Home from the hospital (garage)…

The little car is all better and home where it belongs with no damage to the transmission. What happened was that the radiator blew and when that happened anti-freeze found its way down into the transmission casing. Because I had it off the road and shut down within a couple hundred feet and in less than 30 seconds there was no serious damage. I was just lucky that I was in a place where I could do that, and I have this nasty image of how much fun it would have had I had been in the middle of the Champlain Bridge in Montreal.

Even though they say it’s OK I’m still going to take it back in a few hundred kilometers to have them flush it out again just to make sure nothing nasty shows up, but at this time everything looks good. The bottom line is a new radiator, a few seals, hoses, clamps, fluids and only a few hundred instead of a few thousand dollars. We’ll keep you posted.

Trade in or keep?

It turns out that my little red car is going to be OK and the repair costs won’t be too bad. As soon as I realized something was wrong I got it off the road and shut down within 200 feet and that saved it. Still, I’ve been driving this Jeep since last week and I must admit that the style and feel have grown on me. I also like the 4-wheel drive option as where we live can be quite nasty sometimes in the winter. We haven’t had any problems that we couldn’t deal with up to now, but the idea of kicking it into 4-low and not having to worry about the snowplow being late would give me a little peace of mind.

I won’t touch this particular vehicle however because of things I’ve mentioned before and another problem that I’ve discovered since, but I think I could be talked into the same or a similar model without too much difficulty. Has anyone out there ever had a Jeep and if so, did you have any problems?