Cerebral Gibberish

Well on Tuesday when I got to work I noticed a odd sound coming from the car when I opened the door while it was idling. It sounded like something rolling / rattling around in a tin can toward the very front of the car. I turned the AC off to see if the noise would go away and it didn’t. The noise did change as I revved the engine so it would seem to be something run by one of the belts. Well I am just about due for my 60K service so I called and scheduled an appointment to get the service done and to check on this new noise as well as a few other items like my wheel bearings.

Leaving work the car started fine but the noise seemed louder then it was in the morning and a few guys from the office even heard it from across the parking lot. I got home without any problems but I was taking it easy and kept my eyes on the gauges just in case it the noise was the water pump giving up the ghost. The engine was running fine but still making that noise so I shut it down. I popped the hood and pulled out a light to see if I could see anything but the way the engine is crammed into the front of the car I could not really see anything wrong.

This morning I decided to take the motorcycle to work and upon opening the garage door I noticed water dripping from the bottom of the door. I thought to myself “Humm.. thats odd, I didn’t think it rained last night”. As I got closer to the back of the car I noticed two puddles of liquid that lead to the front of the car… Not Good. I could not see where it was coming from since the the bottom of the car has a cover under the engine so I could only tell it was coming from somewhere under the cover. I’m pretty sure the liquid is coolant since it looked like water (not thick like oil) but had a slight slickness to it and look kind of red / pinkish maybe (says the guy that is color blind). Since my car is manual, it can’t be Automatic transmission fluid, granted I’m sure the manual gear box has some fluid in it but I think it would be dripping further back. So it looks like I’ll be towing the car to the dealer on Monday and I’ll be riding the motorcycle until then. The dealer should provide me with a loaner on Monday.

Now I guess some good news might come out of this if it does turn out to be the water pump. My Certified Pre-Owned warranty should cover the cost of replacing the pump and since the water pump is driven by the timing-belt, they are going to have to dismantle the whole front of the car just to replace the pump. So while they are in there I’ll tell them to go ahead and replace the timing belt since most of the cost of replacing the timing belt is labor due to having to dismantle the front of the car. Crossing my fingers.