Today was my only “day off” between my working roadtrip to get here and our roadtrip yet to come. On the original schedule, today was the “buy cars in a terrific frenzy and get them ready to go” day. But we’ve already done that first part. So instead, we slept in and took a slow day making repairs and cleaning things out to get ready for tomorrow when we will drive to Canada! (That still feels bonkers to even say, let alone actually do.)
Each car needed something minor. Evan’s Volvo had a terrible aftermarket tint strip along the windshield that he wanted removed. He also Armor-All’d the whole world. George worked on fixing the electrics for the power windows and repairing his instrument cluster which had not only problems with its lights but also its lens was mostly opaque.
I was feeling rather smug in the Celica, feeling like I had nothing actually important to do. I’ve already driven nearly three thousand miles. All I had in mind was putting the driver door threshold in place. Mark included the trim piece in the trunk (not sure why it had even been removed, to be honest) but I needed the clips. Thankfully, George had a box of a million.
So I put on the Mystery Machine hat that Evan gave me and got to work.
This turned out to be quite easy once I got my hands on the clips. This looks so much more respectable now!
I also worked on tightening up the screws that hold in the atrocious pedal pads that the PreviousPrevious Owner installed. They’re awful, and I hate them, and they are so bad that I must keep them. But they were loose, which was a problem all the way up here, so I adjusted that. Amusingly, I found this exact set of pedal pads at an AutoZone today; they were $14. This kills me because the service history that included so much paperwork of repairs declined also included a receipt for like fifty bucks in labor for someone to install these pads.
I figured I might as well run a diagnostics check on the car’s computer. As the engine warmed up, coolant started leaking out… a lot…
Turns out, coolant leaks out of the upper radiator hose (you know, the even hotter side…) when it’s under operating pressure. We unhooked it, determined the hose and the radiator both look okay, and remounted it, tightening the hose clamp a little better around a flange. That seems to be holding for now, at least idling in the driveway. I’m rather pleased! If this fixes my coolant leak, that means one less cause for my car to smell like car part barbecue after each segment.
Also I made a friend… mostly because I didn’t want this little neighbor to try and drink the giant coolant poison spillage I made.
And a few more odds and ends…
After all of that, we ate far too much seafood on the waterfront of the Sound at the Harbor Lights restaurant.
Tomorrow, we take the short drive to Port Angeles and return to Hurricane Ridge, before boarding the first ferry over to Victoria, CANADA. Which is a place, I repeat, that we are going to go to, tomorrow. In these cars that, somehow, we own, which is also insane.
This keeps hitting me in waves — we’re doing this again.