A dash of wrinkle

摘要

Alba's latest troubles began one morning when I started his engine and let it warm up. Just before setting off, I spotted a little green droplet descend towards the carpet. On checking, I found coolant was dripping from the lower part of the heater. I was lucky to discover it before the drip became a flow of hot coolant over the carpet or, worse still, the passenger's feet! I think there used to be a suitable repair kit for the Mk4 heater matrix pipes but I only found the complete matrix on sale, so a quick order to Mini Sport saw the matrix arrive in Japan within a week. For the time being I connected the two heater hoses together, which was OK for a short time as, fortunately, the weather was still cool enough to avoid overheating. The temperature gauge read a little bit higher than normal, due to the reduced volume of coolant in the system.