“I mean, if you think about it,” I said, chuckling and grinning like an idiot, “We got a free car for the price of a coolant hose.”
These were the words that tempted fate and destroyed a car. In five mintues, their speaker (me) would have a burnt-up husk of a vehicle with no working engine. He’d have a good two hours to sit and watch traffic blast by on Interstate 85, northeast of Charlotte in the sprawling suburbs of Concord.
Carrie is my sister, and back in December, I had some problems with my car. Being the wonderfully giving and more financially secure sibling that she is, Carrie offered us her ex-automobile. It is (nay, was, for it is no longer) a 1989 Mazda 626. A five speed four-cylinder with a good amount of miles on it, but the reason my sister moved on to another car was “a coolant leak, probably,” because the radiator had been replaced.
So, of course I could fix it. Carrie picked us up and took us to Charlotte, I had a look at the car and noted that the coolant reservoir was full, so the radiator was full, too, right? We made dinner, and then headed off. And, immediately, the car began to overheat.
Natania and I pulled over in the parking lot of a Harris Teeter and had some delicious coffee while we waited for the car to cool down. And then I found out that the bloody radiator was bone dry. And there was a leak on one of the smaller hoses leading from the radiator to the engine. It was about 9 PM on a Sunday, so the auto parts stores were closed. Stopping in at the Walgreens, I hoped that some duct tape patchwork would do the trick. How wrong was I.
We put as much water as we had into the radiator, then drove back to a gas station. It stayed much cooler than before, but that leak was still pretty heinous. Taking the little clamps off the hose was the biggest pain in the ass. It took nearly an hour to get them back on, after taping up the big gaping hole. And, after filling up the radiator with free water (!), we were back on the road.
This time, it ran smoothly. Before we hit the Interstate, I drove around for about fifteen minutes, and the temperature maintained itself. Going onto I-85 was perhaps not the best idea, but I knew no other routes to get home, and I was overconfident. But after about ten minutes on the highway, the temperature gauge suddenly started to move. Within seconds, it was clicking the ‘H’, and the engine shut itself off.
Later, after AAA came and towed the car, and Carrie picked us up, and we slept the night back at her apartment, and when we finally made it back to the garage where the poor car was being kept, I found that through a combination of a poorly duct-taped hose and a speedy trip on I-85 I had ruined Carrie’s old (and our “new”) car. Turning the key made some noise, but not the right kinds of noises. That meant the engine had no compression. I had destroyed it, through heat.
I felt bad, and still feel bad, for wasting a car. People keep trying to convince me that it was just fate, that the car would’ve gone soon anyway, but I’m frustrated and I feel that if I had just waited for a hose, things would have been okay. Now, the car is probably sitting in a junkyard somewhere in Suburbia, rotting away, giving up its innards to other, more fortunate 626 owners.
What a sad damn picture.
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