Muy Caliente!

Don’t worry, I am talking about myself.  It has been very cold here lately.  In fact, today is the first day in over a week that is has been above freezing.  Unfortunately Honda of Princeton decided they would save their $1.50 and filled my windshield washer tank up with water rather than the proper fluid last time I had the oil changed.  Needless to say, I haven’t been able to rid my windshield of the terrible NJ salt and it has been getting pretty crusty.  Well, while Sara and I were grocery shopping on Monday, I saw some windshield washer fluid on sale and decided to pick some up to cure this horrible problem.  In fact, I was so motivated that while Sara was loading the food in the trunk, I would fill up the tank under the hood.  Popped open the top and proceeded to fill up the bottle all the way to the top.  Then I looked to my right and saw another tank, this one with a giant blue picture of some windshield wipers.  Yup, I am a moron.  I filled the coolant overflow tank to the brim with window washer fluid.  After calling my Dad, AAA (clueless), and Honda (also clueless) I decided to drive my car to my parents house and flush out my coolant system and replace it with fresh water and antifreeze.  We got to my parents and I borrowed a bucket, tools, some bottles of water, and a gallon of antifreeze my Dad had lying around.  Well, since there is only about 3 inches of room between the radiator and the engine, I was pretty limited in what I could do in there.  It was only 20 degrees Monday and with the wind blowing constantly, my hands were numb almost instantly, especially when wet with antifreeze.  I did manage to figure out where the coolant piping ran and which hose to disconnect to drain the expansion tank (only after I pulled the wrong hose off first and drained the coolant from the radiator first, did I mention it was tight and hard to see?).  After I drained the tank, I proceeded to pour in a bottle of water and a bottle of antifreeze (50% mix).  Started it up, everything seemed fine.  Then my Dad called and I told him what I did.  He then informed me that the bottle of antifreeze he had lying around was in fact antifreeze already drained from a previous car.  Fantastic.  So my theoretical 50% mix was now only 25% and it was old, dirty fluid.  Needless to say, my car was going to get an oil change this weekend anyway, but will now also receive a full coolant flush.  Yippee!!  To make matters worse, when I was pulling the bucket full of drained coolant out from underneath my car, it split in half from the cold spilling antifreeze all over my parent’s driveway.  Oh, and my windshield washers still don’t work because the pump is still surrounded by ice.