Are you sick of me talking about my car yet? =) Yesterday, I had a little scare–I thought I’d blown another head gasket. We went to Wal-Mart Sunday night, and when we returned, I thought I smelled coolant burning off in the exhaust. I really didn’t want to deal with something like that again, so I just ignored it and hoped it would go away. Yesterday morning, I went out to take a look at the car, and there was a puddle of antifreeze on the ground underneath it, just like the last time the head gasket blew. After poking around the engine compartment for a few minutes, I found that the coolant was coming from somewhere on the top of the engine, right near the head gasket–I feared the worst. I went to my garage and got a bright halogen light, shined it on the engine, then started the car. I worked the throttle by hand, revving the engine pretty high, and I saw the leak. It was just a coolant line that runs from the engine block to the thermostat housing. I had some fuel line laying around, so I used that to replace the old line.
I’m still not sure how well I trust the Subaru now, even after all these repairs. I drove it for about an hour and a half on Sunday for 40 miles of off-road, low-speed, high-rev driving out around Pinnacle Peak, and didn’t have any problems. I was pretty nervous about driving the car out there, because I didn’t bring any of my tools. If anything had happened, it would have been a long walk back to town.