The Birthday Thing

My younger son's birthay recently occurred.

We had a get-together at my mom's house. It worked out pretty good, since the older is there these days, and he's quite the chef!!!

He'd asked the younger what he wanted, and he said sloppy joes. Pretty easy, but no!!! The older had to go way above and beyond!!!

To start off, he made his own buns. Pretzel buns, with either coarse kosher salt or everything seasoning!!!

He went crazy on sides, too!!! He made a whole cookie sheet of mozzarella sticks, a bunch of fried zucchini, a few onion rings (he was running out of breading) and sweet potato fries.

Of course, he had to make up a bunch of sauces to go with it. marinara, ranch (because all bottled ranch is trash), and cheese, for on the sloppy joes.

We played cards quite a bit and stuff. Later on in the afternoon, my mom tells me her car has been overheating. I head out to take a look. Everything looks fine, but the coolant looks dirty. I tell my mom I'll get some flush and coolant and clean it out and see if that helps. Things spiraled from there.

I drain the coolant, and my mom comes out and asks if I'm going to do like she's seen my dad & I do for years, splice a flushing tee into a heater hose and back-flush it. I take a quick look around and find a box of a half dozen flushing tees, so I start looking at the heater hoses. They have the squeeze to release clamps, but the upper one is pointing to where I can't get pliers on it. I notice the end of the hose has a sleeve on the end with one screw holding it to where it attaches to the engine, so I try taking the screw out, and find out the hose barb just slides in, with an O-ring seal. I reposition the clamp, and screw it back in... except I end up twisting the head off the screw!!!

Okay, a closer look at what's going on here. The hose is connected to an aluminum bracket with the alternator on it. To get the end of the screw out, I'm going to have to pull it out. I thought it was going to be a typical GM type thing where every accessory is bolted to one bracket, and it was going to take me a day just to remove it. Happily, that turned out not to be the case. Three bolts holding the alternator on, and three more holding the mount to the engine. Of course, the drive belt has to come off to remove those. As I'm removing them, I notice something... on the other side of the mount (why does the heater hose connect to a bracket, anyway???) the coolant line comes out... but the whole top is missing!!! I think I figured out why it was overheating!!! Another run to the parts store, and I've got a replacement (after looking it up on my phone so the counter guy could cross reference the part number) and a couple hours later, everything is back together!!!