the saga continues

Good grief, somebody shoot me please. First of all, those jackasses at the service shops are f-ing full of shit. Second of all, Ford is f-ing full of shit to build a car around an f-ing radiator. I will never buy another ford. Probably. Unless its a Lincoln or something...whatever.

I spent almost all of today working on that goddamned radiator and curently I'm feeling somewhat defeated. It was looking bleak when I couldn't figure out what the instructions meant when they said, "Remove radiator mounting bracket assembly" and thought for sure I was going to have to remove the bumper cover and just the thought of doing that was very overwhelming. Here's why. The Haynes manual does this super nifty thing where to install a radiator is explained in less than 20 semi-detailed instructions. However, you'll find that step 11 is "Remove bumper. See chapter 8 for details" and so you go to chapter 8 and find the "remove bumper" section and it has 10 steps, step 5 is "Remove headlamps, see section 2" and step 12 is "remove fender liners, see section 4" which is another 8 steps, one of which is "Remove the wheels". I imagine this is the scenario that the service shop is trying to sell to me. HOWEVER, it just so turns out that the hard part about removing a radiator from a 97 Mercury Sable is the fact that the hoses all connect on the engine side of the radiator and there is little to no room to work. Keep in mind, this would be absolutely the same scenario if you took the whole front end off. The worst part is that the transmission oil cooler lines use a little plastic quick disconnect "tool", which, of course, only works if your line fittings are not rusted to your radiator, like mine are.

So, after getting off to a great start, floundering for a little while, then having a eureka moment and blazing away, I end up feeling defeated by a pair of poorly places and solidly stuck transmission cooler lines. So I had to give up for tonight. The only option I have is to cut the lines off the radiator so I can remove it, then I'll need to install new lines along with the new radiator. Which probably isn't a bad thing...just another operation I wasn't counting on and which on the face of it SHOULD be relatively simple and hopefully low cost. Right? And I take some small consolation that had I gone with a service shop they would have called me to let me know "Turns out your tranny cooler lines were rusted to the radiator and we had to cut them off, so you'll need new ones of those installed which will take 2 more hours and $200 in parts..." or something along those lines.

Mainly I just feel like I've let my family down, stranding us without a car for who knows how long. Hopefully I can get these lines at an auto parts store for a reasonable price and hopefully there are no more surprises. Oh, and I absolutely HATE spring wire hose clips. What a horrible idea those are.

And to top it all off I felt like shit (maybe it was just because I was practically swimming in antifreeze all day) because I was missing my son. I'm not supposed to be away from him like this on the weekends.