Thursday Glenn finally took the car in to be worked on. He naively set aside a paultry $300 for the repairs, thinking it wouldn’t all be used. I laughed. Considering Herb (our mechanic) had already done a once over and couldn’t find the leak the last time he had the car, I knew we were going to get hit with some hefty labor costs. After having the car for a day and a half Herb called us to give us the news.

The leak in the fuel system was found in the PCV valve. It was replaced and now our knocking is past tense. But that’s not all of it. It seems the car shaking like a mofo was completely unrelated. See, back when we bought the car we had some problems with it misfiring. As it was still under warranty the dealer replaced the spark plugs… or so we thought. Of the six plugs, one was an original part. The other five? Yes, they had been replaced, but with plugs for regular Tauruses. Ours is a Flexi-Fuel, which requires special plugs. To add insult to injury, they were crap plugs. So they started acting up far sooner than they should’ve.

After replacing the plugs Herb changed the oil. Given the facts that the engine had been running hotter that normal and that Glenn has this annoying knack to put off routine maintainence (such as oil changes) as much as possible, I didn’t think it was a bad idea. Anyway he took the car for a test drive. A couple blocks away from the garage steam starts shooting up from the passenger’s side. The “hose” from the overflow tank to the radiator had burst. So that also had to be replaced.

The total? $491. Considering the fuel pump that got replaced of the summer cost us $500 that’s a bargain. I have to dig out the owner’s manual to verify this, but I figure that once we get the struts replaced next month all the major repairs should be done. Man, when Fords hit the 100,000 mile mark they fall apart, don’t they?

On a positive note: I got a call from my uncle last night. We are now the proud owners of his old 40″ LCD screen TV. It just barely fit into our cabinet! I know LCD monitors use less electricity than CRTs, but I wonder if LCD TVs work the same. I guess we’ll find out. It even has inputs on the front that I can hook up my computer to. Now if only I can convert the livingroom into the computer room…

Oh! And I lost another pound! Whoo hoo!