I have a story to relate, one that might inspire a few belly laughs to help y'all stay warm.

I was driving home prior to heading off to work today and noticed a large puddle of liquid on the passenger-side floor mat. I groaned, thinking that my heater core, recently rebuilt and installed, had either blown a hose or sprung a leak inside the car. I had seen a puddle form there before: that happened a few months ago so I did the necessary work to repair it. When I got home I tasted the liquid and found it sweet, not quite like ethylene glycol (antifreeze) but because of where the puddle formed my mind tasted antifreeze. I worked myself up into a tizzy thinking that I would have to pull the underside of the dash again, thought of how tough that was the first time. When I did the last repair it took me two days to pull and replace the dash (I was repairing other stuff as well). I tensed up at the thought of the cold weather coming this weekend (predicted to hit a high of -23 C) and here I was, driving a car without heat again. Did that last winter, didn't want to do it again. Ever since buying my 1982 Toyota Tercel the heater never really put out much heat. I knew there was some kind of problem and guessed that it was a blocked heater core. Turned out that the core was in bad shape but also the valve that opens and closes to let hot coolant into the core was also not working and the controls cables were very sticky.

Oddly enough today, the engine was still running cool but I attributed that to the fact that the lines for the heater core were higher than the engine, so the cooling system would not loose all of the coolant and the car could still be driven - I have run it like that in the past. I drove to work all tense, monitored the engine temperature closely, ready to stop if it began to overheat. I drive with a gallon of premixed coolant stored in the trunk in case of emergency. Well, the engine stayed well within proper operating temperature. Interesting no?

I got to work and lamented to the guys about my ensuing misery, that I would have to pull the dash again and sort out the problem. They felt awful for me because they knew how tough it was for me to repair the car when I replaced the original core. We all peeked under the hood to see if a hose was leaking, talked sympathetically about our trials and tribulations with older cars and tried to figure out where the problem was. Hmm...we saw no visible leaks throughout the cooling system. We theorized that if I topped up the antifreeze and ran the engine hot, then perhaps we could see where the leak was. Bear in mind that if the heater core hoses leak, the coolant can run along the copper fittings of the core and into the cabin of the car because of the design. We went back into the lab to get on with our work day, still talking about what needed to be done.

I carried my lunch into the lab and readied myself for work. I set my lunch bag (a grocery store sac) and began my work. At one point in time, I had to move my lunch to a different spot so I picked it somewhat differently than when I did earlier and wouldn't you know it, there was coolant in the bag and it was leaking through a hole in the bag and spilling all over the floor. I opened the bag and sonofabitch, my jar of mango slices was leaking its juice. Well, the guys saw this so there was no escaping the next hour of mango juice jokes. I was immediately labelled the Mango Man, my car was called a mangomobile and the guys (all chemistry oriented) offered up all kinds of suggestions for using mango juice as engine coolant, biofuel, etc, etc, etc. For one solid hour I had to listen to their jokes. They weren't satisfied with keeping this knowledge to themselves so they had to get the boss involved and others. How does a man live down a reputation for misjudging his mangos? Sigh! Just another day in Mangoville.

Robert (Ma)N(go) Pruden