Last Monday my postal vehicle broke down. It was overheating quite rapidly, all of the engine coolant was disappearing, gurgling noises could be heardcoming from under the hood, clouds of steam followed me wherever I went. Pair these symptoms with the fact that the vehicle has travelled over 110,000 miles and it becomes obvious that the head gasket is blown. The local mechanic who does minor work on these vehicles took a look under the hood and concurred. So, last Tuesday my vehicle was sent off to the Vehicle Maintainence Facility (VMF) in Washington, PA to be fixed. It was returned to me on Friday afternoon.
When I spoke to the guy from the VMF, I knew that I was in trouble. They had fixed the transmission, he told me. The transmission had neen giving me some minor problems when shifting into reverse, so this pleased me. "What about the engine?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he told me, "there was no coolant in your vehicle." When he said this, warning lights began to go off in my mind. I just knew that they hadn't fixed the vehicle's real problem.
I watched all of the guages very carefully as I delivered my route on Saturday. All appeared to be functioning properly. I was pleased. Perhaps they had fixed that blown head gasket, even though that seemed highly unlikely consiering how quickly the work had been done. Maybe that mechanic and I had been wrong... Alas, this was not the case.
About twenty minutes into my route today, the steam clouds, overheating, and all of the other problems returned. My first instincts had been correct.
AS I sat waiting in the cold for my boss to procure another vehicle for me, it became obvious to me how those guys at the VMF had "fixed" my vehicle. They had dumped a gallon or so of antifreeze and a can of stop leak into the radiator. That's a nice temporary fix to get you through the day, but that's no way to fix a blown head gasket! What the hell is wrong with these guys?!
