After work on Wednesday, I was cruising along the freeway towards home. I’m fairly good about checking my mirrors and instrument panel regularly, and I having just done a scan I found myself thinking that it is nice to finally have the car running half decently after investing money twice recently for a tune-up/repair followed by a repair of a broken timing belt. Sure, it creaks and groans when I’m not traveling on a straight, flat road; crying out that it’s going to need new ball joints or some similar costly repair very soon. Yes, it’s probably almost time for new brakes again. OK, maybe the transmission has been seeming to slip as of late, making me wonder what that is going to cost. But at least the engine is running fine now that I dished out a bunch of cash I didn’t have. But as I scanned the panel I thought about the fact that it was nice that I didn’t hear noises from the engine that shouldn’t be there.

Then I scanned a minute later, and noticed that there was no needle on my temperature gauge!

Looking closer, the needle was hidden as it had shot straight up. I looked ahead and saw the Whatcom Road exit, and I immediately slowed down and signaled to get off the freeway. Coming up the exit ramp, I shifted into neutral to try and save my engine.

It promptly died.

I now was coasting up the ramp with no power. You only get about four pumps of the brakes when there is no power to recirculate the brake fluid, and so I turned right at the top of the ramp, which was thankfully a yield rather than a stop sign, and pulled to the side of Whatcom Road. Even though it was down hill to a gas station, there was a light just before the gas station that was red with traffic waiting, and I would have no brakes to slow me enough to allow the light to change.  Once stopped, I shifted into Park and tried to start it again, but it just cranked and didn’t turn over.

Steam started to come out from under my hood. For some time there had been a very slow loss of radiator fluid, meaning that I needed to regularly top the car up. My mechanic had located a minor leak during the last service, it could not have been much since there has never been drops of fluid in my parking spot and he had said it could wait until the next servicing. I knew that somehow it had suddenly become worse just now, and doubted that I had much fluid left in the radiator. Once I could pop of the rad cap and check, it was confirmed.

After a couple of trips back and forth to the gas station with some empty pop bottles, I had refilled the rad with water. Pumping the hoses by hand revealed that the engine was still full of antifreeze. However, the car was still too hot to start it when I tried, and the car was quickly draining the little battery. Once the engine was finally cool enough and the rad was fully topped off I should have been able to start the car, but now I needed a boost. After borrowing cables from the gas station, I waited for someone to stop and boost me. A kind motorist did stop, and we tried to get it going. It seemed very close to turning over, but just wouldn’t quite do so. That is when my new helper suggested I might want to see what’s going on under the hood while he cranked it for me.

As he cranked, I watched antifreeze squirt out from under the heat shield in the front of the engine. The car had a blown head gasket.

I thanked him and let him go on his way, and walked down to the PetroCan to return their jumper cables. While I was very tired and wanted to get home, I knew I didn’t need the expense of a taxi with the bills I was about to face. I asked if the bus ran this late, and was assured that it came by every 20 minutes and that since they hadn’t seen it for a while, it must be about due.  I walked across the street to the bus stop in front of the Shell station and sat on the bench.  I was the worst stop I’ve been at, as they situated it at the one spot where the road narrowed and there was no shoulder, but with a ditch behind.  As I did some homework on the bench, semi went by within two feet of my knees.

After 40 minutes of waiting, I went into the Shell station and asked them about the bus.  They stated that this stop was hardly used, and no buses came by past 4pm!  The were a lot more helpful, going online to confirm the schedule and to tell me that the closest bus would be 2 kilometers away and wouldn’t come for over an hour.  Since it was already 8:45pm, I gave in and called a cab.

A call to my mechanic in the morning confirmed my diagnosis and that he believed the same as me, that it was time to quit putting money into this car.  The repair costs were becoming more than a payment on a replacement car, and so even if I hadn’t budgeted to buy a car it would still be cheaper than continuing to pay for repairs on this car.  I would need to search for a car, and quickly as I was already missing work and definitely needed a replacement by Tuesday morning.

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