I managed to load all my stuff into my wagon the night before big thanks to Daniel and his mate. Ed arrived on time and we were off to pick up the trailer. Hit our first snag of the day when they wanted to see a driver’s license (we both haven't got one). Legendary Ayresie drove up all the way from Cranbourne. We followed him home and loaded his stuff. Then went to Jimmy's place to pick up Davo’s stuff. And we were off, that’s when the car blew up. The heat gauge raced up to H and well into red. I screamed to Ed to pull over but there was road work on the Monash and the emergency lane was blocked off. A trail of smoke started to stream out of the bonnet. We pulled over popped the hood and a fountain of boiling coolant started spraying onto the freeway. "Harnie
was driving on the opposite side of the Monash, saw the
wagon, the trailer, Jas' car then proceeded to break the law and
illegally u-tern[sic] to the other side. Co-incidence that he should be
driving at the same time that the car broke down
Lucky indeed!"^
Called RACV and got my car towed with the trailer hooked to the back of the tow truck. The tow truck guy was a real champ and made the distance 8kms so it was included under the RACV limit. Daniel checked out the car and noticed the fan belt was missing, this would suggest that there was nothing wrong with the radiator and that the water was not getting pumped through the engine. My sister let us use her car and Harnie took over the driving duties from Ed. Ed went to Kennard’s to replace the electrical cable which was rectangle to circle for my wagon but need to be circle to circle for my sisters car. The guy at Kennard’s insisted Ed take the original cable as well which Ed refused three times. We noticed that the left indicator was not working on the trailer - a no left turn policy was employed. We made it into town and unloaded all the stuff, Jason's friend Naryan helped with the carrying. Jason and Megan had a lovely Nando’s lunch complemented by Vic market fruit waiting for us. The plan was to drive to Ringwood to pick up couches from Ayresies gran and deliver them to Ayresies sister in Cranbourne. We were in the rightmost lane on Hoddle street and had to cross three lanes of traffic to get onto the eastern. We had to break the no left turn policy - I did the "stick your arm out bicycle indicator" thing which was completely ignored, in fact almost got it taken off twice - to the absolute delight of our support car (whose navigator was responsible for putting us in the wrong lane in the first place).My sisters car started heating up(even though it was pulling an empty trailer) and we pulled into the Nunna Macka’s, we sat outside exhausted and depressed. Our mood was lifted immediately when Megan bought everyone a jumbo sized sugar fix sometimes referred to as a slurpiee. There was a vintage Holden that also overheated at the same mackas, its driver popped the radiator cap and boiling brown water shot into the air the guy managed to dive out of the way of most of it, quite a spectacular sight. Harn had packed about 50 litres of water for emergency use which we shared with him. We made it back to my place and had a couple of cold Heinekens on the deck with my sister and her friends. Harn offered to take the trailer on the back of his
"mighty XF"* and offered a
"100% guarantee"* unfortunately we didn’t have the right cable (we required rectangle to circle) and besides my Jinx guarantee trumps any guarantee offered by the Ford Motor Company – did I mention each car was a Falcon? (EB wagon, EA sedan and finally the XF offer). We all went to a Greek restaurant at Knox and treated ourselves to a
"splendidly delicious meal (meat, meat & more meat - just the way Val likes it)"^ we toasted all things radiator related and finished off with a round of sambuca shots followed by a glow in the dark game of mini golf which Megan won putting and putting all of us blokes to shame.
^
"Taken directly from Megans gmail addition"^"Adapted from Megans gmail addition"
*
"Taken Directly from Harnies gmail addition"
