That image up there is a reminder of something. It’s a reminder that when it comes to wrenching, plans and goals you may have simply don’t matter. Somewhere out there, many of us believe, is chaotic spirit, a sort of ethereal, metaphysical entity that gathers ambient chaotic energy, and then flings it into one’s cars with the gleeful disregard of crabgrass. That chaos energy has the power to sense how you’d like to spend your precious wrenching time, money, and energy, and then forces situations where you simply are not able to do so. Then it laughs at you.
Usually this process is quite simple: the chaos causes problems in cars other than the ones you were hoping to work on.
In my case, the car I was hoping to work on was my Citroën 2CV, which I’d only just gotten running again a few days ago, but instead I found that I had to spend my time working on my normally quite reliable daily driver (unless a deer is involved) because of something that was going on in that top picture. Can you see what it is?
Here’s that main shot again. See what’s happening? It’s subtle, but I bet you can see it.
Yep, that’s it, you got it. That very straight vertical something isn’t a bit of wire or string or something, it’s a jet of coolant coming from a pinhole in that coolant hose, which is a little molded hose that takes delicious, piping hot coolant through the heater core and lets it continue on its heat-carrying journey.
A pinhole leak in a hose is one of those miserably tiny things, almost imperceptible, that nevertheless has huge, potentially catastrophic consequences. These leaks are how cars overheat, how head gaskets fail, how all manner of cascading problems happen. They’re deeply annoying.
Oh, and before this I had a tire I had to replace, which just made it feel like something (I’m blaming that chaos entity, remember) was really determined to insure that I wouldn’t have time to work on my 2CV.
Neither of these issues were huge issues, exactly, but both were the kinds of things that had to be taken care of, right then, if I wanted to actually, you know, use my car.
I did get to meet this verdant fella, though. Oh, and for other reasons I had to go up on my roof, but that did allow me to take a picture of both the Pao and still-partially disassembled 2CV from a flying-monkey’s-eye-view:
And I found a new way to bother my kid in his cool attic lair:
Okay, but back to this annoying repair. The hose, while molded, I think was straight enough that I could replace it with a length of normal hose and not have to try and track down a custom chunk of Nissan Micra/Pao more-rare-than-Fabergé-eggsalad rubber, so that was my plan.
You’d think getting out a hose would be trivial, but that would mean that somehow misery like this wouldn’t be a thing, where whatever sadistic monster installed this hose clamp decided that the best possible way to do it would be to put the adjustment screw in a position where you’d have to violate the laws of physics to get a screwdriver in that slot. Whyyyyyyyyyyy?
Eventually I was able to jam a wrench in there and loosen that screw with a delightful and never-ending series of 1/48ths of a turn, over and over and over.
Finally I got the damn thing out, and for a moment I thought I somehow nicked a brake line because I saw what looked like brake fluid!
Thankfully, it was just blood, from somewhere. Because that’s what it always is.
Eventually, I got the new chunk of hose on, added some more coolant, and took the car out for a test drive. With this on the roof:
Yes, those were the snips I grabbed to cut the hose. They’re my gandfather’s old tin snips from when he was a tinsmith, and they’re important to me, which makes it even more absurd I drove as far as I did with these dangerous things forgotten on the roof. And somehow they didn’t fly off? Thank whomever, because that could have been a disaster. Oy.
Also, when I was driving, I noticed that the temperature gauge was rising, dramatically and far too quickly for my tastes. I was overheating. Why? What the hell happened? The leak was fixed! What did I screw up? Why did I screw it up? Ugggg.
Eventually, I realized what I did, or rather, didn’t do, which is to bleed the air out of the cooling system and top it off again with coolant, of which far more got pissed out by that pinhole leak than I realized. So, out bubbled the air, in went the delicious green coolant, and another test drive proved all was okay.
So, to recap, I spent a bunch of time this weekend wrenching, with the end result of having a car that was in effectively the exact same condition it was in before the weekend started, and the car I desperately wanted to work on having had no progress made whatsoever. Another triumph!
Oy.
When I saw the picture, the first thing I noticed was that the hose clamps look just like the ones on my ’89 Nissan. I didn’t catch the coolant leak, though. I thought that was a spider web.
Also, it’s crazy to think I’ve been reading your work since you were writing “Will it baby” articles with your son.
Make sure you orientate the hose clamp correctly so you don’t lose points at the car show. If you’ve ever watched the SMA You Tube channel, you know what I’m talking about.
So the “snail” is taking a leak?
Maybe fix up the RV so it has a place to take a leak? Ha ha
I’ll admit I didn’t see the leak, but I did see the non-logical orientation of the hose clamp.
As far as the tin snips, I learned a lesson the hard way, leaving a cool Canon rangefinder camera on the roof and driving off with it still up there. Now, when I put something on the roof, I put the keys up there with it so I can’t do that again.
I would start with learning a new routine, keys will eventually become keyless … Do you remember Mercedes’s story involving a press Ford pick up truck and the key on the windscreenwiper?
Yes, I do remember reading Mercedes’ story. But my ’17 Honda Accord was well-enough engineered to know whether my key fob is inside the car or out. And once, when my key fob was in a backpack in the trunk and my son picked me up at the airport with the other fob, the trunk wouldn’t stay shut.
The car was already essentially keyless at that point. I’ve since tested that theory and the car won’t start with the key fob on the roof. But yes, a mechanical key going into a cylinder would be a literal “non-starter.”
A few years later, my housemate misplaced the same second fob and couldn’t get the car started to pick me up from another flight. I should’ve put an Apple AirTag on that one. It’s still MIA somewhere.
Side note: long before that, a physical key broke off in the steering column cylinder in my ’71 Peugeot 504. There was enough of it left to not lock the steering column, but I had to install a fairly hidden hot wire switch for the ignition and accessories, and a push to start button to summon the starter motor. I might have made a decent mechanic in Africa.
My lifelong personal solution has been: Nothing goes on top of the car, ever. As a result, I’m very selective about pants pockets.
I must admit I missed the coolant leak because I thought you had only one issue. It appears to me you have electric wires hooked up to a grease or some petroleum fixture. That can’t be good.
I’m glad I’m not alone in noticing that!
The best tool for cutting hoses is the slicer used to cut PVC sprinkler hose. Basically a razor sharp blade held in a cradle insuring straight cuts.
I think a leak like that is what took out the headgasket on my Tracker. I developed one of those pin-hole leaks, smelled coolant but couldn’t find the source. Shrugged and went on my daily business, until I could find the source later. On the highway, I noticed my temp gauge starting to climb, so I whipped around and headed home. The gauge never hit “hot” but I’m willing to bet it was enough to make that aluminum block get grumpy and blow the HG. Belched coolant out the tailpipe only a week or so after I had fixed the hose.
In real life if you run out of coolant the thermostat has nothing to measure for temperature
Yep, figured that is what happened. Not enough coolant to properly inform the temp sensor. Funny how lots of overheating events will show either a very slightly elevated temperature, or even stone cold when the poor engine is in meltdown mode.