Bruce Garrett Cartoon
The Cartoon Gallery

A Coming Out Story
A Coming Out Story

My Photo Galleries
New and Improved!

Past Web Logs
The Story So Far archives

My Amazon.Com Wish List

My Myspace Profile

Bruce Garrett's Profile
Bruce Garrett's Facebook profile


Blogs I Read!
Alicublog

Wayne Besen

Beyond Ex-Gay
(A Survivor's Community)

Box Turtle Bulletin

Chrome Tuna

Daily Kos

Mike Daisy's Blog

The Disney Blog

Envisioning The American Dream

Eschaton

Ex-Gay Watch

Hullabaloo

Joe. My. God

Peterson Toscano

Progress City USA

Slacktivist

SLOG

Fear the wrath of Sparky!

Wil Wheaton



Gone But Not Forgotten

The Rittenhouse Review

Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Steve Gilliard's Blogspot Site



Great Cartoon Sites!

Howard Cruse Central

Tripping Over You
Tripping Over You

XKCD

Commando Cody Monthly

Scandinavia And The World

Dope Rider

The World Of Kirk Anderson

Ann Telnaes' Cartoon Site

Bors Blog

John K

Penny Arcade




Other News & Commentary

Lead Stories

Amtrak In The Heartland

Corridor Capital

Railway Age

Maryland Weather Blog

Foot's Forecast

All Facts & Opinions

Baltimore Crime

Cursor

HinesSight

Page One Q
(GLBT News)


Michelangelo Signorile

The Smirking Chimp

Talking Points Memo

Truth Wins Out

The Raw Story

Slashdot




International News & Views

BBC

NIS News Bulletin (Dutch)

Mexico Daily

The Local (Sweden)




News & Views from Germany

Spiegel Online

The Local

Deutsche Welle

Young Germany




Fun Stuff

It's not news. It's FARK

Plan 59

Pleasant Family Shopping

Discount Stores of the 60s

Retrospace

Photos of the Forgotten

Boom-Pop!

Comics With Problems

HMK Mystery Streams




Mercedes Love!

Mercedes-Benz USA

Mercedes-Benz TV

Mercedes-Benz Owners Club of America

MBCA - Greater Washington Section

BenzInsider

Mercedes-Benz Blog

BenzWorld Forum

March 22nd, 2020

Tales From The Plague…(continued)

My car is a diesel, a Very Nice three litre V-6 bi-turbo Mercedes-Benz diesel sedan. I bought it for their legendary longevity and fuel economy, which is nice for road tripping. But diesels don’t like being parked and not running for very long. Last time I let that happen when I did take it out it threw a check engine light and went into a kind of limp mode, that I was able to trace to a possibly stuck exhaust gas recirculation valve. After driving it a while the problem went away and hasn’t returned. Since I live within walking distance of work, and to most everything I need on a day to day basis, not letting the car sit for extended periods is something I have to manage. Usually that’s a nice weekend day long pleasure drive in the countryside. Now that we all need to stay indoors as much as possible due to COVID-19 that’s not really do-able.

The car has been sitting since last Tuesday afternoon when I took my house sitter to the train station for his return home. So today I figured I’d take it for just a short drive up I-83 to Shawan Road and back while we’re still allowed to leave the house. The idea was simply to at least get the engine up to temperature, and give it enough of a drive that if the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) needed a cleaning cycle it could get a full one. I can always tell when it’s been doing that right when I turn it off because it smells like something’s burning. Which…it is. But it’s supposed to be.

My street is more full of parked cars this morning than last, which I guess is good. Out on the highway traffic was exceptionally light…nearly non-existent…which is also good. The big electronic traffic billboards were all telling us to Stay Home, and it seemed this morning that most people were.

I felt reasonably sure that I wasn’t causing any problems by taking the car out for a routine maintenance drive and back as I never left the car until I got back home. At some point we may be officially told not to leave our homes at all and then I don’t know what I’ll do about the car. You folks with all electric cars you can charge at home have it pretty good right now, though I suppose gasoline burners don’t suffer as much from just being parked for extended periods like diesels can.

Leave a Reply

Visit The Woodward Class of '72 Reunion Website For Fun And Memories, WoodwardClassOf72.com


What I'm Currently Reading...




What I'm Currently Watching...




What I'm Currently Listening To...




Comic Book I've Read Recently...



web
stats

This page and all original content copyright © 2022 by Bruce Garrett. All rights reserved. Send questions, comments and hysterical outbursts to: bruce@brucegarrett.com

This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.