Your Toyota And You

[File Under: Things You've Never Really Thought About Before]

Well, i don't know about you, but until last week, i'd never fully appreciated the amount of water a good air conditioner can condense out of the air.

Can't picture it? Here's one easy way:

1. Clog the drain hose on your car's A/C.
2. Drive from Florida to North Carolina.
3. And back.
4. In July.
5. Check the back seat.
6. If the floor mats aren't floating, you didn't do it right.

We recently tried the above experiment for the second time in a month, and after two days of soaked carpets the resulting odor was so thoroughly malevolent i found myself looking furtively over my shoulder to see what sort of hideous beast had given birth and died under the back seat. It was not good. It may also have had something to do with the boxed remains of my pulled pork dinner special sitting back there, but i ate those for lunch today, and they weren't that bad yet. So i figure the smell was mainly the carpet. K. concurred, though not without a pointed remark on some totally random unrelated subject, something about me and not showering often enough or something. I mean, completely off topic. She does that sometimes.

Anyway, our hand-me-down Camry has even less ground clearance than my old hand-me-down Corolla did (forever may it run), meaning you can't get underneath it to look at anything. Not even partway. Not even your head. Unless you have a decent floor jack or your own in-garage lift, or are some unique variety of midget, you're out of luck. I couldn't see anything on the engine side of the firewall from above, either, so i started pulling panels off under the dash.

Now, for some reason i've always resisted picking up a Chilton manual for this car. Probably it's out of some last vestige of deep-seated reluctance to drive a Camry, even an old dented one, but whatever the reason, i was on my own. Armed with the finest of directions from About.com, therefore, i went looking for a small black tube coming out of a medium-size black container. It wasn't where they seemed to think it was, but it was indeed medium and black. It also had about a quart of water still trapped inside when i pulled the hose off. This was not the worst of problems, as it did drain quite nicely down out of sight, into that handy little floorpan hollow underneath the seat. In addition to being totally unreachable, this was also the only carpeted area in the car that had been - up to this point - still dry.

So. Pressing on, i went to work on the hose with my Special Tool. (If sawed-off coathangers are good enough for the $12,000 pieces of $2,000,000 aircraft i work on, they're good enough for our Camry.) So the hose is clean, the evaporator drains, and the carpet is almost dry. The trained nose may still detect a light fungal note in the interior bouquet, but this too shall pass.

Which has allowed me to turn my attention to the minor insect issue that has developed in the meantime. It was on my morning drive last week that i first noticed the long column of small ants making their orderly way out of the dashboard and down the center console to disappear somewhere between the seats. I think My first considered action was to smush as many as i could reach. This being at seventy miles an hour, i probably should have considered a bit more first, such as whether or not they might be fire ants. Fortunately, they were not. In fact, they didn't seem much bothered at all by my veritable Old Testament smiting of their little marching army. I observed the survivors as they reformed and retreated back into the dashboard, and they did not appear much discouraged.

Since then, i've never seen more than two at a time, like little ant scouting parties sent out to reconnoiter. This seems to take place when the engine is getting right about up to operating temperature. I guess the wanderlust comes upon them when things get a little warm. Well, i can't blame them. Summer in Florida does the same to me.