I drove down to my friend's house to work on the car again. I hate driving down I-5. And will someone please tell me how in the heck a 4 cylinder Kia Sportage only gets 20 MPG on the freakin' highway? They should have named it the Suckage. Holy crap.
Well, I successfully installed a bunch of fuel line, and installed a second replacement gasket on the power steering pump cap. The first one swelled up for some reason. If this one does it, I swear I'm going to replace it with a home-brewed cork gasket.
I got a few feel good vibes off of doing the simple things, and decided to tackle the transmission fluid and filter, as well as the shifter bushings. Clearly, I need to learn some foul German words, because shouting four letter words at the car in English apparently doesn't help it to understand that you want the freakin' bushing to go in, not pop back out bounce out from beneath the car, forcing me to go fetch it each time. Just what are those bushings made of? Flubber?
The fluid and filter change went a little better until I discovered that my none of the crush gaskets I bought for the car are even remotely the correct size. Of course, by this time the parts store in BFE, Washington are all closed, and so I killed time for the rest of the evening chasing what must be 20 years of dirt from the car by scrubbing various filthy interior parts with soap, water, and old toothbrushes. The following morning, I found one store in town that actually had crush gaskets of the correct size, and purchased two of them for the sum of $4.23. WTF! What? They're copper, not freakin' gold! Sure, the wrong size ones are only $0.10 each, but the ones I need are how much? I haven't been more bewildered since... Well, that story isn't fit for public.
To make a long story short, I managed to get everything buttoned back up, and the transmission does shift much better. The gear selector also functions perfectly, as now the gear selection is precise, and the car no longer slips out of park on hills. The bad news it that I have to take it apart again, because clearly I messed up the neutral safety switch, as the car will now only start in reverse.
In other news, my Mercedes clearly has an expensive drinking habit. The wonderful, and I might add, completely non-functional Chrysler POS excuse for a climate control module leaks coolant badly enough that my car requires half a gallon of coolant added to it after running for fifteen minutes. At $12 per gallon, I'm pretty certain the car needs to break that habit, since it's burning more in coolant than it is in fuel. Does anyone have a suggestion for bypassing that pile of junk? I'm not exactly ready to shell out $450 for the electronic conversion right now.