On Monday evening I was a very lucky boy indeed. Whilst on a journey back from seeing a friend my coolant hose of death gave up the ghost! It was quite foggy out & when I stopped at a set of lights near the end of my journey I thought I saw some smoke. I do have an intermittently smoking turbo but it looked different. After my last engine failure I'm kind of obsessed by the oil pressure gauge & upon checking it (again), it was down to 2 bar. I have one of barbs' engines & have never seen it below 2.5! Before I had a chance to do anything the lights changed & I pulled into a car park with my eyes firmly glued to the gauge. As I sat there on idle, I saw it drop again to 2 bar & then slowly but consistently start decreasing. I naturally shat myself & at 1.8 I reached for the key to shut it off .... and that's when I noticed the engine temp was starting to point north!!
Me & a mate (who kept telling me how heavy the bonnet was he was holding up
) got under the bonnet and realised the smoke I saw was actually steam. We poured water into the header tank and we just heard it pour out as fast as it went in from around back of the block. After digging around with the torch on his phone I could see it was peeing out of the coolant hose near the join on the opposite end to the thermostat!!
I had the car recovered on Tues morning to Barbs & had the shame of arriving with my car on the back of a flat bed whilst another customer was dropping their ink black coupe with a private plate (J---WOO?). Was it anyone from here?
Barbs has fitted an upgraded hose of death for me & after driving it home this evening, it seems I caught it just in time!! He said there was a massive gash in the pipe so it must have failed quite spectacularly. If I hadn't gone to see my friend on Monday evening, my next journey would have been straight down the M4 to London & a certain death for my engine!!! I must buy a lottery ticket this week!
If your reading this barbs, you the man!