Can't Find a Leak in "Rory Equinox"

Yesterday Hal put a couple of jack stands under my Equinox and looked all over for any sign of something leaking. I even got inside and pumped the brakes several times while he traced out the lines. Then he put on the new tire that he picked up at Ball Tire in Alpena after bringing the flat one in the day before. (They had to order this Cooper Touring tire, none were in stock.)

Today I started him up and backed Rory into some clean snow and let it idle for a good 15-20 minutes, then moved the car and did some brake testing. There were no signs of anything having leaked onto the snow, of any color. And the brakes felt great. I am going to assume then that one of my silly dogs decided to piddle where my car had been after I got home Wednesday just to make me worry. I also checked fluid levels before I garaged my car and everything seems fine. So in the end, this minor fiasco only cost us about $138.

Something else I noticed when I had gotten home that day that has nothing to do with my car was the freezer atop the refrigerator in the garage was not staying cold. When I opened the door to add some ice cream, large chunks of ice fell out (this is an old, manual defrost freezer) and I discovered all the meat half thawed and the package of shrimp very thawed. I transferred everything to a cooler and put it outside. As the outside temperature was about 17 degrees everything refroze quickly. I put a thermometer in the freezer and it registered about 34 degrees. The refrigerated items I transferred to the kitchen fridge which required taking the beer and soda out to fit it all in.

I've turned the control to the coldest setting and at one point the temp dipped down to 15 degrees. I threw a couple of bottles of ice water inside and a couple packages of meat and have been watching it closely the past 36 hours. Today it's hovering around 29, but that doesn't bode well for staying below freezing. Hal thinks the garage is simply too cold even though it's got hot water pipes from the wood stove running through it so the compressor isn't cycling on as often. I suppose that is a possibility but as the outside temperatures just don't want to cooperate by rising (it is the dead of winter, as they say, and last night's low was -0.6) I don't see anything changing for the better. About the only thing we can do is move it into the basement which is a pain because we have to find a place to put it and it isn't exactly easy to move, and hope that does the trick.

Otherwise, I get to buy a new refrigerator for the kitchen and move my current 18 cu ft Amana downstairs. I've been wanting a larger fridge for years (one of the reasons for changing the kitchen layout last February before we had the floor redone, was to make room for a bigger one) and this could be my opportunity. Guess it all depends on what Hal really wants to do. I know what I'd like to do.