Modern upgrade, authentic charm

This turn-of-the-century townhouse on Beacon Hill with five levels of living space was updated in a way that preserved its authentic charm while adding contemporary features.

The 10-room single-family brick rowhouse at 22 Joy St. — built in 1890 — was completely redone in 2006 with a granite, cherrywood and stainless-steel kitchen and a spacious top-floor master bedroom suite. The 3,096-square-foot home with formal dining and living 
areas, double Victorian parlors with wood-burning fireplaces, and a private courtyard and third-floor deck is listed for $2,700,000.

The makeover also 
included a two-zone gas-fired heating and central air-conditioning system, new electrical and plumbing, five updated bathrooms and 
recessed lighting throughout. The brick exterior was repointed and large four-pane windows had their rope-and-pulley systems updated with custom shutters. But much of the original woodwork, including door and window moldings, wide-pine floors, staircases, wood-burning fireplaces and top-floor wood beams, has been retained.

You enter through a double set of wood doors into an oak-floored foyer with a sweeping staircase. A formal dining room to the right is walled off from the foyer and accessed through French doors around a corner. The dining room has a wood-burning fireplace, recessed lighting and an original 
exposed beam.

The adjacent living room also has an original wood-burning fireplace and a 
recessed-lit tray ceiling with an exposed beam. In one corner is a wet bar added in 2006 with Green Goddess granite counters and a Marvel wine cooler. Windows from this room and the adjacent kitchen look out on a narrow 
private courtyard.

You step down from here into a long kitchen and breakfast nook with four large windows overlooking the courtyard and a leaded glass door that opens onto it.

Redone in 2006, the 
kitchen has dark cherry­-wood floors, light cherrywood cabinets and Green Goddess granite countertops. There are also two stainless-steel sinks, two wall ovens and two wine coolers. Stainless-steel appli­ances also include a Sub-
Zero refrigerator, G.E. Profile dishwasher and gas stovetop with a Zephyr hood.

A restored original winding staircase leads up to the second floor, where there are two Victorian parlors with original wide-pine floors and pine wainscoting. The front parlor, currently outfitted as a home office, has two tall windows, recessed lighting, and a wood-burning fireplace with a marble mantel.

The back parlor, currently outfitted as a den, has its own wet bar with Green Goddess granite and a Marvel wine cooler and an original brick fireplace. Off this room is a small bedroom, and there's a half-bath off the hallway.

There are two more bedrooms on the third floor with restored pine floors, recessed lighting and large windows. The front bedroom has a wood-burning fireplace, and the rear bedroom opens out onto a good-sized private deck. There's a full bathroom on this floor with a Green Goddess granite vanity and a white-tiled walk-in shower.

The entire fourth floor of the townhouse is a master bedroom suite with vaulted
ceilings, original wood beams and exposed brick walls. The oak-floored bedroom has custom lighting and lots of closet space. The en-suite master bathroom, also with oak floors, has a clawfoot tub as its centerpiece.

There's a marble-line shower and wood vanity topped by white vessel sinks and high-end wall faucets.

The finished basement has beige ceramic tile floors. There's a family room, off which is a European full bathroom with a showerhead in the wall. Off the family room is a closet with a Kenmore washer and 
dryer, and closets holding the home's two-zone heating and central air-conditioning system replaced in 2006.

There's also an exercise room with barrel vaulted openings for storage, and stairs up to a bulkhead that opens into the courtyard.

Parking is on-street with a residential permit, as there is no on-site space.

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Acadia SUV parks in practical territory

Like many full-sized SUVs today, the 2014 GMC Acadia Denali no longer fancies itself a truck but instead is built from the ground up as the king of do-it-all.

Except for the Honda Odyssey, this may be one of the more practical machines to move as many as seven people around town with split second row captain's chairs allowing free flow to the third row. And with a quick pull on a strap, the back seats drop to create a monster storage area. Access to the car is well designed and the power lift gate is a back-saver.

The 3.6 liter V-6 288 horsepower engine turning a 6-speed automatic lacked some giddy-up for the size of the vehicle and acceleration suffered, although gas mileage has improved over earlier models. Regular gas will get you 16 miles per gallon in the city and 23 on the highway.

The fit and trim of the interior is excellent. Using a mix of hard and soft surfaces with some nice brushed metals and wood grain, the Denali upgrade looked and felt great. The well-made seats are nicely piped and offer good support and comfort. I did not quite master the Intellilink infotainment system and found it to be a bit cumbersome. Frankly, it's time we got back to paying attention to driving rather than drilling through menus looking for music, phone numbers and navigation.

The truck handled quite nicely and the all-wheel-drive performed well in a couple of brief trail tests I was able to run. This vehicle rides smoothly, more like a full-sized car, but will happily crunch over rough-and-tumble areas. The tow capacity is rated at 5,200 pounds.

I liked the lines of the SUV. The Denali trim adds some crispness to the curved features. It shares the bold Chevy deep grill and heavy chrome. And much to my pleasure, the rear wheel wells do not indent into the rear 
interior deck as they do on the smaller Terrain. I tested the woefully underpowered junior SUV last summer and really disliked how much of the cargo area was sacrificed because of that design.

The Denali upgrade trim adds on a panoramic sunroof, front and rear collision alerts, lane departure and blind spot monitors, more sound proofing and rear seat DVD players.

The base Acadia has a MSRP of $48,675, with the Denali package you'll pay $52,335.

Along with the Odyssey, comparison shoppers should take a look at the Dodge Durango, Honda Pilot, Mazda 9 and Hyundai Santa Fe — the Acadia fits favorably among these seven-passenger vehicles.

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Luxury rental tower springs up

If you've driven down Essex Street in Boston heading toward South Station, you've undoubtedly noticed the construction project that's been in development at 120 Kingston St.

The project, which broke ground in September 2012, is within months of completion. For Forest City, which is developing it with the Hudson Group, it's the first such project in Boston to date.

Located on the edge of Boston's Chinatown, this new luxury rental development will include 240 studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and penthouse contemporary residences available for lease in the spring. Officially known as the Radian, the development will offer modern rentals on the Rose Fitzgerald ­Kennedy Greenway and will feature panoramic views of Boston along with luxury amenities and services for residents.

Additionally, Radian will have 4,500 square feet of retail space available on the ground floor with an outdoor patio perfect for a restaurant and cafe.

The retail space is being marketed by Jesse Baerkahn and Dave Downing of Graffito SP, a team with extensive experience in ­urban place-making in Boston and Cambridge. Graffito SP helped transform Kendall Square into a retail and restaurant destination by bringing Area Four, Commonwealth, FireBrand Saints and Tatte Bakery to the neighborhood. In Boston, the firm just completed work on the restaurant and coffee bar at District Hall and The Club by George Foreman III in Fort Point.

"Radian is the premier rental tower opening downtown next year. As the gateway to the Greenway, Radian is at the nexus of three vibrant neighborhoods and will become a new icon in the Boston skyline," said Doug Arsham, vice president of development for Forest City Boston. "Our vision is to offer an enhanced living experience through top-of-market finishes, services and amenities, while also offering a respite from the bustling city life. We are very pleased with the initial response we received for Radian, on the first day that our teaser website launched we received approximately 100 inquiries."

Keep this property on your list if you're in the market to lease. With a location that's ideal for the downtown professional, it's set to fill up very quickly.

Charlie Abrahams is a licensed real estate agent in Boston who works with buyers and sellers and can be reached for any additional information at: Bostonrealestate@charlieabrahams.com

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Jury awards $24.4M to parents of Tufts patient

The parents of a boy whose intestines were damaged by an infection that went undetected in Tufts Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit for nearly a day have been awarded a 
$24.4 million judgment by a jury, but will receive only $5.3 million under a prior deal between the parties.

Edward Xu, who is now 9 years old, was a premature newborn when he got the infection that distended his belly.

Lawyer Benjamin Nov­otny, with Lubin and Meyer, said Edward's parents 
alerted a doctor who ordered
X-rays after 11 hours, but 
those only captured the
half of his belly that was not infected. Nov­otny said it took another 13 hours before doctors realized what was wrong.

Yesterday, a jury returned a verdict that orders the hospital to pay $24.4 million to Edward's parents. However, both sides had agreed to limit the payout to $5.3 million under a deal that would have ensured some payment to the family regardless of the verdict.

"I'm just happy to see the family get the help that they need," Novotny said. "His parents take a bag of fluid and they tie it to a pole 
beside his bed. The bag feeds a tube in his chest. For eight to 10 hours a night he stays hooked up to these machines. It will be like this for the rest of his life."

The boy underwent emergency surgery to remove the damaged and infected lengths of his intestine, but the medical costs involved in his care are more than $2,000 a week, Novotny said.

Tufts yesterday defended its care of the boy.

"We have reviewed this case thoroughly and Edward was monitored closely by a team of experienced medical experts. They performed early medical and surgical interventions to save his life, using the most advanced techniques," the hospital said in a statement following the verdict. "Our care team is saddened that the best medicine available could not give him a better outcome."

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Two biotechs get $100M-plus injections

Two Cambridge biotech companies added more than $100 million to their coffers yesterday, but for every different reasons.

Moderna, a biotech company that developed a way to force specific cells to manufacture drugs on demand, announced it raised $110 million in a new financing round, led by Flagship Ventures.

"We are pleased with the confidence and enthusiasm that our investors continue to demonstrate by providing the resources to advance Moderna's clinical development platform," Stephane Bancel, president and CEO of Moderna, said in a statement.

Bancel, noting Moderna has now raised 
$450 million in total, said the funding will allow it to continue its work without jumping on the recent biotech IPO bandwagon.

Also yesterday, pharmaceutical giant Vertex announced it had sold the royalty rights to Incivo — a hepatitis C drug — to Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. for $152 million.

Vertex said the sale will allow it to continue to focus on its cystic fibrosis drug.

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Asia stocks down as Fed stimulus views shift again

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Asian stock markets except Japan were in the red Thursday amid jitters over new signals from the U.S. Federal Reserve that it may cut monetary stimulus sooner than expected.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0.7 percent to 23,539.83 and China's Shanghai Composite lost 1.1 percent to 2,183.50. Seoul's Kospi was down 1.2 percent to 1993.20 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 retreated 0.3 percent to 5,292.20.

Japan's Nikkei 225 bucked the trend to rise 1.3 percent to 15,278.15, boosted by a weaker yen.

Minutes from the Fed's latest policy meeting showed that the central bank would likely start tapering off its bond purchases in "coming months" if the job market improved further. Fed members also weighed the possibility of slowing the purchases even without clear evidence of a strengthening job market.

The Fed's $85 billion monthly bond purchases have kept interest rates low to spur spending and growth but also sent a wave of investment into stocks in search of higher returns.

"Together with extensive discussions on alternative policy response to keep rates low ... it indeed looks increasingly likely that the focus is now on keeping rates low after tapering, rather than delaying tapering," Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in a market commentary.

It said reduction of the bond purchases could begin as early as January, contrary to some expectations that the stimulus could stay until March at least.

The Fed's stimulus, in its various guises, has helped shore up risky assets such as stocks around the world and emerging market currencies, over the past few years as the money created has been recycled through financial markets.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 66.21 points, or 0.4 percent, to 15,900.82. It was up 20 points shortly before the minutes were released. The Standard & Poor's 500 lost 6.50 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,781.37. The Nasdaq lost 10.28 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,921.27.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude was down 20 cents $93.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 1 cent to close at $93.33 on Wednesday.

The euro fell to $1.3417 from S$1.3432 late Wednesday. The dollar rose to 100.45 yen from 100.21 yen.

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Mass. to get $34M from JPMorgan

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase will pay $13 billion — with $34.4 million going to Massachusetts — in the largest settlement from a single group in history, to settle claims by the federal government that it misrepresented investments, leading to the housing bubble.

Under the settlement, JPMorgan acknowledged that it made "serious misrepresentations to the public" about residential mortgage-backed securities, leading in part to the financial crisis, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

"Without a doubt, the conduct uncovered in this investigation helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown," said Attorney General Eric Holder in the statement.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who took part in the suit against JPMorgan, said the settlement sends a message. "This settlement today is part of our ongoing effort to hold Wall Street accountable for its role in the financial crisis," she said in a statement.

Massachusetts will use some of the money to repay PRIM, the state pension program that invested in JPMorgan securities, and set aside a portion for consumer relief.

"We are pleased to have concluded this extensive agreement with the President's RMBS Working Group and to have resolved the civil claims of the Department of Justice and others. Today's settlement covers a very significant portion of legacy mortgage-backed securities-related issues for JPMorgan Chase, as well as Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual," chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement.

Much of the settlement will be used to repay investors, but JPMorgan will pay $4 billion for consumer relief and a $2 billion fine.

On Friday, JPMorgan announced it had reached a $4.5 billion settlement with 21 major institutional investors over similar claims.

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Nordblom plans 602 apartments in South End near old Herald site

A new development featuring more than 600 residential units has been proposed for the booming South End area opposite where the Herald once stood.

The proposed development at 345 Harrison Ave. would consist of two buildings — 13 and 14 stories tall — spread over two acres, according to documents filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The project would include ground-level retail outlets and restaurants, topped by 602 rental units and a "green" roof above the parking garage.

"In many ways, the neighborhood has been 'frozen in time' and has not benefited from the cultural and architectural renaissance enjoyed by the balance of the South End," the project proposal, filed by developer Nord-blom Co., says.

At least 10 percent of the apartments would be considered affordable housing by the city, the proposal said.

The development would replace the warehouse currently used by Graybar Electric Co. On the former Herald site across the street, development on the "Ink Block" is already under way, a project that will include nearly 500 luxury condos and rental units, as well as a Whole Foods supermarket.

Nordblom's proposal includes access from the Ink Block to the Silver Line on Washington Street.

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Westboro IT co. raises $58M, to hire 150

A Westboro-based IT infrastructure company has raised $58 million, which it plans to use to hire 150 more people in Massachusetts over the next year.

SimpliVity's goal is to simplify IT infrastructure by taking 12 different products — such as storage and networking — and assimilating them into a single building block that it calls the Omni Cube, said CEO Doron Kempel, who founded the company in 2009.

"We've developed a new data architecture, data that filters any redundancy so that only unique data is stored, which increases the performance of the system and reduces the amount of space and power that is required," Kempel said.

This "architecture" also allows for a single person to manage data globally from a single location, he said.

Matt Murphy, general partner at Kleiner Perkins, the Menlo Park, Calif., firm that led both a $25 million funding round for SimpliVity last year and the latest round, said the firm acted because of an "acceleration of enterprises building out their own cloud-like infrastructure."

"There are between eight and 11 new products you need to manage and work well together," Murphy said. "The beauty of SimpliVity is they did it all in one appliance. They're really taking on IBM, EMC, VMware, Dell. All of them are talking about making their own solution, but they're late to the market."

SimpliVity released its product earlier this year, Kempel said, and since then, demand has soared.

"We need to grow as quickly as possible," he said. The company, which has 100 employees in Westboro, expects to hire another 150 in Massachusetts over the next year, including 50 more engineers within the next four months.

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Milford casino rolls dice today

A sharply divided Milford goes to the polls today to decide whether to allow a $1 billion Foxwoods casino to be built there, as a new poll finds that a majority of Massachusetts residents back casinos for the state, but not in their backyards.

The two sides are campaigning down to the wire, with dozens of volunteers from both Casino-Free Milford and Citizens for Milford's Future planning to offer rides to the polls and standing at key intersections throughout the day with signs.

"We feel like the support is with us," said Geri Eddins, a 20-year resident and spokeswoman for Casino-Free Milford. "As far as Milford's finances go, our town is on solid ground, and we do not need a casino. By allowing a casino into Milford, we would be sacrificing our quality of life."

Whether Eddins' group, which raised about $24,000 as of Oct. 31 for its campaign, is any match for Foxwoods, which has spent $790,000 for everything from an office in Milford to advertising, canvassing, lawn signs, T-shirts, bumper stickers and a voter survey whose results it declined to reveal last night, remains to be seen.

"As an attorney, I'm all about the facts," said Mike Kaplan, chairman of Citizens for Milford's Future, which received $24,000 from Foxwoods, mostly for advertising and mail solicitations. "This project would create 3,500 jobs and $34 million annually to our town. ... We can do a lot of things with that money, including decreasing taxes."

A statewide phone survey of 517 adults conducted earlier this month by Western New England University Polling Institute found that 61 percent said they favor establishing casinos in the state, but 55 percent said they would oppose having one in their community.

"The poll results suggest there is a 'not in my backyard' mindset when it comes to casinos in Massachusetts," said Tim Vercellotti, the institute's director and a professor of political science at the university. "Residents still seem to want casinos, just not too close to home."

So far, Wynn in Everett is the only contender for the sole resort casino license in Eastern Massachusetts to have staged a successful host community vote, although Suffolk Downs may re-emerge as a candidate in Revere if it manages to find a casino operator as a partner.

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All the dirt on the best Roomba yet

iRobot Roomba 880 ($699.99, irobot.com)

The new Roomba robotic vacuum features a totally rebuilt dirt removal system that does away with those pesky bristles, which do little more than become tangled with hair and debris. The Roomba 880 automatically will vacuum your floors at a preset time, and is more powerful and efficient than previous models.

The good: iRobot has gone to great lengths to make sure you'll never need to use an upright vacuum again. The Roomba 880 is quieter, faster and just darn better than its predecessors.

The bad: If only you could afford a Roomba for each story of your home! But barring a future Roomba that climbs stairs, robotic vacuums are for single-story living.

The bottom line: This is an amazing robotic vacuum for certain living situations and individuals who can afford the steep price. You'll only need to plug in that old-fashioned vacuum for the occasional food spill.

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Google takes flight to NSA

Google is becoming a leading voice against government cyber-spying, with rank-and-file employees as well as top executives issuing scathing — and even expletive-laced — rebukes of the National Security Agency.

The unusual activism by Google — which ironically enough has been on the receiving end of frequent privacy complaints itself — follows newly disclosed documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden alleging that the NSA secretly had hacked Google's private data storage centers around the world.

Google's top security exec testified before a Senate subcommittee last week that the future of cloud computing — the practice of storing information on the Internet rather than on site — is threatened by these allegations of government spying.

If people don't trust their data is secure on the Internet, he said, they'll store it on a hard drive instead, reversing one of this decade's most fundamental computing innovations, and potentially resulting in untold economic losses.

Other tech giants on the receiving end of alleged government spying have chosen to write letters and seek new laws allowing them to release national security requests for data.

But Google's reaction has been far more explosive:

• On Oct. 30, Brandon Downey, a Google security engineer, took to his Google Plus page to publish a response to new allegations of NSA spying. "(Expletive) these guys," Downey wrote. Though Downey wrote that his opinions weren't those of his employer, they did seem to reflect the general sentiment of the company.

• Six days later, one of Downey's colleagues, Mike Hearn, wrote on his Google Plus page that he joined Downey in "issuing a giant (Expletive) You" to the NSA and adding, "Thank you Edward Snowden."

• That same week, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, called the alleged spying "outrageous," and said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: "There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them."

In testifying before the Senate subcommittee, Google's information security director, Richard Salgado, highlighted an estimate from Cambridge-based Forrester Research that the NSA's PRISM project, leaked to the media in June, could mean up to $180 billion in losses — or a 25 percent hit — to the cloud computing industry 
by 2016.

Those estimates were made before the latest news broke about the NSA having compromised Google's cloud servers.

Salgado testified data localization efforts are already beginning in South America.

If they become more widespread, he said, "Then what we will face is the effective Balkanization of the Internet and the creation of a 'splinternet' broken up into smaller national and regional pieces with barriers around each of the splintered Internets to replace the global Internet we know today."

The effects on Boston's innovation economy would be disastrous, with cloud computing services estimated to comprise 20,000 jobs in the area by 2015.

I never pegged Google for a privacy activist, but money, like politics, can make strange bedfellows.

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Young entrepreneurs get real

A group of entrepreneurs, armed with business plans, prototypes and mock-ups, pitched their start-ups to a panel of potential investors, and then got back to work on college applications.

High school seniors taking an entrepreneurship class at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, presented business plans Wednesday for companies ranging from a recipe website that links with grocery delivery companies to a running-shoe sole that tells the wearer when shoes need to be replaced.

"We're putting them in real situations. It's so authentic," said teacher Kevin Bau.

Students pitched their companies to a panel of "sharks," including Michael Bronner, founder of Digitas and natural food company UNREAL, and Jeremy Levine, founder of StarStreet and a BCDS alum.

"I actually felt like I was running a small business," said Isabel Hechavarria, who pitched Bella, her line of swimwear made from material that lets the wearer get an all-over tan.

Bronner said the students' detailed pitches and business plans impressed him. "I've seen presentations from kids coming out of college, honestly, that are not as strong as these," he said.

After the pitches, Hechavarria was approached by one of the judges about setting up a "game-changing" conversation, according to Lisa Trask, the other teacher in the class.

"This is definitely a case of the classroom and real-world experience overlapping and transitioning, and she'll have the support of the school to pursue this endeavour," Trask said.

Trask would not say which entrepreneur was involved or what the talks were regarding, but during Hechavarria's pitch and after, several of them expressed interest and said if they became involved they would seek a celebrity endorsement.

Other CEOs said they were interested in pursuing the proposals beyond the class, but said they would likely take some time before they did so.

Steve Gold, an entrepreneurship professor at Babson College who is not involved in the BCDS class, said the program will be valuable for all the students. He said skills critical to entrepreneurship, such as communication, organization and leadership, all translate to nearly every other job.

"It's the kind of thing that benefits everybody, no matter what path these students take in life," Gold said.

Bau said one of the main goals of the class, now in its second year, is to help students understand that they can make an impact in whatever field they go into.

"You don't have to fit into the existing structure exactly as it is," Bau said.

"I think it's going to change their lives," Bronner said.

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Pontiac problem is a thing called piston slap

I have a 2003 Pontiac Vibe with 135,000 miles on it. This past winter it would knock for a minute or so on a cold start. A GM tech told me that it has a cold piston slap and it will go for a long time. I could faintly hear it this summer. Could it be anything else? Is there something I need to do so it will last two to three more years and 60,000 miles?

Hoping to get close to 200,000 miles out of this or any engine is a worthy goal but of course there are no guarantees, knock or no knock. The GM tech is likely correct. Piston "slap" occurs when the excess clearance between the piston skirt and the cylinder wall allows the skirt to "slap" the wall as combustion pressure drives it downward in the cylinder. As the piston warms up and expands a bit, the clearance is reduced and the noise stops. And as the tech said, this isn't particularly harmful and does not mean impending failure. The engine in my '70 Corvette with 120,000 miles on it has reminded me it has a slight piston slap every time I have started it for the past 20 years!

A mechanic's stethoscope can pinpoint the particular piston/cylinder in question. If disabling the spark for that cylinder during a cold start test, which eliminates combustion pressure that slaps the piston skirt against the cylinder wall, eliminates the knock, it's piston slap.

If it is piston slap, don't worry about the noise and just drive the car. The only "repair" would be a complete engine overhaul that would not be economically justifiable.

There's one more possibility: combustion chamber deposit interference, or CCDI. This occurs when carbon deposits build up on the top of a piston and/or the roof of the combustion chamber to the point where there is physical contact between the two on cold starts until all the components warm up and expand enough to eliminate the contact. Again, like piston slap this isn't particularly harmful, but unlike piston slap it may be easily "fixable."

A professional or DIY induction cleaning with SeaFoam or GM Top Engine Cleaner can remove the carbon build-up and eliminate the noise.

L L L

I would like to better understand oil change intervals on little used vehicles. I have a '77 F-150 that I use around the ranch about 20 hours and maybe five miles per year. I completely rebuilt the engine and the oil I put in more than five years ago is still honey-colored. Am I hurting the engine? Seems silly to change it every year, but is there a shelf life?

In this case the word "silly" is synonymous with "wasteful." I just checked the date I last changed oil and filter on the aforementioned 'Vette and it was 2009 — four years ago. In that time I've driven the car fewer than 2,000 miles so I guess you've reminded me it's time to change it again.

But I have no worries that I'm hurting this engine, or any other "low annual time/mileage" engines I own and operate. The oil in these engines is subject to very little fuel/combustion blow-by contamination. The only time-based deterioration is oxidation from exposure to air inside the engine.

I think you're safe, but it's probably time for an oil and filter change. Save the old oil for recycling or use in topping up oil levels on your other low-annual-time engines.

Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor, and former race car driver. Readers may write to him at Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Leave a daytime phone number.

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