Fledgling Mechanic

Tuesday was the day from hell around the Tiearney household. Monday, the day before, Melissa's car overheated on the way home from work and fortunately she was able to make it home just in time. We thought we had gotten the water pump/coolant, etc. issue taken care of over the weekend when Melissa's home pastor spent some time putting in a new water pump. So much to our chagrin, here we were with an undrivable car and not much time to fix it. We called Melissa's pastor and he gave us some instructions. We had to get a part from the Chevy dealer and then bleed some air from someplace. I picked Melissa up from work and we went to the Chevy dealer but they didn't have the part we needed, which was just a small little freeze plug that went over a hole on the engine (apparently the other one got a hole and popped off). Then that Chevy dealer directed us to another Chevy dealer two towns over. Fortunately they had the part, so we bought two just in case we messed one up and because it was only 3 dollars total. Well, we did end up messing one up when we started trying to put it in. This led to a downward spiral of frustration and not knowing what to do, which culminated in another call to the pastor and a detailed walk-through of what we should do. At this point, it was already well past 9:00 PM and quite dark out. We finally got the plug in and then started opening this little vent to bleed out the air that built up in the tube connecting the coolant tank with the engine. Apparently this feature is an extreme rarity on cars, and it was something no one had ever heard of or seen before. We carefully opened the vent while talking to the pastor on the phone, but unfortunately it came open too far and went shooting straight up as a stream of hot coolant shot straight out of the hole. This left us in the worst predicament yet because without that cap, the car could in no way be driven. So we spent the next hour combing the parking lot around the car and the grass in front of the car with no luck. Extremely frustrated, I plopped down on the sidewalk with my head in my hands and just said a prayer that we could find this tiny little cap. After that, I got up once more to make another round with the flashlight and amazingly there it was laying on the pavement. I let out a little scream of ecstasy and put it back in its place. With that small cap back on, we were able to run the car a couple times in order to bleed out all the trapped air. Now it's running pretty well again with no problems yet. I never thought I would ever even attempt to do my own car work, and after doing it I don't think I want to do too much more. I do, however, have a much greater respect for mechanics. I don't have enough patience to deal with stupid car problems.