A Subaru Update!

'Tis Monday! And Cody gave us a call to let us know the Subaru situation. First:  It is not bad. ( Finger's Crossed!)  Turns out, the timing did not quite jump as he had thought.   And the issue was not on the side he had thought.  Instead, a small carbon build up on one of the Piston Heads was causing a stop gap as the top of the piston hit the top of the cylinder.   Translation:  2 more weeks without a Subaru!

At the end of the day, we are getting two new head gaskets, a new water pump, a new Timing belt, A new Harmonic crankshaft pulley, and possibly new wires and spark plugs! ( More on that later)  All for half the price of a gasket job!   Which is a little more than I had originally signed on for, but a LOT less than I was expecting.  

As much as I brag up the Subie,  He is old.  And Subies DO break.  And we have to put this into perspective  It has been 5 years since our last head gasket repair.  In that time, we have put nearly 200,000 miles on him.  That also goes for the timing belt, water pump, and any other basic engine surgery.  I changed out the Spark Plugs and wires three years ago.  They are supposed to be changed out every 60,000 miles or 48 months.  So we are going to swap them out while the engine is out of the bay.  The ones I put in three years ago were a little past their usefulness.  However, they were still firing at least.   

Well, after re-reading my previous posts from 2017 and 2018,( and 2016!)  it seems that MOST of my problems stem from us not replacing key parts before the manufacturer recommendation specs.  And, living here in Iowa, we tend to put a lot of miles on our car.  One of the downsides of living in the country 25 miles from civilization. ( and your job, and groceries, and running trails...) If you think about things that way,  we are probably more lucky than we know.  

The guys have been very cool about things, and answered all of our questions.   The said: Aside from carbon build up, the engine looks pretty good. The reason for the extended time is that they will be sending the engine block to the machine shop to be cleaned up, so that is another slight preventative maintenance we can add to the list.  (I think whenever head gaskets are changed, they send the blog to a machine shop to get cleaned up. )  They even said they will clean up the engine bay while the engine is out.  Possibly because they don't want to get their hands any dirtier than necessary.  

So two more weeks without the Subie.   Bummer!  But I'm hoping he will come out of this looking and feeling brand new-ish.  Well, as brand new as any vehicle over 350,000 miles can feel.   

In the mean time, we will continue to go to Farmer's Markets with the Loaner car: a Honda Santa Fe.  It has the room that allows our tent set up and soap boxes to fit nicely.  And I can get my bike inside easy enough.   By the way!  The 88 Oldsmobile was so big, I could fit my bike in the BACK SEAT!  Talk about roomy!   I'm thinking they do not make many vehicles like that anymore. ( Anything that is NOT a minivan or Suburban. )  

Girls helped with Dino's.

Also, I will continue to chalk in the park.   It rained hard this morning, so I'm guessing most of my previous murals are gone.   Which is a good thing! As I was running out of places to do my drawings.   Yesterday, a couple of the girls showed up and joined in to put a couple dinosaurs out there.

Washed away by rain...

   Too bad their drawings  did not last longer...But that is Ok!  They seemed to have a good time and I let them do a lot of the chalking.   With a little more encouragement, they might come down and do their own chalk drawings in the future. (Now that they know all of the tricks and tips.)    However,  School started today!  So looks like they will not be showing up anytime before 3:00 in the afternoon... For the rest of the year.   So I will have the entire park to myself once again. 

Thanks for stopping and and hearing my sad tale of Subie Woes....   Hopefully,  two weeks from now,  we will have a happier ever-after story to share.   We shall see.