Thread: Auto fluid everywhere - Don't let Mum borrow your Disco

Had to work Saturday morning so I let my lovely mother borrow my Disco...

I get a call just before midday, "your car has broken down om the southern outlet, smoke out the back, RACT on the way".

This was a surprise considering this D2a Td5 has been amazing for the almost 2 years I've own it. Had it towed to IMS in Kingston (Justin Cooper). I have to say it has already been great service with Justin calling me back on his Saturday to touch base.

I drove down later for a peek myself and it looks as though it's all the fluid from the auto that was dumped on to the exhaust hence the smoke. Hopefully a hose as given up? Any thoughts?

I'm happy it is with Justin today either way!

Alex

Had same happen to me on the morning going to ferry to Tangalooma for a week holiday with friends. My fault because I’d disturbed the cooler hose to transmission cooler when replacing the radiator the weekend before (stupid plastic overflow pipe outlet!).

In our case we had two cars, 11 people (6 with me), 5 kayaks, loads of gear etc and it dropped its load only 50m after leaving my mates place heading to ferry. Oh and it was 6:30am on a Saturday.

Shortening the story ... we sent all the girls ahead in the other car and all the boys stayed to help fix (sexist yes but that’s what they all wanted to do). Local garage thankfully had a workshop so we borrowed the torn head needed to refill transmission and made up a filler tube from pipe, old milk bottle etc. Mechanically, it just needed the junction to be cleaned and pushed back in (I shut it down almost instantly when I saw the first trail of fluid in the rear view mirror and smelt the giveaway fluid smell).

I had other tools on board but was glad the torx head was loaned by garage (for Brisbanites, the bloke at the top end of Grange Road cnr Evelyn St - great bloke). We also bought all of the ATF he had available on his shelf. Once we got it topped up and ready to go it still smelt bad due to all the ATF which had run off. We figured if we gunned it we might make it to the ferry in time so I had my army logistics mate working the phone to his partner to talk to the operators about us trying to get there and my engineering mate making sure I didn’t stuff up on the best route to take. Meantime I was gunning it without gunning it (nervous about a repeat incident without having had chance to road test and worried about impact on transmission itself).

We gave up making it to the ferry when they gave us a pass to the next one later in the day. We took off for an engine hose down and some coffee by the Bay.

While we were having coffee I realised we could check on the girls’ progress via find my phone ... as we watched the happy little dot make its way across the bay we had the epiphany that in the rush of it all we had neglected to think about the increasingly dry conditions on the island (Sept 2017), the significant amount of bogging that was going on and how ALL of the rescue gear was with us...

I have to admit we paused for a moment wondering if we actually wanted to admit that to the girls in advance or just wear it if necessary when we got there ... you’re right, we rang them. By the time we decided to do that they were already on the island and being assisted by a couple of very eager to show their ability young blokes and they were totally happy about being without the gear. They were also helpful enough to point out that while we had the rescue gear, they had helpful young blokes to get them through and also sent us a photo of the fridge in their car with all of the beer!

Moral of the story ... yes the bloody transmission pipes will let go and right when you don’t want them to do so, which in this case was when we had every ability to self rescue but no coldies to enjoy while waiting for the que of tray backs to get out of the bloody way! Took us 2 hours just to get from the ferry to Tangalooma - look it up ... it’s about 20 minutes worth of track.