Another Milano waterpump story...

[Will Owen <nashwill@domain.elided>]

We had a wedding (plus a lot of the usual
side-gatherings) to attend in Lexington, KY this
weekend, so I checked Rico's fluids (that's the
Milano) and tire pressures, gave him a bath, and we
took off from Nashville shortly before noon on Friday.
About 35 miles north on I-65, the radiator icon on the
monitor panel lit up. I pulled off at the next exit,
into one of those utterly useless gas plaza places,
and took a look. There was a strong smell of scorched
antifreeze from the manifold, coolant splattered all
over the firewall, and NO pressure in the cooling
system when I eased the cap off the tank. H'm. 

I added the last bit of spare coolant mix I had in the
trunk, and we drove into the town of Franklin, where
we found a BP station whose owner was happy to grab a
flashlight and look under the hood. As all the
splatter we could see was at the rear of the engine,
we assumed a heater hose or something had gone bad,
but neither of us could spot anything resembling a
leak. We topped up the reservoir and ran the engine
for a while, but there were no drips at all from
anywhere. Even temperature, fan worked, what the heck.
We thanked him and left.

Won't elaborate on this story too much more, except to
say it took us two more water stops beore I noticed a
concentration of reeking vapor at the FRONT of the
engine, and suddenly remembered that the guys at
Spruell had installed that water pump before we bought
the car, and that was - guess what? - almost exactly
30,000 miles ago! (Don't you hate it when one of your
kids does something both typical and obnoxious?) And
of course by then we were a good 30 miles past Bowling
Green, or about a third of the way there. So we drove
back to Bowling Green, rented a dopey but useful Metro
for the rest of the trip, and then drove Rico home
very carefully yesterday evening. 

Two things I'm happy about are that AlfaBill has a
good stock of pumps for really reasonable, and that
the ever-helpful Mr. McKeown has done the pump on his
164, which is the hard version of this job, so I can
expect some expert assistance (I have to admit that he
usually assists me by telling me what wrench to hand
him next). One thing that I'm a little worried about
is that 30-some miles from home, the speedometer
needle started flopping around like crazy, then
dropped dead. Could that have been an electrical
problem brought on by all that coolant spraying
around? Fred? Anyone?

Will Owen
Nashville, TN
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