Bizzare Catastrophe

[al-stag]

As my garage is a council one that leaks a bit, I thought I would get a car cover .

On returning slightly p'd off from a holiday abroad (almost continuous rain for 10 days,scary swollen river trips, hacking through flooded jungles+ floods and landslides) I removed the Stag's cover and laid it carelessly on the floor at the end of the garage. I backed the car out and gave it a usual 10 mile weekly winter blast. Returning to the garage I drove straight in and edged the Stag up to its usual position. Suddenly there was a rustling and theengine stopped suddenly. My heart sank! The cover had snagged on the viscous fan and been dragged in, stopping the engine. As it was getting dark and there is no light, I left it until this morning to sort the problem out.

It took me two hours, including removing the power steering pump and belt to disentagle the mess, hacking at it with Stanley Knife, scissors, screwdriver and scalpel. Luckily, there was no damage except to my nerves. On examination, the ends of the fan blades project about 1/4" below the front scuttle, and this was what picked up the cover. Luckily the coverwas a£7.99 in a Lidl one, sohardly anydamage to the wallet!

But....Great to be back in England !!!


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Al

[Coppo]

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Hi Al.

That was lucky....Have you not got this cover in place. Part No. 216746

Paul.

[al-stag]

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Coppo,

Thanks, there doesnt appear to be one! I shall investigate



Al

[grahamb]

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Glad it caused nothing to serious Alan. Where did you go on holiday?

[al-stag]

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Hello Graham,

Costa Rica. There is usually a bit rain at this time of year, but it was unusual weather conditions and most days it hammered down continuously. This flooded the hotels which were fairly primitive, roads were swept away by flash fllods and there were landslides. At one point we were just about winning against the current of a swollen river as the boat was pounded by logs and the props fouled by trees that had been swept away. We had to hack our way through the jungle at some points, ford rivers and get around landslides, quite an adventure. But aside from that we saw a lot of what we wanted to see so it was aworthwhile holiday.

There are very few old cars is CR, I think anything old will have rusted away, or been pounded into oblivion by the rough tracks that serve as roads (except many characterful old Land Rovers which are locally much respected). Its a land for tough 4WD's. One guy said "Ah England, you make really tough cars!".

Here's some pics http://www.flickr.com/photos/alyrpal/sets/72157610625411332/show/

Nice to come back to some excellent winter sunshine

Al

[grahamb]

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Great pictures Alan. Costa Rica certainly looks very lush! I think I will have to look into flickr as this looks more impressive than pbase now and my account is up for renewal..

[al-stag]

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Graham

If you have a BT Yahoo account you get a Pro account on Flikr free, which gives you unlimited on line photo storage. Its very useful. I store travel docs on Flikr so that when I go away I can access copies anywhere. There is also a fairly decent photo editor. But, for photo printng in the UK you can't beat Photobox, and you can retrieve your Flikr photos and print them.

Al