radiator burst
spring morning commute to work
mended over lunch

At 7:10 Friday morning I was on my way to work in the Del Sol, but I was out of gas. So I pulled into the BP slick producing station and noticed a whiff of smoke coming from under the hood. I was a little alarmed so while I was filling up I inspected the engine bay. Everything seemed just fine. Weird.

A few miles down Wade avenue I saw the temp gauge buried in the red. I slowed down and apologized profusely to my car and ambled through the red light at Harrison to negotiate all the beige shoppes of Cary. I landed at the Beige Kangaroo and bought a bottle of water. It was clear my radiator had split at the top tank. Ever so slowly did I add water to my scorching block. It sputtered and protested every drop, and after 30 minutes of consoling my poor sick car I refilled the water jug in the beige bathroom and drove to the Beige Just Tires to ask where the nearest parts store was.

The manager came out and said that "we do that sort of work here" and I responded "I do too, I'm a mechanic". A wee lie, but not too far off I suppose. As part of the mechanics code, he directed me to the Beige Advance auto parts store... which was next to the Beige parking lot that I had my heart attack in.

Lovely. A broken car, headed to history repeating itself? Nope. We're not screwing around here. I waltzed confidently into the Beige Advance parts store and as I was searching for a 10mm wrench and some pliers I called out "may I have a radiator for a '94 Civic Del Sol SI 1.6L please"? $98.00 plus a life time warranty.

I topped off the radiator and went on to work. I got there by 8:40, so not so bad. At 11:00 I took the old radiator out (two hoses and a single bolt), removed the cooling fan (four 10mm bolts, one broke from corrosion) and replaced the assembly before 11:30. Then I test drove it to the other building, bought strawberries at the farmers market and had lunch.

A lovely and successful day by all counts.