Crazy But Able

I’m already sick of telling the story of what happened to my car over vacation. But I’ll tell it here once, in several parts, so that I can just point everyone here if they want details.

On December 23rd, we woke up and packed the car. Only after packing the car and getting ready to go did we find out that the car won’t start. Jumper cables? In the trunk, with the spare tire, underneath everything we just packed. Yay. This should have been a sign to just take Peggy’s car.

A couple of hours later we’re in the middle of driving through Hated Wisconsin (hereafter referred to as HW).* Suddenly, cold air starts blowing out of the heater vents. Right after I notice this, Peggy decides she wants to stop at a rest area. As we’re pulling in, I look down and the heat gauge is slammed all the way in the red. I stop the car, and smoke billows out of the engine. Wonderful.

Peggy goes in to use the facilities; I check under the hood. The engine is covered in coolant. There’s literally not a single surface under the hood that is not covered in green liquid. I shake my head, close the hood, and use the facilities myself. Then I went to find Peggy. “I think I found the problem,” I said. Peggy was not in a good mood to start with, so she rolled her eyes at me.

We get out to the car, I open the hood. I point, saying “I think that’s the problem.” Peggy laughs out loud; she immediately notices that top coolant hose is ripped wide open. We quickly formulate a Plan. The Plan is that we will get a ride to the auto parts store in the nearest town that we just passed. We will get a new coolant hose, and coolant. Then we will put the coolant hose on the car and drive to Michigan.

First we need to remove the old hose. For that we need a screwdriver. If you guessed that the screwdriver was in the tire change kit, in the trunk, underneath all of the crap in the back, you get a prize. The screwdriver was one of those kind of screwdrivers that you can take the shaft out and reverse it to get phillips or regular. One clamp holding the hose was phillips and one was regular, so this is good. What’s not good is that the screwdriver has a pretty loose fit between handle and shaft. You get another prize for guessing that at one point the shaft fell out of the screwdriver and down into the engine, eventually resting on the oil pan shield.

Did I mention that it’s -5 degrees outside?

With the hose off, we call a 1-800 number for Wisconsin Tourism that is on the wall at the rest area. They give us the phone number to the Black River Falls chamber of commerce. Call them, they call a taxi. We wait, over an hour, no taxi. Call them back. The nice lady says “Oh, I’ll just come down and pick you up myself.” 5 minutes later, here comes the taxi. Turns out, the taxi company sent an unmarked car the first two times, and just drove slowly past the rest area. Like he expected us to be waiting outside freezing our butts off or something.

Peggy waits for the nice lady to explain the situation. I go get a new bendy universal hose (because of course they aren’t going to have a replacement top coolant hose for a 98 Subaru Forester in the middle of Wisconsin.) The car parts guy says, “Oh yeah, those are really durable, that hose will actually last longer in your car than the original one did. It just won’t look as nice.” < — THIS IS CALLED IRONIC FORESHADOWING.

In the cab ride back to the rest area, I realize that I forgot to buy coolant. However, I have nearly a full bottle of it in my car from the last time I had coolant problems. I hope this will be enough to get me to the next town to buy more, because I’m already on the interstate with the cab at this point; and I’d have to literally double the cab distance to get more.

Turns out the nice lady called the HW state police, so Peggy explained the situation to the nice officer. Cab guy drops me off, Peggy and I get the new hose on. It’s got a little kink but nothing major. The coolant I have gets us to the next town, where we go to McDonalds to eat and the gas station to get more coolant. I got one bottle of pre-mix antifreeze, and one bottle of regular undiluted antifreeze. I poured some of the pre-mix antifreeze in the car to top it off, and I filled the previous coolant bottle I had in my car with water, so if anything goes wrong, we’re prepared.

Part one cost list:

• New bendy hose: $9.35
• Coolant: $13.65.
• New Plastic Funnel: $1.19. (At the rest area I only had a little paper funnel; it sucked.)
• Cab ride, including tip: $35.00.

Handy navigation links:

• Part One: Hated Wisconsin
• Part Two: How NOT to make a U-turn
• Part Three: Dare To Be Stupid
• Part Four: Crazy Yooper Mechanics
• Part Five: Conclusion

[*] Wisconsin is Hated primarily because its such a pain to drive through on the way to Michigan. If Wisconsin looked like Idaho, we’d hate it a lot less.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 at 1:35 pm and is filed under general foofiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.