Checking all your belts and hoses is a seriously good idea, especially if it is an older car. I have had those things go out, and in the middle of nowhere, and that is when you are sometimes least prepared.
I was on a trip to California from Spokane to take my friend Nyla down to see her mom who lived in California.
I had just replaced the head-gaskets on the 71 Datsun pickup engine we were driving, and the garage was supposed to have checked everything out before I got it back. They didn't.
We had made it into our second day, and were winding through the mountains of central Oregon when the radiator hose broke and started spurting everywhere. Fortunately, we had brought along extra gallon jugs of water, so we let it cool down and refilled the radiator.
Now.... how to patch that hose ??
Imagine------ two little old ladies, out on a back highway, 20 miles to the next town.
Then, we dug through everything that was in the back of the Datsun pickup, looking for something, anything, that would work temporarily, so we could limp into a mechanic shop.
Finally, we found an old shower curtain (to this day I have NO idea why that thing was in the back of my pickup ? ?), and we took scissors out of my knitting bag, and cut a nice piece of shower curtain off and wrapped it tightly around the radiator hose.
Next, I took some of my knitting yarn, and we wrapped that around and around the shower curtain and put some good "granny knots" in it. Away we went, praying we made it to the next town.
Yes, it worked, we made it to the next town, and you should have been there to see the look on that mechanic's face when he opened the hood and looked at our repair job.
I know that he must have chuckled about our shower curtain "fix-it" for the rest of the afternoon...
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