1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154 
SKEWERED!
Page 69
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
A radiator repair is called for in the middle of nowhere
by Ron Douglas
NOT ALL vehicle failures are the result of wear and tear or even that so often quoted cause, beloved by manufacturers' warranty departments, "driver misuse." Sometimes pure bad luck can put you off the road and quite often when such a mishap occurs you are so far from the sort of help you need that you simply have to improvise.
One spring morning I was off-loading reinforcing irons on a power station site way out in the wilds of Scotland, with the nearest habitation 30 miles away when such a stroke of bad luck hit me.
The irons were being handed off the vehicle by four labourers onto the first level of a future block of offices, and part way through the operation one of the men missed his footing on the scaffold and plunged the twelve or so feet to the ground. Quite naturally everybody dropped what they were doing, clambered down to the ground and fussed around the poor fellow who quite obviously had broken a leg.
The site ambulance whisked him off to some distant hospital for treatment and the rest of use returned to the unloading. The accident had happened at the front end of the vehicle and as I walked back I was staggered to see the reinforcing iron that the labourer had dropped propped up between the radiator grille and the scaffold.
Just as I was congratulating myself that it had not gone through the screen I spotted water running down the inside of the cowling. Yes, the blasted thing had skewered the radiator; it had in fact, by a stroke of bad luck for me, come off the scaffold like a spear and gone straight through one of the apertures in the grille.
With a bit of help I got it out, but as we withdrew it from the radiator matrix, water and anti-freeze gushed out.
I stripped off the grille and surveyed the damage. About 11 tiers of cooling fins and four tubes were wrecked and on the face of things I wasn't going to be at my next pick-up on time.
I knew very well that the very nearest place I could hope to get a radiator was Glasgow and that was 140 miles away. And, bearing in mind previous dealings with the service outfit concerned, I knew it was reliable but oh so slow to respond to anything more than 10 miles from its doorstep.
Now, a vehicle cooling system is designed to have a fair margin of cooling capacity and on counting the tubes on my particular vehicle I discovered that the four damaged ones represented less than 3 per cent of the total. Well, I thought, it would be a poor system that had only a 3 per cent margin, and so I decided to make a repair on the spot.
In my toilet kit I had a pair of nail scissors and with these I trimmed the cooling fins from around the damaged area up and down the length of the damaged tubes for three inches each way. I then cut the damaged tubes and with a pair of pointed pliers from my tool box turned them back a couple of folds each, staggering the folds so as to be able to get at them in order to pinch them up tight with a small Mole grip.
The whole job took about two hours and with some trepidation I refilled the system with water. A tiny weep was evident but, "when it warmed up that would disappearI convinced myself. By the time I had done, so had the lads
doing the unloading and I trundled off to the site office to get my ticket cleared and talk to the bossman about how I should claim for the damage to my truck.
He saw reason, but as is usual in such cases the solicitors and lawyers had to prove their worth by dragging out the poor labourer's broken leg claim for almost a year. I eventually got the price of a new radiator which I bought and put in the garage.
Oh no, I haven't fitted it yet. well, . . the old one isn't leaking is it!