There are mechanics that shouldn't be mechanics

"JGrabowMSt" (jgrabowmst)
07/04/2014 at 23:32 • Filed to: blownheadgasket

So fairly often, I spend a few hours of my day where my girlfriend works. It's a small restaurant, and the food is pretty good, so I don't mind it. I also get a discount. Bonus.

Well, I'm sitting at one of the tables today, and I'm in the middle of watching a terrible Chuck Norris movie (only so many ways to pass the time really), and the delivery driver comes in saying he can't do any more deliveries for the day because his car is completely overheating with steam coming out and everything.

So my girlfriend, knowing I'm "slightly" mechanically inclined asks if I could take a look and see what's going on.

Fine. Interrupt this ridiculously bad Chuck Norris movie, I wasn't totally engrossed in the terrible acting or anything. I didn't really mind, but I know she doesn't like the delivery driver, and I use the time I spend at the restaurant to just chill. But whatever, he's having a rough day, and because now he's not making any money anymore, so let me take a look and see what's going on.

So I ask him to pop the hood, and well, here's where the problems really start to rack up.

2002 Jeep Liberty. 3.6L V6.

Lets step back for a second, and go over some recent work on this:

1) New tires. Like, these things have maybe a few thousand miles on them. The tread was crisp.

2) New alternator. Shiny as can be under there.

Not cheap, considering he doesn't work on this himself. Now, I release the hood, and here's where the problems start:

1) Hood struts are shot. Like, completely. At least he was good at holding the hood up while I took a look at it.

2) I cannot see the fluid level in the overflow tank. Like, I shook the car, and saw no movement.

3) Radiator has a crack behind the upper hose part. Small crack, but the coolant was fizzling out.

Hold on, let me re-phrase that.

3) What was left of the coolant was trying to run away from the chocolate milk monster under the hood.

So I take off the pressure cap. Not good. Straight up chocolate milk. Lumpy chocolate milk.

I was going to top him off with some pre-mixed coolant and follow him home, but this was done. There was no hope for this car in getting home. I told him to take his stuff out, move it to a corner, and I gave him a ride home instead. Car would not have made it to his apartment, not with those hills or his driving habits, and he doesn't have AAA, and I'm not about to waste one of my free tows for this.

Not even really the worst part. So, I'm looking at his car, and I see the crack in the radiator, and I'm poking around some other things, and he's standing over me, just "thinking out loud" about how he knows I fix computers, and normally people who fix computers don't know a thing about stuff like this, so how do I know about stuff like this? Well, SIR, I know about stuff like this because I like cars. So I explain that I just did a lot of work on my Magnum, and that it's not really that big a deal, I had my toolbox in my car from replacing the sway bar link and the broken ground, so it was fine, I was prepared to be able to at least look. Then he says, "I know the coolant looked like that for a while, I asked my mechanic about that, and he said not to worry about it, it's fine."

So I gave him the best advice I had to give. "Never go back to that mechanic."

Sorry, no pics, but it was something not too different from this: