I want to share a sad and funny story about driving a car with a punctured radiator of my friend. Hopefully, this story will serve as a lesson for inexperienced car owners and maybe cheer you up a little.
He is the proud owner of Chevrolet Aveo. The machine is simple but reliable. For a long time, he was afraid of overheating the engine (even in winter) and added antifreeze to the expansion tank.
Before refilling the antifreeze, it would be good to find out how the antifreeze differs from the antifreeze and how to refill the antifreeze properly. But, by the way, this knowledge did not help him. So, everything is in order.
Before the trip, he constantly gives the car 10-15 minutes to warm up the engine. And so, one day, going to work, he warmed up the engine, as usual, drove up to the gate at the exit from the yard, and went to open them.
As soon as he opened the gate and turned to his car, he was terrified. From under the hood was a huge cloud of steam with an incomprehensible chemical smell. Scared, he immediately shut down the engine and opened the hood to see what was going on. And then there was an unpleasant surprise for him: in the radiator cells there was a hole in the thickness of a finger, from which a stream of antifreeze hit the hot engine, and because of that, actually, there was a cloud of antifreeze steam.
I had to ask for a job and take two days off, as his work was connected with moving around the city by car. Having thought for a long time before the evening, he decided to take a desperate throw in the morning - to fill the radiator with water, and with the stove turned on to reach the service station on the other side of the city. He chose the best time - early in the morning, without traffic jams.
So, in the morning he came out with a 5-liter bottle of distilled water, and then he was waiting for another unpleasant surprise - in the middle of winter there was a day of thaw when the temperature rose sharply from minus 10 to +8. Spitting at everything, he opened the lid of the expansion tank, poured water to the maximum, and with the thought of "whatever happens", drove through the city. Speed mode kept about 40 km\h and cut the stove to the full so that the liquid and the engine would not get too hot.
A series of failures at this did not end - at a major intersection turned over the truck, and all sent to bypass almost the entire city.
Had to go around, giving a hook of 12 extra and painful miles for him. And now on the horizon, you can see the gates of my service station, which he was ready to kiss, but then he was waiting for failure. As they say, not his day, completely.
It turned out that there were only two mechanics on the shift and the cars in front of me in line for a couple of days ahead. Meanwhile, the smelly steam he was already familiar with came out from under the hood again. I had to jam the car and wait for almost an hour until it cooled down, and the time was almost evening (winter, getting darker quickly). But during this hour he had time to learn about the next service station, through 2 streets, where there were specialists in such cases.
Having cooled down the car, he went to the next service station. There he was diagnosed with a sad diagnosis: the radiator needed a new one because there was a big hole that could not be fixed, plus the overheated the engine. That's how he tried to save money on the tow truck, and as a result, he got to repair the engine, a week of downtime, and replace the radiator itself, and flush the cooling system.
I hope that my story will be instructive for those who like to save on everything, even the most important. His "saving" on the tow truck cost him three times as much: engine repair, a week without a car, and the purchase of a new radiator. But he could easily use the tow truck and leave the next day on his own business. So follow these instructions, so as not to suffer great losses. After all, the rules and instructions are written not just like that, as here my acquaintance managed to see on his own bitter experience.