It almost killed my car!
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Switched off the air-con knobs, and turned the car key off.
Pressed down the ‘hazard light’ signal button. Good girl. Panicking? Not in my vocabulary… yet.
*Rumble-rumble* a little drizzle then… torrential rain! Panic? No… call someone for help.
Tried starting the car engine… just a mild cough… try again… no respond this time… My car was dead. The only culprit I could think of was a weak battery. Please... nothing more serious than that.
Called my good friend Ms ECKB to ask for a tow-truck contact number or something. But Ms ECKB (bless her heart) volunteered to come over and got her bro who knows about cars to come along … I was very grateful indeed for any kind of help.
“Too expensive to have your car towed. Better see if it can be revived,” was her advice. Sound advice it was too.
While waiting, I observed that while most drivers understood the meaning of ‘hazard light’, there were actually some who didn’t! One driver in particular (can’t make out whether it was a she or he… so I’ll go by ‘the driver’), ‘the driver’ honked at me and when that didn’t get a respond, I was given several ‘flashes’ and a ‘nudge’ (driving really close to my car bumper!).
What could I do? It was pouring heavily, else I could have stick my hand out to indicate I was ‘helpless’. Didn’t ‘the driver’ see the hazard light signal blinking madly?
I guess in the end, tired of playing big bully, ‘the driver’ finally reversed *hah!* changed lane, and drove off. Geez…
Help finally came… My car battery was jump-started and I was able to reach a workshop before my car went berserk on me again. This time… the engine won’t stay dead even after switching the key to off! How now brown cow?
The mechanic did his thing, and in the end extracted a small plastic adapter that was broken. He then replaced the broken part with a new one. This small plastic thingy (see picture) was the culprit to all my trouble… my car battery was apparently still in its prime.
The broken plastic 'thingy'
The nice mechanic did tell me the name of the plastic adapter ‘thingy’, but like a typical woman driver, I promptly forgot. What the ‘thingy’ does (in my understanding) is to connect water from the water tank to my car engine. When it broke, all the water from my water tank got drained out and the tank left empty. This caused my car engine to fail. At least this was how I understood it to be.
If my car got too hot it could have burst into flames! This bit of info from the nice mechanic sent shiver down my spine. So, the small plastic thingy could have killed my car... and potentially me? Hoh boy!
Well, that was my recent misadventure … happened just last week, on All Saints’ Day. A Saint was looking after me that day I bet...
posted @ 6.11.07,
