First, update on the breather hose:  Couldn't find a darn thing that
would work as a solution to the kinked oil breather hose.  Out of
frustration and the need to have a vehicle running today, I plugged one
end of that heater device into the rubber boot that connects to the mass
airflow sensor.  Then I took the little short breather hose out.  It was
also shot.  Put the long, straight, new breather hose on the other end
of the heater and plugged it onto the oil breather tower.  Seemed like a
good idea to get rid of the kink and shorten the amount of hose there.
Voila, no more oil blasting out of wherever it was coming from!  The
question is, does anybody know of a downside to putting that heater
where I did?  I suppose that, since it's now higher, its function is no
longer relevant because the water will collect on the low end of the
hose.  Unfortunately, I couldn't plug the heater directly into the
tower, else I would have . . .

So, thinking I was good to go for a while, I run around, living my life
today.  I stop at the bank after work, waiting in a long line of cars,
and when I'm leaving the bank I see a big cloud of what looked like
smoke coming out of the back of the van!  =8^O  I pull over, grab the
fire extinguisher and throw the back open, carefully, for fear that
flames will come leaping out and burn my face off.  What I find is that
the engine is now not only covered in oil (what I couldn't get cleaned
up from before), but also in, yes, you guessed it, antifreeze.  Once
some of the steam had cleared (it just condensed on all my windows), I
found a small hose was loose.  It was a new hose, one that the local
dealer had recently replaced.  It connects up to the engine next to the
power steering pump on one end and to a metal tube over the overflow
tank at the other.  I reconnected it, started cleaning things up and put
the rest of my 50/50 mix that I always carry with me in to the expansion
tank.  It immediately gets sucked into the engine.  The one good thing
that happened was that all this happened across the street from a
grocery store, so I got some more antifreeze, distilled water, another
roll of paper towels, and another bottle of hand cleaner, and topped
everything up.  Got home without it overheating, so I'm hoping I dodged
the bullet on that one.  Tomorrow I'll begin the process of letting the
system bleed itself.

Bleed itself?!?  Yes, that's what I said.  Shortly after I got my van, I
had some problems wherein the little red blinky light would come on but
the engine temperature wouldn't go up.  I fixed the problem by being
sure that there was always coolant in the overflow tank.  Then, when I'd
get up the next day, when the system was cold, I'd be sure the expansion
tank was topped off and the overflow tank was at the Max level.  After a
couple of days of doing this, I didn't have to add any more coolant and
the blinky light problem went away . . . for three years.  This van
actually does do a decent job of bleeding itself despite all the horror
stories that abound.

So, let's see what joys tomorrow brings . . .
Marc Perdue