... Winter Storm Warning in effect from 9 am Wednesday to 4 am CSTI sure am glad I got the Jeep's oil changed today.
Thursday...
The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a Winter Storm
Warning for heavy snow... which is in effect from 9 am Wednesday
to 4 am CST Thursday.
* Timing... snow will begin late Tuesday night or early Wednesday
morning... possibly briefly starting as a mix of rain or snow.
* Main impact... heavy wet snow accumulations of 1 to 7 inches
likely... highest south of Interstate 80 in Cook County and in
eastern Will County. Snowfall totals could vary substantially
over short distances with some areas within the warning likely
seeing much less snowfall... especially in the northwestern
portion of the counties.
* Other impacts... strong northerly winds will gust to 45 mph at
times. Where heavy snow occurs... this will create a wind whipped
snow that will reduce visibilities to near zero making travel
dangerous if not nearly impossible at the height of the storm.
Precautionary/preparedness actions...
A Winter Storm Warning for heavy snow means severe winter weather
conditions are expected or occurring. Significant amounts of
snow are forecast that will make travel dangerous. Only travel in
an emergency. If you must travel... keep an extra flashlight...
food... and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency.
They predicted 3-5 inches a few days ago; now it says "12+".
On the plus side, neither I nor Mrs. Fungus have any place to go and I have plenty of fuel for the snowblower. Let it snow!
* * *
...about that oil change.
So I naturally drained the oil pan, then changed the filter, and ran in six quarts of fresh 10-w30. And when I checked the oil I had no trouble seeing where it fell on the dipstick, because rather than being a clean, golden color, the oil looked black. Right in the middle, between the "full" and "add 1 qt" marks; and I wiped the dipstick and checked it again, and got the same result.
See, here's the thing: the Jeep's gone some 136k miles in its existence, and before it was mine it belonged to the State of Indiana where it was probably not very well cared for. And since starting my current job, I've driven the old crate a lot, about 500 miles a week.
That is going to knock loose a lot of engine gunk. A lot. And a regular oil change, even with a filter change, won't get all that gunk out. The engine's got six quarts of fresh oil in it, and I'm not using any other fluids--even the radiator overflow was still at a decent level--so I know the oil is okay to use.
So what I'll do is run it a few weeks on this batch of oil, then give it the Rislone treatment. That's where you take a quart of Rislone and dump it into the crankcase, then start the engine and run it at idle until it's good and hot. Then you shut it off and drain the oil. (And I'll put the front end up on jack stands to make sure it drains completely.) Once that's done, fresh oil and a new filter.
Back in 1987 when Dad first got the MGB, it had iffy compression; after performing this procedure on the car its compression had improved markedly because the Rislone cleaned a lot of gunk out of the engine. Whenever an engine needs internal cleaning that's the first thing I try; and usually I don't need to try anything else because it works.
That's my plan. Ha, ha.
* * *
Someone should tell Arse Technica that Mann's hockey stick was proven fraudulent. "Another hockey stick", this one in ocean levels--which are not rising at anywhere near the predicted rates, of course.
* * *
I suppose I ought to rest up. Tomorrow I'm going to have a lot of physical labor to do.