STRANDED IN PARADISE II

Last night when driving out to the bay the car had a problem. The dash lights and headlights dimmed and then went out before the engine cut out. We were on the country road and it was foggy but fortunately I was able to steer the car off the road (tricky when not being able to see) and nestled as close to a fence line as possible. It was almost pitch dark being after 8pm but fortunately there was an almost half moon that peeped out from the clouds from time to time.

I looked under the bonnet and with the help of light from the Old Girl's blackberry ascertained that there was nothing obviously disconnected. It was hard to see though (note to self: buy a torch for the car) so I had to feel around to check that things were OK. This is tricky in the dark with a hot engine.
I assumed that it was alternator or coil failure and there was nothing I could do to fix it. We were still about 5kms from home and could easily have walked it even though we had bags of groceries but I didn't fancy leaving the car overnight on the side of a country road. When we first moved up here I noticed a car broken down on the side of the road almost exactly where we were. A day later it had been trashed. See:

MEAN SPIRITED BASTARDS

The road has some patches where cellphone coverage blacks out but fortunately we were in a clear bit. Funny that as we subscribe to Vodafone (a little telecommunications joke there to lighten the situation). The Old Girl called AA and explained the problem. They said they'd send someone out but it would be about an hour as we were about a half hour out of Whangarei. As we waited a few cars passed (I put my foot on the brake lights, which fortunately still lit up, when cars approached from behind as I didn't want to be crashed into even though we were off the road). Two actually stopped to ask if we needed assistance which was pleasing. The first was a young woman with two little kids in the car. She drove her car up so that her headlights shone under the bonnet but we still couldn't identify the problem. I thanked her and said that hopefully a tow truck would be there soon. The second was a young guy and when I thanked him and told him that we would be OK soon he said 'no worries mate, I was hoping it might be a chick who needed a tyre change". It's good to see that there are still people willing to help strangers.

When the tow truck arrived it was the same guy who helped us a few weekends back when the car overheated. He and a guy from the Repco store spent ages installing a couple of new radiator hoses for us. See:

ARE YOU BEING SERVED

He winched the car up onto his truck, drove us home and then took the car back to a garage where we get the car serviced. It has a locked yard but he has the key-code so was going to put it safely there which is much better than being on the side of the road. I don't know when it can be checked and repaired as the garage is closed until Monday. The Old Girl is getting a lift with neighbours into town tomorrow evening to get the bus to Auckland and I'm booked to go back Monday afternoon. If the car's not ready then I'm stuck here. I'll have to ring work and tell them I'm staying up here until after Anzac 'weekend'.
Still, there are worse places to be stranded.

The car is a bit of a worry though. It is now 15 years old and starting to give problems. We may have to replace it or just resort to using the Peugeot only.