Cars, the extended sequel and then some

I dare not jinx it, but I brashly suspect that all my car troubles may be over.

I have reached this conclusion based on my suspicion that I have performed the first (much-needed) car maintenance in quite some time on these poor beleaguered Cloudbridge vehicles. Alonso, one of the Cloudbridge workers as well as my backbone and my sanity as I have been getting used to my new position, opened up the hood of the truck with me a few days ago and gave me my first ever lesson in what actually goes on in there.

Things I learned:

1) There should be coolant in there (there wasn’t)

2) There should be steering fluid in there (there wasn’t)

3) The battery should not be loose (it was)

4) The loose battery should not be hitting against the fan belt to the point that it has broken open and is leaking battery fluid (it was)

Needless to say, there were a fair few things that needed to be addressed. I decided to take the truck down to the mechanic to see whether the absence of all these missing yet apparently vitally important fluids had hurt the truck. He refilled everything that I hadn’t already filled up, and he patched up the hole in the battery. He also pointed out something extremely crucial to my 4WD success (or lack thereof): a dial on the front wheels need to be adjusted whenever the 4WD is switched on, thereby enabling the front wheels to engage. This was switched off. That explains an awful lot.

So I drove it back up the hill with no weight in the back. And it drove. Not only that, it drove smooth. Truck: 0 Holly: 1

The next day, Alonso and I opened up the hood of the land rover. Repeat lessons from above (except for the battery, which was firmly secured and all in one piece), with these further educational points:

5) Brake fluid needs to be above the minimum line (it wasn’t)

6) Oil should not feel like tar sand (it did)

No coolant, no steering fluid, minimal brake fluid, shitty oil. So I filled up the coolant and the steering fluid, which I’d learned how to do now, and took the car down to the mechanic for oil and brake fluid. Pretty expensive, but it’s a comforting thought that this car now has a higher probability of continued functionality than it did before, as I’m driving up and down this insane mountain over the next month and a week.

And that’s the story of how I had to learn the basics of under-the-hood car stuff. Nothing fancy, but just enough to see when a car is being totally neglected. Good timing, as I bought my own new first car about a month before coming out to Costa Rica; now that I have been plunged so abruptly into the world of basic vehicle maintenance, I can take these skills home with me and keep my own car (also a Toyota, as are the Cloudbridge vehicles) going for that little bit longer.

On top of my little vehicular victories, I conducted all trouble-shooting, garage visits and maintenance work in Spanish. I can talk about insufficient brake fluid and leaky battery cases and sand-textured oil like a boss. Yeah!