118) A Radiator Cap
The Ford Sierra that we had bought while Jonny was working for Eastvaal Ford in 1983 was getting very old but Jonny was very good about looking after it. We never went out in the car until he had checked it pretty thoroughly and seen that all the levels of oil, brake fluid and water were correct. If there were any problems he always saw them early and so avoided some very costly repair bills.
One morning he had, as always, checked all the levels and needed to put more water into the radiator. A little later I drove off to work, when I was just coming into the village of Hillcrest I heard a strange noise and thought I had run over a tin can on the road. I looked into the rear view mirror and saw something that could have been a tin can spinning off to the side of the road behind me so was not really concerned about the noise. When I drove home in the afternoon the temperature gauge was rather high and I was concerned that there was a problem with the car so told Jonny about it as soon as I got to the house. He immediately opened the bonnet to see if the engine was hot and found that it was not only very hot but that there was no radiation cap at all. We talked it over and remembered that before I left for work Jonny had taken off the cap to put more water into the radiator and I remembered thinking I had run over a tin can on the road. So putting two and two together we assumed that what I had heard was the radiator cap falling on to the road from where it had mistakenly been left. We were very short of cash at the time and could not decide if we should use the small amount of petrol that we had hoped would last the rest of the week to go and look for the cap or should we just leave it until the morning on my way to work. We knew that the longer we left looking for it the less likely it would be that we would find it. We did not know the cost of a new radiator cap but knew that what ever it was we did not want to waste the money if it was not necessary and we could find our missing cap. So after some discussion and a lot of prayers we decided that we would go into Hillcrest, look for the cap where I thought I had lost it and if we could not find it we would have to go to the spares shop and buy a new one.
We parked the car on the side of the road more or less where I had heard it fall and walked from there about half a kilometre towards Hillcrest. Along the side of the road the grass was long and over grown and there was a fair amount of rubbish strewn around so we had to walk slowly and search the wide verge to make sure we were not overlooking our cap. Then we turned round and walked back to the car again, still searching. Back at the car I thought that maybe I was wrong about where I had heard it fall and suggested we should search the road-side the other way, so we walked about another half a kilometre away from Hillcrest and back to the car again. By the time we got back to the car for the second time we had accepted that we were not going to find it, it had gone and there was nothing we could do about it. We began to relax a little and to laugh at how silly we must have looked, walking up and down the road searching for such a small item. We were standing beside the car laughing and deciding what our next move should be when we were approached by an African woman who had been waiting for the bus at the bus-stop in a side road off the main road. She had obviously been watching us for a while. She said “Excuse me, is this what you are looking for?” and she was holding our missing radiator cap. It had rolled, or had been kicked a fair way from the main road and was next to the bus stop. If the lady had not been waiting for a bus and had not spotted us in our search we would never have found it. We were so please to see it we ask her where she was going and she told us that she was waiting for the bus to take her to Botha’s Hill. We replaced our radiator cap, piled our new friend into the car and took her to her destination.
Another time when Jonny was coming to fetch me from work not far from the place we had found our radiator cap the back wheel came off the Sierra. Fortunately Jonny was not hurt and not too much damage was done. As Jonny was still trying to figure out how he was going to get the wheel back on the car, a car that was going in the opposite direction, away from Hillcrest, did a U-turn in the middle of the road and the four African gentlemen in it jumped out and helped Jonny to hold the car up so that he could get the wheel on. I was very impressed with that as they were complete strangers and were on the opposite side of the road so could quite easily have just ignored him. Times like that renew ones faith in the human race, they are really not all so bad.
All this talk of the car reminds me of the problem that we once had with the windscreen wipers. For some strange reason the one on the driver’s side would on occasions fly off the windscreen and wrap itself around the side of the car. When this happened one had to stop and put it back into place before driving off again. One afternoon when I was coming home from work and there was a tremendous rainstorm that made it almost impossible to see the road ahead. The wiper popped off the windscreen and I put it back a couple of times but it would not stay so I had to drive with my window open and keep my hand on the front window to stop it coming off again. It did not matter that the rain was pouring in, as I was already soaked to the skin. I had to drive very slowly because of the weather and having to drive with one hand. All the other cars on the road were passing me and I was just crawling along at snails pace on the left shoulder of the road. I got a bit of a fright when a police car passed me and signalled me to pull of the road; I thought I would be in trouble. Fortunately the officer in the car was friendly and tried to help but he could not work out why the windscreen wiper was being so difficult so he asked me where I was heading and just told me to follow him. He got back into the car, put on his flashing light and siren and escorted me home. I have never had a police escort before or since it made me feel quite important.
One morning he had, as always, checked all the levels and needed to put more water into the radiator. A little later I drove off to work, when I was just coming into the village of Hillcrest I heard a strange noise and thought I had run over a tin can on the road. I looked into the rear view mirror and saw something that could have been a tin can spinning off to the side of the road behind me so was not really concerned about the noise. When I drove home in the afternoon the temperature gauge was rather high and I was concerned that there was a problem with the car so told Jonny about it as soon as I got to the house. He immediately opened the bonnet to see if the engine was hot and found that it was not only very hot but that there was no radiation cap at all. We talked it over and remembered that before I left for work Jonny had taken off the cap to put more water into the radiator and I remembered thinking I had run over a tin can on the road. So putting two and two together we assumed that what I had heard was the radiator cap falling on to the road from where it had mistakenly been left. We were very short of cash at the time and could not decide if we should use the small amount of petrol that we had hoped would last the rest of the week to go and look for the cap or should we just leave it until the morning on my way to work. We knew that the longer we left looking for it the less likely it would be that we would find it. We did not know the cost of a new radiator cap but knew that what ever it was we did not want to waste the money if it was not necessary and we could find our missing cap. So after some discussion and a lot of prayers we decided that we would go into Hillcrest, look for the cap where I thought I had lost it and if we could not find it we would have to go to the spares shop and buy a new one.
We parked the car on the side of the road more or less where I had heard it fall and walked from there about half a kilometre towards Hillcrest. Along the side of the road the grass was long and over grown and there was a fair amount of rubbish strewn around so we had to walk slowly and search the wide verge to make sure we were not overlooking our cap. Then we turned round and walked back to the car again, still searching. Back at the car I thought that maybe I was wrong about where I had heard it fall and suggested we should search the road-side the other way, so we walked about another half a kilometre away from Hillcrest and back to the car again. By the time we got back to the car for the second time we had accepted that we were not going to find it, it had gone and there was nothing we could do about it. We began to relax a little and to laugh at how silly we must have looked, walking up and down the road searching for such a small item. We were standing beside the car laughing and deciding what our next move should be when we were approached by an African woman who had been waiting for the bus at the bus-stop in a side road off the main road. She had obviously been watching us for a while. She said “Excuse me, is this what you are looking for?” and she was holding our missing radiator cap. It had rolled, or had been kicked a fair way from the main road and was next to the bus stop. If the lady had not been waiting for a bus and had not spotted us in our search we would never have found it. We were so please to see it we ask her where she was going and she told us that she was waiting for the bus to take her to Botha’s Hill. We replaced our radiator cap, piled our new friend into the car and took her to her destination.
Another time when Jonny was coming to fetch me from work not far from the place we had found our radiator cap the back wheel came off the Sierra. Fortunately Jonny was not hurt and not too much damage was done. As Jonny was still trying to figure out how he was going to get the wheel back on the car, a car that was going in the opposite direction, away from Hillcrest, did a U-turn in the middle of the road and the four African gentlemen in it jumped out and helped Jonny to hold the car up so that he could get the wheel on. I was very impressed with that as they were complete strangers and were on the opposite side of the road so could quite easily have just ignored him. Times like that renew ones faith in the human race, they are really not all so bad.
All this talk of the car reminds me of the problem that we once had with the windscreen wipers. For some strange reason the one on the driver’s side would on occasions fly off the windscreen and wrap itself around the side of the car. When this happened one had to stop and put it back into place before driving off again. One afternoon when I was coming home from work and there was a tremendous rainstorm that made it almost impossible to see the road ahead. The wiper popped off the windscreen and I put it back a couple of times but it would not stay so I had to drive with my window open and keep my hand on the front window to stop it coming off again. It did not matter that the rain was pouring in, as I was already soaked to the skin. I had to drive very slowly because of the weather and having to drive with one hand. All the other cars on the road were passing me and I was just crawling along at snails pace on the left shoulder of the road. I got a bit of a fright when a police car passed me and signalled me to pull of the road; I thought I would be in trouble. Fortunately the officer in the car was friendly and tried to help but he could not work out why the windscreen wiper was being so difficult so he asked me where I was heading and just told me to follow him. He got back into the car, put on his flashing light and siren and escorted me home. I have never had a police escort before or since it made me feel quite important.
posted by MC at
3:32 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home