Heat

If you've been reading since the beginning, you might remember that my personal truck stranded me shortly after I started working here by pouring copious amounts of coolant on the ground and threatening to overheat. The coolant seemed to be coming from the back of the engine. I don't claim to be any kind of mechanic whatsoever, but the first place that came to mind as a source for the leak was one of the gaskets on top of the engine. My understanding is that a blown gasket leaking green fluid from the top of the engine is generally a really bad $ign.

Lucky for me, after climbing over, under and through the engine compartment, I traced the source of the leak to the heater core. Apparently this heater core device has nothing to do with the engine itself, but instead takes hot liquid that has passed through the engine and uses it to blow hot air inside my truck. I learned this from the wonderfully illustrated manual I bought at AutoZone.

I called my friend Littlefield from back in school to get his advice. It occurs to me that I don't even know Littlefield's first name. We all just called him Littlefield. He's a wizard under the hood, so I called him up, told him what I saw and asked him how much he thought it would cost to fix it.

"Just bypass it," he said. "Coupl'a bucks."

"Bypass it?" I asked. "Don't I need it?"

"Not really." Littlefield then proceeded to explain to me how to bypass it. It was really quite easy. One hose delivers hot liquid into the heater from the engine. Another hose returns the liquid to the engine after the heater core is done with it. To bypass the heater, you just pull the hoses off and connect them together.

Tools: Flat head screwdriver.

Time: Five minutes.

Cost: $2.78 for the hose connector.

That was a great relief, because at $6.25 per hour, $225 per month for rent, an $87 per month charge for my health insurance, $78 per month for my truck insurance, etc., I have NO MONEY to replace a heater core or any other expensive automobile part. I'm barely making ends meet as it is. I didn't even try to find out how much that thing would cost, because I know it just isn't going to happen.

Now for the catch. There had to be a catch.

Sure the truck doesn't need the heater core. It works just fine without it. The problem is that without hot water running to the heater, there's no heat in the truck. And it's cold as hell here right now. I heard our Weather Nerd (his words, not mine) say we're running about 15 degrees below average right now. Luckily I have the Hate Van to drive to and from work, but we're not allowed to drive station vehicles off the clock. If I want to go anywhere--to the store, to a bookstore, to simply explore the area, etc.--I have to take my truck and freeze my balls off. Once frozen off, they don't reattach easily.

Further, when I've been driving the truck for a little while, my own body heat brings the temperature inside up slightly. It's not enough to make it any more comfortable, but it IS enough, with the moisture from my breath, to fog up my windshield. I have to run the defroster to be able to see where I'm going. But the defroster only blows freezing air, making the truck cabin feel that much colder.

I drive as long as I can with the defroster off, until I can only make out shapes shifting around behind the opaque screen of glass in front of me. Then I turn the defroster on full blast until the glass is clear, only to repeat the cycle.

It's not fun being poor.