Another breakdown
▶ My brother lives on the Isle of Man. I hadn’t seen him for two years, but he managed to arrange an overseas trip and was staying in a Gatwick hotel overnight to catch an early flight the next day. We decided to go and collect him from his hotel, then visit a pub for lunch. My car of choice was our ex-project
Saab 9-3 TTID, which seemed to be behaving itself of late. Limp-home mode and plenty of black smoke from the twin exhausts was its main problem. I thought we should give it a run up the motorway to exercise the engine. The exterior was filthy – eggs had been thrown at the Saab’s exterior after I parked it in one location for a week – why would someone do that?
Anyway, the 9-3 was motoring well, until I asked Sarah if she could see any smoke coming out from the back of the vehicle – white smoke this time. She said she couldn’t see properly as the window was a filthy egg colour.
My usual sinus issue was pretty bad – I’ve lost all sense of taste and smell (not Covid-related) and Sarah announced, once we were off the motorway and heading for the airport, that she ‘could smell fuel.’ I said, “It’s aircraft fuel, darling.” When my brother jumped into the Saab, he said, “It stinks of diesel in here!” Heading into town, I then noticed the smoke from the rear and at the next set of traffic lights, smoke was seeping from the bonnet. I thought it was on fire, so ‘jumped’ the red light, turned left and parked – outside a fire station! Next to the fire station was a BP fuel station, so I was glad we were clear of that.
Cautiously lifting the Saab’s bonnet, I could see diesel all over the top of the engine. We had no tools with us.
Fortunately (again), between the fire station and the fuel station was an MOT garage. A very nice man named Tony came out to look, said he could order some fuel hose (the return pipe to the tank was split), while we jumped on a bus to the pub.
Job done – and I asked Tony to fix a slow tyre leak at the same time. Result, I’d say.