The part for the car hasn’t come in yet.  We were told that it might take two weeks because it’s on back-order.  The mechanic decided to do a repair on the pipe.  He was surprised that the duct tape had stayed on.  Anyhow, the day after the repair, the car started acting up again.  In fact, it got worse.  The repair made the pipe worse and it tore it up even more.  The car kept overheating.[ad#ad-1]

In addition to frequent topping up of water, my husband had to finally resort to cutting the pipe and taking out the bit of metal that was used in the repair.  We went back to duct tape.  We still have to frequently stop and top up with water, but there are no further tears to the pipe.  We need to last out this week at least.  Luckily, the kids have half-term next week and we are expecting the part to show up by them.  I certainly hope so, because our older daughter has a gymnastics competition in a town much further away at the end of the month.

Don’t you just love it when your car breaks down?  It’s happened so often in the last few days that I’m ready to get a new one.  Only one problem.  We can’t afford to.  It our only car and if we don’t have it, we can’t get anywhere.  The problem with living in remote areas of the villages, you need a car.[ad#ad-1]

My husband thinks he’s diagnosed the problem.  We have a crack in the pipe between the coolant and the engine.  At least, that the glaringly obvious diagnosis.  Whatever else is wrong remains to be resolved after this issue is.  Unfortunately, we can’t get the part for him to fix it himself.  However, our local mechanic thinks he’ll get it in by tomorrow.  Thank God for trustworthy local mechanics.

In the meantime, the mechanic has wrapped the crack in duct tape.  We Americans fix everything with duct tape, so we couldn’t laugh at his methods.  We’re also carrying extra gallons of water in the car.  It’d be so easy if we didn’t have to drive everywhere.  I guess I should be glad we’re expecting rain.