Tanya’s car going up in smoke left us with a slight transport problem.
You see, the Rand-Lover was leaking water from the thermostat housing, and I figured it’s the gasket. So I pulled the housing, bought velumoid, psyched myself up for the job, thought about it, drank beer, and otherwise procrastinated, as dictated by my basic nature.
Which lead to me hurriedly bolting things together on Wednesday evening. And guess what? It still leaked. Made it to work by pouring water in the top faster than it could run out the bottom, or side, in this case.
Removed the thermostat housing and got our driver to take it to a MIG welding place, where the fellow shook his head and frowned. Whereupon I phoned around, looking for a replacement, but no such luck. Apparently these things have by now all corroded away in a similar fashion to mine.
So Tanya had to give me a lift home last night, which also means that I had to give her a lift to work this morning.
I used the opportunity to shoot through to Bellville, where I have a shipping container, will all the stuff I’d accumulated when my ex kicked me out, as well as a bunch of stuff I’ve accumulated since then. Gads, I love my stuff.
And there I found, as I rightly suspected I should, the thermostat housing which I didn’t use, because it was then the worse of the two, but of course now it’s by far the better of the two.
Which means that the Yellow Rand-Lover rides again.
For your further edification, I present Plan B. Or is that Plan C?
This is the bottom thermostat housing off the front of the Chev 2.5 engine head (in other words, the bit that the broken bit in the previous pics bolt on to). With a piece of pipe, an angle grinder and an arc welder, one can create a functional equivalent to the aliminium part, but one that should last as long as the rest of the head.