Mervin motors on.

For those following the trials of Mervin, my bargain basement van, here are more tales of his adventures.

Mervin threwa wobbler week before last when he was asked to do a cross town journey at rush hour. Normally he performs perfectly, although he doesn't like early morning starts - rather like me in that respect. And we both hate rush hour. This particular rush hour was a doozer though. A fire at a waste recycling centre had caused half the roads in the city to be closed off due to the nasty smoke and fumes, with the result that all the traffic has seemingly been pushed onto the one cross town road remaining. What should have been a 40 minute jouney on a normal day had stretched to a good hour and a half of sitting motionless and carwling an inch or so at a time, with about 4 miles still to go to reach an important conference venue when Mervin threw what is best described as a hissy fit. He got all hot and bothered and leaked his coolant all over the tarmac. With the temperature gauge needle trying to bend around the red stop I limped him into a filling station and raised the bonnet. Examination showed no coolant left at all and a tell tale brown stain on the header tank return hose. Closer examination showed that this had been rubbing against the metal clip of the air filter box for 15 years, with the end result of the sidewall of the hose weakening and eventually splitting under the excess heat and pressure of the rush hour crawl.

Now I may have touched before on the topic of modern filling stations and this one was no different. It stocked something like 42 different flavours of crisps, overpriced curled up sandwiches and lukewarm fizzy drinks, but nothing remotely useful to the stranded motorist. However a short walk away was a bicycle shop. Now there is an industry that looks after it's customers. They sell bikes AND the bits to repair them. Sadly they did not have the header tank hose for a 1994 Ford Courier diesel van, although they did, for some strange reason have a Jaguar cycle on display. Ford owned Jaguar for a while, but none of the parts on the bike looked compatable with Mervins chassis. I was however able to purchase a puncture repair outfit and role of elecrtrical insulation tape with a get you home bodge in mind.

Heath Robinson inspired repair then took place. After allowing a suitable cooling period lashings of glue and a puncture repair patch were applied to the split hose and a makeshift bandage crafted from tape. Attached to the useless filling station was one of those Hand Wash car wash places, absent of any of the usual Migrant staff (well is was only 9.45 by now) and as they generally sit around drinking between scrathing your paintwork with a moist rag I managed to find a couple of useful empty bottles with whcih to fill up the radiator system using the leaky tap conveniently attached to the nearby wall of what was once the mechanised car wash, before Polish migrants were invented to do it by hand (oh err!)

This bodge worked so well that I haven't bothered to replace the hose. Total repair cost £2.

Mervin was so over joyed with this mechanical attention that he promptly failed to proceed again with another problem more about which follows.