Trying to keep old cars running

The vehicle that was my daily driver is out of commission again. It's a high quality government motors vehicle. I shouldn't complain too much because it recently passed 175k miles if you believe the odometer is right. Cooling problems again.

Interesting thing is that after I gave up trying to find the leak we went to drop it off at the garage and the area around t he shop was so full of cars we could barely get in. They have been really busy since early spring. It used to be that I could call them on Monday to get something done and I could drop it off no later than Wednesday. The last time I had them work on the old clunker I called them on Tuesday and they told me to bring it a week from Wednesday. Mostly they are busy because people are trying to keep their old clunkers running so they don't have to spend money on a new ride. I'm in that boat.

My wife's daily driver is getting close to the point of needing a timing belt and that is fairly big bucks. It also has a leak on the bottom. It's been too wet for me to jack it up and crawl under but from the location it looks like a seal on the transaxle. That will be fun on the checking account, no doubt. Fortunately, the leak seems to be slow enough that it hasn't significantly affected the level of any fluids so I'll probably let it go for a while. I can put a lot of transmission fluid in it for what a proper repair will cost.

Good for me that my backup vehicle seems to be working fine, although it has a slow oil leak. It's been leaking for years and it seems to lose about 1/2 a quart of oil between oil changes so I'm not that concerned about it.

One advantage of a gravel driveway is that oil leaks aren't a big deal.