I’m running into a great mix of its too cold to really work on anything and everything is breaking down on me. My other car has a wheel bearing going out on it so the other day I decided to dig out the Sentra and see if the water pump seal was still leaking. Surprisingly it appears to have sealed up and I could run the car around, after digging for two hours to get it out of a drift.

Scheduling meant that I would need to wait a couple weeks before I could get the other car into the shop so I had to try and drive the Sentra as much as possible.

The car ran pretty good and after monitoring it for the next couple days the water level stayed full so I figured I was in the clear. But because I don’t trust it fully, I was making regular checks on the fluids just to be absolutely sure nothing was leaking. Since it has been particularly cold recently, I couldn’t tell if the heater was cooler because of a coolant issue or because there was a leak.

Before making one long trip this last Saturday, I stopped at a gas station and checked the coolant level and felt the hoses and then I noticed something odd. The clamp around the return hose at the radiator had snapped and the hose was just barely on the radiator nipple. I figured there couldn’t be much pressure on that side so I carefully drove it to a parts store and got new hose clamps. After refilling some lost coolant, I was back on the road.

Since then I still have been checking the fluids daily and everything had been just fine. Yet as I was heading home from work, I was just travelling through one of the towns on the way and my heater suddenly quit working. I quickly pulled onto a side street and turned off the car and in the darkness I could see steam rolling out from under the hood. I just had to laugh.

As it happens, the other clamp on that same hose did the exact same thing and snapped in two and the water pressure was enough under load to blow off the hose. Water was everywhere in the engine compartment.

Fortunately I was prepared as I bought extra clamps on Saturday and still had them in the car. Also, I had a full jug of coolant on hand to refill the system once the hose was reattached. After a little test to make sure everything was working, I drove home with no issues.

Part of the problem is that the weather has been so cold and the old clamps could not take the heat and cold cycles anymore. I have two more clamps to replace the ones on the other hose which I plan on doing in the morning. Funny thing is that this issue wasn’t the one I feared the most so none of this has really bothered me at all. It’s just part of running the old car around until I can put more money into it. Until I can get the other car going, I just hope nothing else blows out on the Sentra.