Its funny how quickly a bunch of ministers can turn into a bunch of mechanics. I got under the car. Dave popped the bonnet. Steve offered suggestions about what could be wrong. Would we make our trip back to Townsville in time? Can you feel the suspense dear reader?
We pooled our collective experience about what had gone wrong with bombs we had driven in the past. Was it the carby? The petrol line? The spark plugs? (I don't mean to boast here, but incidentally, my particular speciality is radiator overheating. This one time, on another holiday, Dave and I drove home from the Hunter in my previous car- my old Corolla, which kept overheating on us... admittedly it took us a while to get home, but since we had a set of Boules with us, while we waited for the car to cool down, we played Boules by the side of the road. But that's another story for another time. Back to the current one!)
We decided that it was the fuel line. Dave gave the petrol filter a little shake, which seemed to do the trick. There was also a bit of a problemo with the exhaust. It was hanging decidedly low...So Dave being the Macgyver that he is, sacrificed a cable connection from his mobile to allow us to cable tie the muffler to the rear bumper. Having fixed that, we were on our way again.
But we didn't get far. We called the owners of the bomb and told them the sad news. The owner graciously met us at Frosty Mango, the first northern stop outside of Townsville. And the NRMA guy (or whatever its called in Queensland) came to give the diagnosis. It turned out it was the fuel pump!!! The next problem was, the guy couldn't start the car. We had driven it into the ground. It had given up the car-ghost.
The owner graciously drove us to Townsville airport, and we made our plane. Fun times.
Rest in peace, bomb!
1 comment:
That sounds like a super nice owner. If you had just driven my car into the ground I would haven been pissed.
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