Speaking of overheating cars...had an incident way back, before the era of smartphones etc. Freshly bought used car, and I wanted to go on a roadtrip to Montenegro. All was well, except for a slight hiss. Went to the garage to get it checked out for the trip, told them about the hiss, and the mechanic goes 'well; this model has a pressurization system for the coolant, to allow for qiicker engine heating etc, and you hear the valve letting off air after the motor stops. He was wrong, but who was I to disagree?
So; I drive like 2000km without any issues, and on a coastal scenic road in Montenegro, at quite some altitude, it overheats. Had no mobile internet back then , but I did have a guide book in english for the country.
I call a tow&repair service, and some big balkan guy shows up. I tell him in English what's wrong, he takes one look at the motor, rips the hose and expansion vessel clean off the vehicle and goes 'motor kaput. Not safe'
. So, he gets the car on the truck and gestures me to climb in the car (truck cab was full of stuff). I like flying, but I do have a fear of heights. Seeing the canyons and valleys there from the back of a beaten up tow truck, so high up that I couldn't even see the railing when I looked out the window was quite the unnerving experience.
So, we end up at his garage, he works for like an hour on it and I get to see the 'masterpiece'. He used a paste to glue together the expansion vessel and hose etc, for the price of 200 euros
. I left , with a reminder from him that I shouldn't 'stress' the car too much
.
I think the craxk was really tiny. I might have gotten away with just replenishing the coolant from time to time. That paste started to give and crack in a few weeks, so I still had to take it to the 'normal' repair garage.
Had a very similar issue a year later, hissing and all that. It was a small hose that had cracked on one end. Mechanic literally cut the cracked area, stretched the hose a bit and attached it to the vessel again. Literally a 5 minute job