I finally got my tiny garage (I guess it's not really a garage since I can't fit a car in there) organized and all of my tools put away.

It's a good thing, too, because I have some work to do on my car this week and the coming weekend. Yesterday (Saturday, 17-Sep-2022) was really the first time I have been able to give the car a good looking over since we got here (you might recall that I had the car shipped here). Of course, the tires needed air; each was exactly 5 lbs low, interestingly. No problem for my little air compressor. I also did a visual inspection of the suspension at each wheel, and noticed that my rear shocks were leaking their oil. Time to replace them, so I jumped on RockAuto.com (yep, they ship to Canada) and added a couple of Monroe shock absorbers to my cart.

While I was checking the front suspension, I noticed a wet spot on the driveway under the engine, so I crawled underneath with flashlight in hand to check it out (yes, I had the jack, a jack stand, and the wheel in their proper places for safety). There was a drop of oil on the oil drain plug, so I made sure it was tight and that the washer was still intact. I'll keep an eye on that to make sure that took care of the problem. I also happened to notice a bit of coolant on the ground. I remembered that last week I had to add some coolant to the reservoir because I got a "low coolant" message. Now, not long ago, I replaced the oil cooler seals on this car, and I was worried that they had begun to leak again already (NOTE: I could only get Dorman seals for that job, and everybody who has worked on cars knows that Dorman products are, well, let's just say "not great"), but I could not see any oil or coolant leaking from that area. After spending a pretty fair amount of time under the car looking around, I just happened to notice a drip of coolant just behind the water pump pulley. Now, water pump assemblies have a little weep hole on the bottom. Coolant will typically weep out of that hole either when they are brand new and breaking in or when the pump's seals are about to fail. My water pump has 110,000 miles on it (!), so I assume that it's about to give up the ghost. So, I added an AC Delco water pump in my RockAuto shopping cart, too.

The parts are to arrive here on Wednesday, 21-Sep-2022; I'll probably install the shocks on Thursday. Then, if I have time on the following Saturday (and if the weather cooperates), I'll replace the water pump (yes, I will catch all the old coolant and soak up any spills with pig mats and dispose of all of it properly). Fortunately, my engine does not require me to remove the timing belt to replace the water pump; in fact, on my car, after I remove the serpentine belt, I only have 8 bolts total to deal with. I plan to shoot video of both the shock absorber replacement and the water pump replacement and will post each of them after they're edited.

This is a busy week at work, so I hope I can actually deliver on that promise!