The Core of Evil™

I have the Focus all put back together now. It took me three days to get to the heater core, now know as The Core of Evil™, but I had to wait a couple days for the new one. On Wednesday, I got a call from Shucks telling me that it wasn't going to be in Friday as promised, so I canceled that order and called the Ford dealership in Kent. They were able to get the part in the next day, but quoted me the MSRP price, not the price that they had listed on their site. I got them to sell it to me for their web price, and picked it up the next day.

I got the new core in easily enough, and filled the car back up with water. As I started to put things together, I noticed a puddle forming on the floor. I looked under the car and found a new leak coming from a different part of the car. This time it was the plastic thermostat housing. A crack that was already there must have worsened when I was pulling on the heater core hoses. I got that part off in a few minutes and headed back to the dealership for a replacement. It was back on in short time, and refilled with water. No leaks this time. I spent the rest of the night reassembling everything. I had to buy a cool new tool to get the passenger airbag back in, and by late morning on Friday, I was able to take the car for a test drive. No leaks now, and just had to add a little water as air pockets left the system.

But the strangest thing happened. That bearing noise that prompted dad to propose me doing all this work moved from the rear left, to the front right. I also rotated the tires, moving the rear left tire to the front left. Strange... Upon closer examination, I noticed a large flat spot on that tire. The rear bearing was bad when I got to it, but they tend to self destruct sometimes when you take them off anyway, so I don't know if it was bad to begin with, or just after I removed it. But that rear-now-front tire is really bad. Really all of them were bad. There is one that is thread-bare in one spot. So I'm not going to touch it until it has new tires. Then maybe dad will sell it. And the Toyota. And get a VW Bus.