Houston we have a problem

What a day! Today started as any other, got up read some of my books, went to school to pay the next installment of my tuition fees and drive back home to study some more. Tonight I am supposed to be flying over to the Kennedy space center to see the space shuttle launch (which I was really looking forward to).

I pulled back into the driveway, switched off the car and heard a strange noise, a bit like bubbling coming from under the hood. I opened it up and spotted the coolant reservoir was bubbling and boiling! Not good for something that is supposed to be keeping the engine cool!


Slightly worried I head over to the auto shop the some of the guys had recommended as the best place in the area to get repairs done. The repair shop had a look, opened the radiator cap and poured some coolant in, and some more, then some more and then a bit more for good measure. 6+ litres later the radiator was full of coolant again without leaks (good). They then went to check the pressure, first the radiator cap, nothing no pressure (not good) then the pipe that the cap connected to again nothing no pressure (really not good). The garage said they would need to replace the parts but they could fix it today and they would look into the strange knocking problem that have just started to get .


I was running out of time before I had lessons so the garage called their Mexican driver "Sanchez" to take me back home and then off to the flight school. This was a challenge as he only spoke Mexican English which wasn't easy to understand or to direct him where we were going. Sanchez is a bit of a chatterbox only stopping to breath and ask the occasional question. The problem was I barely had a clue what he was on about so mostly nodded politely and started counting car repair costs in me head!


A little while later I found out the shuttle launch had been canceled until Sunday due to a Fuel leak (at least I'm not the only one with a leak).


From bad to worse


After my lesson John (one of the guys on the course) kindly offered to take me back to the garage to pickup my now fixed car before the shop closes. We get there with 5 minutes to spare and the owner comes running out to me. He says to me "I'm glad your here, we have swapped the parts and the coolant system is fine but that knocking is not good news!" He shows me a diagram of the cars suspension and tells me that the left side is badly worn (for those mechanically minded it was the upper left ball joint, upper and lower left control arm, left sway bar and left tie rod end) the cost to fix it $2147!!!! I only paid $2000 for the car! I took my sickly car back home to think about what to do next. Its late so night, night... hopefully tomorrow will be a better day :-).