You know, I’ve been feeling pretty good through this whole unemployment period, but I’ve found that being stuck at home without a car is really getting me down.

Why am I without a car? Well, I dropped my 2001 Oldsmobile Alero off at the dealership on Wednesday morning because of a possible coolant leak. The car has only 43,000 miles on it, so it shouldn’t be doing that! Over the last three months I’ve had to add over a gallon of coolant (50/50 water and Dex-cool, the nasty orange stuff), though there’s been no sign of any leaks on the garage floor, nor any telltale smoke from the exhaust. Being a chemical engineer and knowing the concept of mass balances, I cleverly deduced that either my car’s engine had come up with a way of destroying matter (I’m rich!), or the leak was going somewhere else – a concept I really didn’t want to contemplate.

So, I dropped it off at the dealership (yay 60,000-mile warranty!) and hoped for the best. I got a hurried call Wednesday night saying that it was an “intake leak” and they were waiting for the gasket to come in, so it would be another day. Well, this sent me to the net to get a little better understanding of what’s going on. What do I find but GM’s dirty little secret: the lower intake manifold gasket is defective on all 3.1 and 3.4 liter V6 engines built by GM from 2000 – 2003 or so. I was extremely fortunate to have caught it this early, as once the coolant starts to leak into the engine block extensive corrosion and cylinder damage can result. I’m also very lucky that Oldsmobile slapped a 60,000 mile warranty to get people to buy their dying brand – this is about an $850 repair.

Of course, the fun doesn’t stop there. I got a call last night saying that they had replaced the gasket and while pressure testing the system discovered a leak in the water pump, so they’re going to replace that this morning. So, let’s add this to the list of parts replaced on this car, including the alternator, the ignition key cylinder (!), the left front wheel bearing, and the right front wheel bearing, as well as the turn signal switch, which was just recalled. You know what this tells me? I’m going to baby this sucker as much as I can, and if it all possible get rid of it right at 60,000 miles, because I sure don’t want to start paying through the nose when the rest of the car goes to hell. This is a lemon, plain and simple, though regrettably not in the state of NC’s sense of the word (yes, I checked the laws, believe me). I’ll not be buying a GM car again anytime soon.

So, theoretically, they’re going to fix it and give me a call this morning. Either they’ll come pick me up or I’ll get a lift to the dealership from me_not_you. I intend to double-check the part number of the gasket they used to fix it and make sure they used the new, improved gasket instead of just replacing it with one of the old, defective gaskets.

I’ve got more stuff to talk about – I’ll do that in my next post, after I shower.