On returning to St Andrews after the bunker, I stopped the car and had steam billowing out from under my bonnet. Oh no! I made a note of the temp guage: ¾ meltdown, and deactivated the engine. Under the bonnet I saw splashes of coolant on various things. You know it's coolant because the antifreeze gives it that weird flourescent glow. I couldn't drive my car no more; I was stuck, and it was a Saturday night so there'd be no garage open until Monday.
I'm not one to plan ahead, and I hate the whole idea of having plans. Nevertheless, I had a plan for coping with a broken engine. I had a telecommunications device in my rucksack and I had my XYZ card with me. So at 1645 I phoned them. I'm afraid I don't see why I should have to listen to a recorded message and choose several option from menus before I get to speak to a "customer adviser", nor do I see why I should have to tell them my name, address, postcode, membership number, car registration, make, model and colour. I couldn't remember my postcode, and I thought the guy at XYZ was going to say that this was a crime and that he couldn't send a mechanic unless I could remember my postcode. Do these corporations do their absolute best to make telephone conversations as long as possible by requiring unnecessary information? Do they profit from the telephone calls? Anyway, the guy at the call centre sent the mechanic to the wrong place, and gave me a goofed estimate of how long he would take to arrive. Well done him.
After 1 ¾ hours the mechanic arrived in his van. He was called Colin Murdoch and he was excellent. He was polite, interesting and he fixed my car in an hour. I said I thought it was a coolant leak. He took the radiator cap off and attached a bike-pump. He inflated the system a bit and you could hear the hissing of a leak. So I'd been right which was good. It was the pipe to the air-heating exchanger that had developed a hole. Amazingly, he replaced it on the spot with a piece of generic hose he cut to size. He refilled the radiator and we tested her out for five minutes. She was fine, and didn't overheat. So I had an operational car again by 1945.
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Man, I was pleased: I so didn't want to be stuck there until Monday morning, possibly longer. Colin was a good conversationalist as well, and kept chatting to me whilst fixing the engine. I told him that I was touring around and he seemed to think it was a respectable venture. He seems to cover the Aberdeen to Dundee area, but sometimes comes into Fife as well. He deals with approx ten breakdowns per day, which is below the national average for XYZ mechanics. He says that he's had to deal with a few Figaros, as there is a company in Perth that imports them, and he knew he was essentially dealing with a common K10 Micra engine.
I had a look at the defective rubber pipe. He said it was "soft", ie that the material had perished with time, so I resolved to replace all the rubber pipes with new ones, to be safe. A pipe could leak, all the water could empty onto the road without your noticing, and the engine could overheat and damage itself irreparably; not good. The coolant system is full of water, and when it gets hot it has a tendency to become steam. Like a steam engine, the coolant system is pressurized, and so these rubber pipes are liable to burst. The thing that regulates the pressure is the radiator cap, which is spring-loaded so that if the pressure becomes too great it vents. I asked Colin to check that my radiator cap was functional, so he plugged it onto his bike pump to see what pressure it vented at: 14psi which he thought was fine. So the problem I have is with my rubber pipes.
I consulted him on the spare-wheel issue. He said tyre blowouts occur "all the time", and that if I had a spare wheel, he'd be able to change it for me. If I didn't he'd have to tow me to a garage and leave me there until it opened. Clearly, then, a spare wheel is a good thing I should be carrying. However I'd not have space for my rucksack in the boot if I had a spare wheel. But there'd still be enough space for my laptop. Decisions... dilemmas. I also learnt I should change the cambelt, as my current one was approx six years old. It's only done 30,000 miles, which is not too much, but age is a problem.
I was so pleased with him for fixing my car, out here in Fife, and for nothing extra, that I resolved to upgrade my membership of XYZ to the next higher level. Indeed, some people would call me crazy for going touring with only the most basic cover. Indeed.
One last thing is worth mentioning about this escapade: nine miles before the pipe blew the odometer was reading 106666.6. It hit that figure as I was on the final approach (500m) to the nuclear bunker. I'm not inventing this, it really happened.
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