This isn't gonna be cheap

Quick update for those of you who are following along:

My ordeal on the highway the other night from the perspective of under the hood.

At some point during the drive home the radiator had a problem of the "Catastrophic Failure" variety. The details of how or why it happened are sketchy, but the autopsy reveals that the rad split, from the bottom. This is quite rare I am told. The result of a rad split from the bottom is the almost immediate absence of any coolant whatsoever for the engine. At this point the engine begins the overheating process. As I mentioned before, one does not regularly check the gauges that never move, so this overheating was not noticed until the extreme overheating and ruining of the engine had occurred.

Granted I maybe should have noticed something was going wrong, but I can HONESTLY say that until the car actually quit, there was no strange noise and no change in the performance whatsoever. I mean, I was traveling at a constant speed on a relatively uninteresting stretch of freeway...

Anyway, I think I am going to take the Neurotic One's advice and go to the manufacturer. I have a few things in my favour:

1. Although I am past the warranty period, I am only slightly past and this kind of thing shouldn't happen at any point that I own the car.

2. I have a pretty good relationship with the maintenance people at the manufacturer. I have only ever bought cars from them and I hope they want me to come back.

3. I can put up a pretty good fuss about things when I want to. I'd hate to have to play the "I used to be a loyal customer but now I am your biggest enemy and will tell everyone (including strangers) about this experience whenever I can" card.

Keep checking back for the continuing saga...or for other more interesting stuff. I won't bore you all with the play by play.

All for now,
Kef...