Wonder how far he got.

Yesterday, going up 22 north of Millerton, just left Lime Rock. Coming toward me, a pickup truck, I think Tacoma, with steam rolling out from under the hood and wheel well, rolling along at normal speed. He/she could not have seen it. i lokked in the mirror, still going.

was it obvious from the driver's POV or was it just obvious from outside the car?

I recently saw a Saab 9-3 that was blowing serious amounts of smoke from the tailpipe.. I could not get the driver's attention to save my life.

Once when I was in university, there was an old Saab or something in front of me for a long time as I was headed to campus. It was burning enough oil to make an effective smokescreen. I had some free time so I wrote a letter with something along the lines of:

"Dear Saab driver,

There is a product called Bardahl #2 which you can add to your engine oil to increase its viscosity, which will prevent all the oil from getting past the seals into the combustion chamber and then being burned off into the atmosphere. It's available at most automotive stores. Please get some as soon as possible.

Best wishes,

The black car stuck behind you this morning, whose interior now smells like your exhaust."

...and left it under the car's windshield wiper.

heh, just make sure it was not a saab old enough to be a two stroke

The steam was coming out of the drivers side, no way he/she couldn't see it.

Probably as far as I got when that happned to me in the Z3.

Not very far.

I got lucky the other day and looked in the rearview mirror on my way to work on the interstate. I saw some whisps of white steam.

My heart sank and I looked down at the temperature guage to confirm my suspicions...it was rising.

I pulled off and pretty much resigned myself to performing a head-gasket replacement sometime in the VERY near future. I had prematurely concluded that the steam was coming from the tailpipe.

I decided, what the heck, and looked under the hood. There was a coolant hose going to the intake manifold that had blown off and lost its little spring clamp.

I noticed a garden hose hooked up to the (non-keyed) spiggot at the gas station I was at. I hooked the coolant hose back up (without a clamp) and filled the radiator with water. I left the radiator cap off for the rest of the drive to work (~2 miles) and took the outer road. I found a hose clamp in the maintenance cage...and count myself lucky I caught it before it overheated enough to break metal!

$200 Rear Drive Corolla Wagon FTW!

Clem

lesson learned. Replace those stupid spring clamps with screw type clamps

GlennS wrote: lesson learned. Replace those stupid spring clamps with screw type clamps

But not until after they fail ;)

J/K...

Clem