I was on my way home, thinking of getting some KFC for my kids as well as my Sheaffer pen refill at Cziplee, when along the Kajang-Puchong highway I smelt something burning as I was slowing down due to the jam near the Bangi flyover.
My wife's Kancil suddenly died, and upon numerous attempts to restart the engine, the starter whimpered as if I had a weak battery. Which in fact I did, but after about 10 kilometres of recharging by the alternator, that shouldn't have been a problem.
The traffic began to move, as my pulse started to race with my mind diving into an abyss of panic and confusion.
I quickly turned on the hazard light, while still trying to reignite the engine. That was when I realized that the engine temperature was off the scale! Fortunately, a Good Samaritan volunteered to help and pushed me and my car to the emergency lane. I was about to have my faith in the civic-mindedness of Malaysians, when I realized that he was a call man!
Call men for the uninitiated are workshop and tow-truck agents who patrol the highway on a regular basis, looking for 'customers', or in more recent years - victims. My hunch is that they earn a good commission which explains why your repair bills reach astronomical amounts if you let them repair your car at their whim and fancy.
But since he DID help me out, I've given him my word to promote his services. BTW, he didn't charge me a penny, thus he's still in my Malaysian Person of the Year honours list.. :P.
His name is Andy Loh Thim Meng a.k.a Pendek, and he drives around in a silver Kenari bearing the plate no WC50. His business card says he's a Manager / Claim Consultant for Wei Chung Service Centre Sdn Bhd in Rinching. Here's a picture of this jolly fella:
His handphone number is 0173581211 & 0166866377. To be honest, he does strike me as a nice person, thus the free promo : )
Anyway, the first thing I told him, which is what you all should do, is that I had my own on-call tow truck service, and a foreman to boot. He was notably bothered, although not peeved by it.
Opening the bonnet, I could see steam rising from one of the hoses. My initial thought was that it might have been a leaking radiator hose, which resulted in less than perfect circulation of water.
I have to say that I'm no car whizz, but driving a kancil is not much of a help either, because due to its reliability, it never broke down on me before. At this point, Andy's machais came along in a blue kancil with a pail of water! Subsequently, they opened the radiator cap, and promptly poured water into the radiator, with steam bellowing for that extra dramatic effect.
Cue the oohs and aahs as this was normally the time that the call men will tell you how wrecked your car is. Trust me, they will tell you all sorts of horror stories to trigger you into sending your car to their nominated workshops where the slaughtering ceremony shall commence..
Since I was insistent that I had my own tow truck service and workshop, they subsequently yielded and after a saying thanks and all, they left (phew!). I actually slipped RM10 into Andy's pocket, but I said, being the nice fella that he was, he gave it back to me..
I forgot to mention, while this was going on, at least three other call men stopped by, offering their help. Once Andy left, another three cars stopped, all giving all sorts of diagnosis and doomsday theory. One actually brought along his wife and 2-year old son along! I don't know about others, but I think I have a clearer picture now on how a sexy babe with miniskirts would feel walking past a construction site..
Anyway, my trump card was that I stay with my parents-in-law, and that my dad-in-law (DIL) is an OK DIY foreman himself. Once all these goons left, my DIL who was from Nilai, came over and brought all sorts of radiator tubes and joints after hearing what happened from my dear ly beloved wife.
Fair enough, it seemed that the original T-joint was broken due to tear and wear. The parts were made from plastic of some kind, and maybe due to the heat and pressure, it decided to cease operating on that very day..
BTW, the replacement part was made from metal, which is the shiny bit in the picture below:
After fixing everything back on again, I started the engine to find out that the battery was flat! Thank God we had a jumper cable, and the engine was back to life once again. Revving the engine, we found out the the water in the radiator started jumping up, which shows that the circulation was not good. As it was about 9 pm, we decided to call it a day, and headed to the nearest Mamak stall.
The plot thickened after barely a few hundred metres! The temperature gauge again went dead max, and there I was scratching my head with the thought that my daddy dearest was happily sipping his teh-tarik away..
Anyway, after a couple of minutes by which time the temp was half of what it was, I started the engine again until it halted right smack in front of the Mamak shop!
So, I said 'F' it cause it was 10 pm and I was mad hungry.
After a plate of rice and lamb curry (Again, you say? Yeah, dad highly recommended it..), I broke the news to him and being him, he decided to have another crack at it.
So there I was, at 11.30 pm, holding up the torchlight, while he went on tweaking whatever it was that he was tweaking..
Finally, we realized that the radiator fan was not working. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I could see another car parked right in front of us - another call man.
This time though, he actually talked some sense and proceeded to do a few checks to show us what was wrong. We had however decided to drive the car slowly home when the fella opened the engine oil cap to discover that the oil was mixed with water : (
Which in layman's term means that the gasket separating the top and bottom half of the block has been burnt by the excess heat generated by the engine, contributed by the crap radiator, thus the full extent of the damage can only be known by taking the engine apart - Which wa Chapter 1 of the Book of The Worst Case Scenario of Engine problems.
To cut the story short, he offered to tow it with his Proton Saga Megavalve (You sure read that right..) using a contraption made from what seemed to be metal pipes normally seen under your kitchen sink. He said he worked in one of the workshops near Sungai Ramal Dalam (which turned out to be beside the Kajang toll's KL-bound exit along the highway.
I dunno. Maybe it was the curry, or even the lethargy that made us said OK. When I asked the guy (whose name I cannot remember) how much for the towing, he just said "senang cerita, abang belanja saya minum satu cawan teh, cukup" (You only need to buy me a cup of tea).
Bam!! The next thing I remembered, we were there, at the workshop telling the boss "Ca'a", not to do anything until we get back there the next day.
I'll definitely be bringing my camera.
