Yesterday, when I came back from the dentist's I thought I felt a weird smell on my car... I asked niece to come outside and check it...she didn't smell it...still, I told her to have her "antenitas de vinil" on while driving... yesterday night, when she was returning from work, she heard a PFFFT! in the engine, and opened the hood to find a rust-colored splat... this was about 1 Km from home...and the smell got stronger...since we had spoken about it, she told me as soon as she came in...
Today, I took the car to the workshop in the morning...turns out it was the main hose to the ...cooling system (?)...
they will replace that one, and the other 2, while they're at it... the guy said they didn't look so good, so I decided I don't want to go through this exercise again in the near future... and, they asked if I would OK probing the radiator, just because the "rust colored splat" is water from it, and it looks... well...rusty... so, better look at it NOW instead of later...

So far, the quote is $380, and I'll have my car back at 5pm... YAY! (from the "rubbery" smell, I was thinking engine seals... or worse... )

While it IS a lot of money, again, I must thank God that the time is past when I would have had to sit down and cry because there was NO WAY I could pay for it...now it just means I have to reshuffle/reprogam payments!