taken an uncomfortable shake out of the steering wheel and no more squealing as we go around corners at low speed.

Ugg, Marketing

Stay-Puft Michelin Man

The big question is, however, would I really come to the same conclusion about the subjective performance of the tires if they were labeled differently, or even the objective performance?  When somebody from the Marketing Department talks about a "product", it's not just thing itself (called the device), it's all of the advertising and how that information has been interpreted by the consumer and then applied to the device. 

Alf's edible cousin

I've never seen a Mastercraft commercial, so I don't know what to think about this brand, but I have seen lots of Michelin tire adverts.  Michelin tells me their product makes my car safer and that I should trust a cartoon character constructed from tires selling tires the same way I should trust an anthropometric animal selling me food, like a jolly Ameglian Major Cow.

Thinking back on my other tires from Mastercraft, even if they performed the same, would I held a differing opinion if I was primed to view the brand differently?  I feel better about the Continental tires on my VW (also US made), but I don't know if they're objectively better than any other brand.