A pressure test and one new water pump later, Peer Pressure is sitting in the driveway again (well, technically, it’s across the street so we can get the CR-V out). Turns out it was the shiny new water pump itself that was bad. It was more expensive to have it fixed professionally, but I was tired of fooling around with it here and there and still not getting answers. I bought the thing to drive, and now that the weather’s getting nice, I’d like to take advantage of that. Plus, we still have a ton of stuff around the house that needs to get hauled to the dump…
The mechanic also mentioned the leaky carb, and they tightened the bolts while they had the hood open, which was nice of them. The result of that is an excessively low idle, basically one step above stalling—but the carb isn’t leaking as much as it was. My next major outlay will be to have the carb rebuilt professionally, something I hope to have done in the next month or so.