They may have mentioned the oil leak due to a safety inspection, most oversees bases require such things but maybe your area does not. Of course like many shops they may just be upselling the repair service to make money, that what shops do for a living but actually you need to do something with that leak, it could get bad enough without you knowing it until you run out of oil and kill your engine. You say the car is Euro spec so I am thinking that it was not shipped to Germany by another GI in its recent past which would make it a Japanese Domestic model. The valve cover gasket probably can just be tightened down a little, see if the nuts or bolts holding it are semi loose, do not over tighten them as a 10 mm or 12 mm nut stud or bolt will shear off easily. Buy some GUNK brand engine degreaser and clean it up afterwards but watch out for getting water into the spark plug area and in the distributor. Your AC has a leak but how fast it will leak is debatable, its too expensive to fix here in Japan so we just reservice a couple of times a season unless the leak is visible in the engine compartment, most leaks are under the dash at the evaperator and not worth fixing here but I do not know how much the work costs there, you may be ahead by at least getting it sniffed for leaks by a shop to ID the leaking area. If you need more help on a visual inspection let me or someone on this thread assist you. With your experience that the system worked last season the leak may not be too large but it wouldnt be right for me to tell you to just top it off, that is your call depending on where the leak is once again. The law here is very lacks on freon issues, you cannot get real R12 any more, we use a substitute that is designed for use in the R12 system, to do a real retrofit is very costly as R134a will leak right through your R12 rubber AC hoses. Based on my local prices for the valve cover gasket, possible half moon looking or round seal on the end and some rubber seal washers under the hold down bolts plus labor it would be about 75 clams to get it done here. You may not need all of these little rubber pieces which dont increase the cost much anyways. There really arent any more of these old versions left on the road in my area but parts are still available. You didnt mention which engine by engine type that you have. I suggest you do what you can to make the car last at least as long as you are going to be stationed there then you can throw it away if you like, my theory on repairing a trusted old car is better than buying a completely unknown nice car that could turn into a lemon. Duane in Japan

The ruling class needs to know a bit more. You have a lot of stuff there, and sound does drain performance...most people aren't aware of that. Sometimes sound will go out if your paging file (virtual memory) isn't large enough. The most common problems, though, are lack of driver updates. It could be any one of thousand and one reasons. To narrow it down, post your computer specs: OS, Hard Drive, Ram, Processor, and Graphics card. If you can, post what you have available after startup. There are some drainers out there. marf

The reason you see these button-and-LED electronic controls on heaters and fans these days is that, believe it or not, they are actually cheaper to manufacture than the positive-off hard-contact switches most of us grew up with. If you think about it, you'll realize that any electronic circuit cheaper than a very simple mechanical device is probably not designed to be efficient, or even very long-lived. I suggest that you throw your fan away, or better yet, give it to someone who needs a fan. Go buy an older, better-made fan at a garage sale. Look for one with a real on-off switch. If you're lucky you might even find one made in the USA, unlike the imported junk that's almost universally sold today.

I saw this the other day, and my first thought was, what a silly, ill-thought design. I don't think it will be very effective. You turn the ignition off, it makes a noise. That's it? So every time you go somewhere, you can count on hearing a very annoying noise as soon as you turn the car off (to go with all the other annoying noises), because you can't possibly make it to the car seat to undo the baby before the noise starts. In behaviour sciences / learning theory, it's clear that alert sounds and alarms can only modify behaviour if there is a correct action to take to prevent it, in this case there is not. Not to mention, over time the possibility of becoming desensitized to the "going to happen anyway" sound. It all seems very frustrating. I think it especially won't be effective because people will return the seats / throw them in the garbage. The parents who care enough to buy this kind of seat are the ones who are most unlikely to forget their child. For the person who has similarly somehow forgotten the sound (perhaps gotten out of the car to get something out of the trunk first), this new seat doesn't do anything more for that child. If I were designing a car seat with built-in protection, I would put a pressure sensor under the seat, a high tech thermometer sensing the air temperature, both connected to a transmitter with gps location. If a child is sitting in the seat and the car is over, say, something like 90 - 100 degrees or so, it puts out an immediate signal to police so they can come save the baby.