My Car

One day two months ago, I came home and parked my car in the garage. When I stopped the engine, I heard something that sounded like boiling water from under the hood. After several seconds, the sounds stopped.

The next day, after school, I drove my car to a my favorite car repair shop and asked the mechanic to check what happened to the car.

He lifted up the hood and then we saw something that looked like white foam overflowing from the mouth of the engine coolant reservoir. He took off the lid of the radiator and put a plastic funnel into its mouth. Then he started the engine and put a smoke detector into the plastic funnel where exhaust might come out. Several minutes later, the reading on the smoke checker showed that there was some exhaust coming out from the radiator. The technician told me that my car's engine block was cracked. When the engine was running, the exhaust was pressed out by the moving pistons through the crack in the engine block into the coolant which surrounds the cylinder. The exhaust passed through the tubes into the radiator then into the engine coolant reservoir. At last, pressure from the exhaust pushed open the lid of the reservoir. The white foam was the product of the chemical reaction of the exhaust and the coolant. It was pushed out of the coolant reservoir by the exhaust.

The mechanic told me that while this problem rarely occurred, it was serious and I needed to replace the engine block. He told me that a brand new engine costs more that $2,000, a used engine costs about $1,200.

In the last eight years I had driven more than 240,000 miles. The car's body, frame and other parts are still in good condition. If I bought a used car with around 100,000 miles, I would have to pay about $7,000. So, I decided to let the mechanic replace the cracked engine with a used one.

One week later, I paid $2,000 for the used engine and labor charges and then I drove my “new” car back home.

I hope I can use this car for many more years.