Cars and fish...

Well, I put poor old Harry back into hospital. The poor guy's fin rot seemed to be coming back. I think I'd better clean out the tank, since I haven't had a chance yet, as it might be that the tank is what is aggravating the fin rot. In the mean time, Harry is getting a "treatment" in the hospital: some fish medicine. So far I haven't really seen much of an improvement, but then again he's only been in the hospital for a few days.  Shame, poor chap, I really feel sorry for him.

Then I also fixed my car this weekend. I'm feeling very proud of myself for that . Jon-David helped me with my car (kudos to him!!) and we fixed two broken breather pipes and my spark plugs.

The breather pipe is made of two pipes, a piece of rubber piping connected to the top of the engine, and a piece of plastic piping that connects to what seems to be the sump. From what I could gather, the breather pipe has something to do with the oil, since it contained oil .

So we needed to replace the rubber part because had some holes in it. We phoned around and found out that the only place we could get a replacement part from was the dealer. Groan. That's always expensive. Oh well. Drive off to town to buy this replacement part, and get a replacement part for Jon-David's car too while we're at it.

So now we're back, and replacing the rubber pipe. And in the process, what happens? The other pipe breaks, down at the connection to the sump. Darn. Of course this is also after all the shops are closed, so we can't go back and get the replacement pipe. So what now?

We eventually went to this hardware store that's open 7 days a week and found some gasket silicon, and used that to kinda glue the pipe back together and push the pipe back on. A temporary measure, but at least it worked. Until Sunday.

When I got back home on Sunday evening after a visit to Léhane, I popped the bonnet and found that the same plastic pipe had broken, this time right at the join to the rubber piping. So on Monday I then temporarily fixed that too, pulling the broken bit of plastic out of the rubber pipe and pushing the plastic pipe back in and clamping it together again. Fortunately, I saw that the pipe had broken just as I reached home, there was some oil on the road right outside my garage door.

So then yesterday I phoned up Barons (the dealer) again, and then Jon-David and I went there in the afternoon and got the replacement pipe. But oh my herd! One stupid little piece of plastic pipe cost me R500 (about $70)!! It's just ridiculous. And guess what? I didn't have a choice. I had to buy it.

Ah well, at least I've fixed that, and my car is running MUCH better. I'm so grateful for that. Less for me to worry about.