Jim Berry

I made it to Virginia Beach from Seattle in one piece last week. The '86 T/A with 186,000 miles on it, did okay.

Only overheated at the Montana state line. The hills were pretty steep for a few miles and the temp must have been around a 100 degrees for most of the 2800 miles. When I got down into the valley, I stopped at a Home Depot for some wall edging. I added it to my air dam which lengthened it about two inches overall. It kept the car about 30 degrees cooler for the rest of the trip.

So, today I'm styling down Atlantic blvd, going back to my hotel room and all of a sudden I feel this "ba-whooosh" kind of sound and all of this steam coming out from under my hood. Some girl form the sidewalk says, "Hey dude, your car is leaking!" I knew exactly what had happened. I smiled, thanked her and drove on, knowing that I was almost out of water and antifreeze.

I looked at my engine temp and it was rising to 240 degrees and climbing. Luckily I was just a block from the hotel. When I finally lifted the hood, I couldn't tell what had blown. I got down to look underneath and felt up around the lower radiator hose.
Bingo! The lower hose had split from the water pump down to the lower curve. $7.73 later after walking two miles to an Auto Zone, I am back on the street.

See ya around if you're in Va Beach!

Jim.

brodyscamaro

thats a cool story

WaynesRS

Man thats so awesome your car is making it that far with that many miles and running so well ! Have a safe trip and have fun !

Jim Berry

And that story has a part two.

I got back to the hotel and installed the lower hose. I filled the radiator to the top with just water and figured that I could cruise to a 7-11 down the road and fill 'er up after the Tstat had opened up.

Well, the 7-11 and any other gas station for that matter, was further than I thought. The engine started overheating after about a mile. No gas station in sight I had to pull into a marine science center parking lot. I opened the radiator and it was bone dry. The water was all in the block. Now I needed water.

Do you think that I could find a faucet with a handle on it? No way! They were all keyed for special use of a wrench. All I needed was two gallons of water.

So, while I was standing there looking for a water fountain or something projecting water, I was looking at a Otter exhibit and they were playing in.......water!

I dipped my hand in real quick to see if it was salt water. It didn't smell like salt water so I just dipped my whole gallon jug into the water (it had water in it previously, no anti-freeze). A lady came by and startled me by saying "Hey, don't feed the Otters!" I said that I wasn't, but I had dropped my jug. It was now floating free and towards the Otters who was looking at the jug like they had a new toy. Luckily, I was able to recover it before the Otters did, and made tracks to my hot car. I had to do this twice.

The next day, I drained the whole system, flushed it and put the correct amount of antifreeze in.

I'm going to replace the upper hose this week.

BikertrashDude

hey welcome to the hampton roads area......
very interesting storys......
.....on that second one i was laughing my butt off!!!!!!!!
ever interested drop me a line.......
biker