Get this: we're driving home from the cottage a week and a half ago and in Aurora (halfway between Barrie and Toronto) the van starts to overheat. So I pull over and Craig puts some water into the radiator because it was super low. A police cruiser pulls up behind us, we explain what's happening and both vehicles pull back onto the 400. Within 100 metres the van is overheating again so we pull back over on the shoulder and Craig goes to ask the officer if he can drive him to the next exit to get some coolant for the engine. No problem, Craig returns and fills up the radiator but realizes he's forgotten his wallet at the gas station. So the officer accompanies us to make sure Craig gets it back and then we part ways. Before we even get back on the highway the engine is overheating again so we pull off onto a gravel shoulder and start to talk about what we're going to do. Craig and I quickly realize that we were not going to be able to drive the van that night. I start thinking about sleeping in the van and finding a mechanic in the morning so we could get it repaired and go home the following morning. As I'm mentally preparing myself, a CAA towtruck pulls in front of us. After looking at the truck for a few minutes, Craig goes to ask the driver if he can take a look at the van. Dennis figures that the coolant just hasn't had the opportunity to seep into the engine since we put it in and suggests I idle at 2000RPM to allow the coolant to spread. The temperature slowly creeps down then shoots back up to HIGH and there's steam and sizzling coming from under the van! No worries, says Dennis, it's just a broken hose, less than $100 to fix. And he can tow us home if we have CAA. Hmmm, we don't but Craig's dad does. Oh, but Wayne's at Uncle Jim's cottage and we don't have the number. That's okay, we think, Lisa has CAA too and her husband didn't go to the cottage and is home with the car. I called Chris long distance on the cell phone and he didn't have the CAA card in the car, Lisa had it in her wallet! So we looked in the phone book we keep in the van (thank goodness it was in there) for Uncle Jim's phone number. Then we get the cottage number from him and sure enough call it and it's BUSY, BUSY, BUSY. Ten minutes we try and finally Lisa answers. We quickly get Wayne's CAA card number and get a $350 tow for free. Unbelievable. Craig ended up giving Dennis $20 as a thanks for helping us so much.
On Thursday morning Craig takes the van to Canadian Tire for an estimate. Since C.T. is so close the van didn't overheat and he was able to drive it there and home with no problem. The problem was more major than we though and C.T. quoted us $860 to get the repair done! Craig called me here at home and asked me to call Total Auto Service to get a quote from him. $411 plus tax. That was it; Craig brought the van home and we had it towed to Total Auto Service Friday afternoon. The repair couldn't be done until Monday but the van wasn't driveable anywey. So we rented a car from Enterprise for the weekend. Saturday morning Craig let me sleep in because I had a monster headache. He gets a call around 10AM from the police! The van has been stolen from the shop!
So we place a claim with Pilot that morning and they upgrade our car rental to a van. Actually a Caravan for the weekend and then an Uplander once Monday came.
We haven't heard from insurance about whether the van is a write off or not but we have a feeling the engine is destroyed (the Police called later in the week to tell us the van was found dumped on a country road). So we've been busy looking on the internet for another van - how frustrating.
Hopefully we'll hear tomorrow whether our beautiful new van will be repaired or written off.
