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Monday morning I get up early to go to work (I'm in the Air Force & fly on C-130's), my wife's '90 N/A is blocking me in my carport, so I start it to move it out of the way, and the power dies suddenly. No electrical power whatsoever! I'm thinking, great, I spend $140 on an Optima battery not 5 months ago & this is what I get. So, I get out my multimeter to check it for volts....12.5 volts is what it reads....hmmm....battery is still good, damn it! It's raining fiercly & I'm getting soaked (I live in Okinawa & we were in typhoon watch), I decide to pull out the battery just for giggles, and the negative cable comes off in my hand, it was broken in half. I go inside & call work to tell them I'm late & can't get in to work until I get her car fixed & out of the way....they actually were cool about it. I found some leftover amplifier power wire from my last install & manage to rig a decent replacement cable & got her car running...cool, now I finally get into work after fighting the Japanese traffic, and I'm almost 1 1/2 hours late! A day goes by, and I clean up my '90 Twin Turbo, and I find rust starting to form on one of the T-Tops on the forward edge near the greyish colored moulding. There was nothing there a week ago, and now I can see tiny bulging under the paint & rust in the crack of the moulding. Dammit! The car only has a bit over 60,000 miles on it too! I wash it at least once a week, and wax it a minimum of once a month with good quality carnuba wax. Two days later, my wife comes home from work after me and said she parked out on the street because her N/A is overheating and making a funny noise! I let the engine cool off & check the radiator....2 1/2 gallons of water later it is full. I'm scared to start the engine, thinking that it's toast. I crank it and it starts right up, no noises, and I let it run for awhile....no overheating. I check for leaks, and I can't find any, so I take it for a drive around the block going a bit fast & keeping it in low gear to make it heat up. The car stays cool. OK, I park & look underneath & it's leaking COLD water somewhere around the firewall area, dripping very slowly near the exhaust. I figure out it's the a/c drain, and take a deep breath. What's next?! I tell my wife (for the hundredth time) "Every time you stop for gas, check ALL of your fluids!" I noticed the overflow container is leaking, and guess that it's pissed out the coolant bit by bit until she overheated it in rush hour traffic. I guess I'll try to figure out how to get it out and repair or replace it....Nissan will probably want to charge a couple hundred bucks to do it, I think my hot glue gun will do the trick though! I think next year I'm going to sell my Twin Turbo and buy an American car (which I can bring back to the US), since I found out that I can't bring the Z back to the US unless I spend almost $10,000 in addition to bringing another identical Z to CRASH TEST, since it's a right hand drive car and in the US it hasn't been crash tested as a right hand drive car (DOT made this law in '99), I love it, but what a waste if I can't bring it back with me! ARGG!!!
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