Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Kam’s Column - 13/05/03
Hello again!
Have you seen the latest Tory proposals for University education? Watching the news this morning nearly had me choking on my Weetabix. Iain Duncan-Smith has come up with the laudable idea of scrapping university tuition fees (great, I think, as I’d like my kids to choose that path). So far so good. But, there is a bombshell – the number of university places would be reduced!
How this is meant to be for the good of society I will never know – are they going to only take the top percentage of school leavers, and leave the rest - who want to learn – without the chance? Or are they going to means test it? Or worse, will they introduce a quota system so that they have a certain percentage from each ethnic group or socio-economic class? Even better, let’s just go back to a Victorian system and only allow the upper classes university education to keep the class system nicely separate. I tell you, regular reader, IDS really gets my goat…
I don’t even want to think about the other story that seems to have had most media coverage over the past week. I’m sure you spotted the story about the climber who had to amputate one hand to free himself from an American mountain side. To tell you the truth, I shudder to even think about it. Combine this with the latest Tory schemes and it’s a wonder that I could even face my Weetabix!
This week’s tale of automotive antics concerns Mr Stavley’s Peugeot 306 Tdi (Mr Stavley’s name has, naturally, been altered to protect his innocence). He bought the car from a local private sale and, within a few days, had lent it to his brother in law, Jerry, while his car was in another garage for repair (this other garage didn’t provide courtesy cars, unlike yours truly).
Apparently, all was hunky dory for a few miles, and then the Tdi overheated – badly. Water boiled up through the radiator, sent steam pouring out of the bonnet and into the cabin and forced Jerry to come to a halt on the side of a deserted B-road at about 11pm. Not what you want when you’re already late for a surprise 40th birthday celebration – especially when it is your own (of course he didn’t know anything about it, hence the surprise)!
First thing yesterday morning, Mr Stavley was on the phone.
“Kev, it’s got to be head gasket, hasn’t it? I mean, you can’t get a diesel to over heat that badly without it being head gasket, can you?” I could hear the panic.
“Well, Mr Stavley, I’m not going to lie to you. It could be the gasket – but that is only a worst case scenario. Let us have a look at the car for you and we will soon know what the situation is.”
Once the car was in the workshop, the first job was obviously to perform a head gasket check – which we do by looking for the presence of hydrocarbons in the cooling system. But there was a problem – the water in the radiator was the colour of the deepest darkest mud from the top of the Congo. I have never, ever, seen water this colour in a car – and in fact you could even see brown sludge where the radiator had boiled over and gushed down the engine bay. Nice.
In theory, it should have been easy enough to get this water out and refill it with nice fresh water. But no – there evidently was a blockage somewhere and every time we put new water in, it would turn brown in seconds. The only thing to do was to attach the ‘in’ side of the radiator to a flowing fresh water source, and allow the system to vent lower down and leave the car running until all the sludge was gone.
Before we could do this however, we had to work out why the fan wasn’t coming on. I left Shaun with the fiddly job of checking all the wiring and he very quickly discovered that there was no feed going into the fan motor. Once that was fixed, it was time to hook the car up and let it run.
It took two hours, regular reader, to have the water in the cooling system running clear. Two whole hours – in which time my lovely forecourt became covered with brown, rusty and horrible water. But eventually it did run clear, so it was time to perform the head gasket check.
I’m delighted to report that the gasket showed no signs of leaking – the system looked to be in perfect condition. And, at the end of a lengthy road test, the 306 remained cool, calm and collected.
The problem was caused by a complete neglect of the cooling system, which after the timing belt is probably the most important part of the engine. At Kam, we flush cooling systems on every service (if necessary) to ensure that this situation never occurs with any of our cars – especially as it can cause head gaskets to go and a lot of money to be lost…
Until next week, steer clear of murky waters by asking us to check your cooling system for you!
Dr Kev.
Have you seen the latest Tory proposals for University education? Watching the news this morning nearly had me choking on my Weetabix. Iain Duncan-Smith has come up with the laudable idea of scrapping university tuition fees (great, I think, as I’d like my kids to choose that path). So far so good. But, there is a bombshell – the number of university places would be reduced!
How this is meant to be for the good of society I will never know – are they going to only take the top percentage of school leavers, and leave the rest - who want to learn – without the chance? Or are they going to means test it? Or worse, will they introduce a quota system so that they have a certain percentage from each ethnic group or socio-economic class? Even better, let’s just go back to a Victorian system and only allow the upper classes university education to keep the class system nicely separate. I tell you, regular reader, IDS really gets my goat…
I don’t even want to think about the other story that seems to have had most media coverage over the past week. I’m sure you spotted the story about the climber who had to amputate one hand to free himself from an American mountain side. To tell you the truth, I shudder to even think about it. Combine this with the latest Tory schemes and it’s a wonder that I could even face my Weetabix!
This week’s tale of automotive antics concerns Mr Stavley’s Peugeot 306 Tdi (Mr Stavley’s name has, naturally, been altered to protect his innocence). He bought the car from a local private sale and, within a few days, had lent it to his brother in law, Jerry, while his car was in another garage for repair (this other garage didn’t provide courtesy cars, unlike yours truly).
Apparently, all was hunky dory for a few miles, and then the Tdi overheated – badly. Water boiled up through the radiator, sent steam pouring out of the bonnet and into the cabin and forced Jerry to come to a halt on the side of a deserted B-road at about 11pm. Not what you want when you’re already late for a surprise 40th birthday celebration – especially when it is your own (of course he didn’t know anything about it, hence the surprise)!
First thing yesterday morning, Mr Stavley was on the phone.
“Kev, it’s got to be head gasket, hasn’t it? I mean, you can’t get a diesel to over heat that badly without it being head gasket, can you?” I could hear the panic.
“Well, Mr Stavley, I’m not going to lie to you. It could be the gasket – but that is only a worst case scenario. Let us have a look at the car for you and we will soon know what the situation is.”
Once the car was in the workshop, the first job was obviously to perform a head gasket check – which we do by looking for the presence of hydrocarbons in the cooling system. But there was a problem – the water in the radiator was the colour of the deepest darkest mud from the top of the Congo. I have never, ever, seen water this colour in a car – and in fact you could even see brown sludge where the radiator had boiled over and gushed down the engine bay. Nice.
In theory, it should have been easy enough to get this water out and refill it with nice fresh water. But no – there evidently was a blockage somewhere and every time we put new water in, it would turn brown in seconds. The only thing to do was to attach the ‘in’ side of the radiator to a flowing fresh water source, and allow the system to vent lower down and leave the car running until all the sludge was gone.
Before we could do this however, we had to work out why the fan wasn’t coming on. I left Shaun with the fiddly job of checking all the wiring and he very quickly discovered that there was no feed going into the fan motor. Once that was fixed, it was time to hook the car up and let it run.
It took two hours, regular reader, to have the water in the cooling system running clear. Two whole hours – in which time my lovely forecourt became covered with brown, rusty and horrible water. But eventually it did run clear, so it was time to perform the head gasket check.
I’m delighted to report that the gasket showed no signs of leaking – the system looked to be in perfect condition. And, at the end of a lengthy road test, the 306 remained cool, calm and collected.
The problem was caused by a complete neglect of the cooling system, which after the timing belt is probably the most important part of the engine. At Kam, we flush cooling systems on every service (if necessary) to ensure that this situation never occurs with any of our cars – especially as it can cause head gaskets to go and a lot of money to be lost…
Until next week, steer clear of murky waters by asking us to check your cooling system for you!
Dr Kev.
