I'm heading away with work for a month, so headed off to the shed to do a quick check on the girls cars before I left.
Wifes car is good, but as its only a month old I would hope so.
Daughters car I found a leak from the radiator hose. No problem I thought, it had a split before when I was away (always when I'm away), so they took it to the local mechanic who trimmed the damaged bit off and did it all up again.
So I buy a new hose that of course arrives late on the friday before I leave and I head out to fix it this afternoon. The new hose all lines up nicely, but one clamp has been installed before the bumper and grill were installed and was virtually impossible to remove. A stanley knife and pliers were wielded with reckless abandon, blood was shed and in the end it only came off with the aid of a 1.5' screwdriver being used as a prybar
.
So I get it all back in and am lining up to push the hose onto the manifold and notice a bit of a hole in the clamping surface of the manifold.
Some numb nut has cranked the hose clamp down so hard that the plastic manifold has crushed and now there is only a 3mm surface for the hose to seal against
. I strongly suspect it was done when the dealer replaced the transmission, but that was a while ago and good luck proving anything... another reason I do my own maintenance.
So 4 hours sweating my coight out in the shed and now I'm further behind, no hope of getting a new coolant manifold in the next 24 hours and a car stuck in the shed for at least the next 5 weeks.
If it was metal I could TIG a new bit of pipe on, but its bloody plastic
.
