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I got out to the garage for a couple of hours tonight, and...it's getting better.
I drained the oil that was in there, since I wasn't sure if any coolant had leaked in over the past week. The oil looked OK, so that was encouraging. The magnetic drain plug had a tiny bit of metal accumulated on it (a few flakes mostly) so that was encouraging to not see acres of shavings there.
Even though the oil looked pretty good (just a bit dark from the assembly lube) I filled it up with fresh oil, then got the electric drill and the primer tool out. After about 2 minutes of lugging, the drill started to spin easy. Turns out the chuck had loosened and it was spinning on the shaft. Tightened it back up and went another 3 or 4 minutes, and got oil on the top. One problem solved! Good thing too, I think the drill has about had it, started to smell kinda...overworked.
I wasn't trusting my electric temp gauge, so just to make sure I wasn't cooking anything, I replaced it (temporarily) with a mechanical one. I tested that one earlier tonight in a pan of boiling water (read 208-209 instead of 212) so I knew I had a good gauge.
There was a decent sized puddle of coolant under the car, so I mopped that up first. I put the bottle of bars leak in the radiator, and topped it off with water. The directions said to run it for 15 to 30 minutes, so...I ran it for 30 minutes. At first it was leaking pretty consistently, then it slowed way down. At 30 minutes there was only one very slow drip.
So...fingers crossed...I have the oil problem solved (impatience on my part) and it looks like the stop leak is going to fix the coolant leaks. Things are looking up!
I drained the oil that was in there, since I wasn't sure if any coolant had leaked in over the past week. The oil looked OK, so that was encouraging. The magnetic drain plug had a tiny bit of metal accumulated on it (a few flakes mostly) so that was encouraging to not see acres of shavings there.
Even though the oil looked pretty good (just a bit dark from the assembly lube) I filled it up with fresh oil, then got the electric drill and the primer tool out. After about 2 minutes of lugging, the drill started to spin easy. Turns out the chuck had loosened and it was spinning on the shaft. Tightened it back up and went another 3 or 4 minutes, and got oil on the top. One problem solved! Good thing too, I think the drill has about had it, started to smell kinda...overworked.
I wasn't trusting my electric temp gauge, so just to make sure I wasn't cooking anything, I replaced it (temporarily) with a mechanical one. I tested that one earlier tonight in a pan of boiling water (read 208-209 instead of 212) so I knew I had a good gauge.
There was a decent sized puddle of coolant under the car, so I mopped that up first. I put the bottle of bars leak in the radiator, and topped it off with water. The directions said to run it for 15 to 30 minutes, so...I ran it for 30 minutes. At first it was leaking pretty consistently, then it slowed way down. At 30 minutes there was only one very slow drip.
So...fingers crossed...I have the oil problem solved (impatience on my part) and it looks like the stop leak is going to fix the coolant leaks. Things are looking up!
