A little radiator story. Photos above – What the bottom of a bad radiator looks like: Karen’s. What a good radiator looks like: not Karen’s. The coolant that Karen must always, always use in future in her radiator. Wayne had phoned up: ” Your car’s ready and I’ll show you the old radiator. I’ve never seen anything like it.” OK, that confirms getting a new radiator was required and would likely fix the overheating problem. Wayne was on task to hammer home a message. He showed me the bottom of my radiator, which had an extremely healthy fungus growth covering a reasonable portion of the radiator: in fact, there was probably only about four inches of working radiator across close to two feet. Yikes! Wayne had never seen anything quite so bad. I wondered if that statistic scored me any points? Apparently not. Had managing to nurse the camper for 2,000kms scored any points? “One”, he said, somewhat reluctantly. He really wasn’t in the mood to concede any points. Aside from the fact that the radiator has done more than 220,000kms in total, it appears that a choice to chuck in a different coolant – all by myself, didn’t get any help with the selection – has caused the problem. Yes, I did look it up but I thought the manual’s advice to use Toyota coolant was the manufacturer’s way of earning more dollars. Wrong. In this circumstance, genuine Toyota coolant was the way to go. The next day I headed out of Geraldton. After 100kms of pedal to the metal and no air con, flying past trains and road trains, the temperature gage was sitting sweet and showing no signs of over heating. I phoned Wayne. He was pleased to hear the gauge was showing normal but couldn’t resist making one last plea on behalf of my radiator that I would only put Toyota coolant in from henceforth. “No worries,” I said, “I’ve bought a litre of the right stuff”. With that he bid me farewell. The moral of this story is … if you don’t know what coolant you have in your radiator, always top up with distilled water. Never, ever, ever, ever – Wayne’s words – mix your coolants. Ok, Wayne, I’ve got the message. You really were a patient chap and I thank you for your efforts and squeezing my vehicle into the list of emergencies on the second day back after your holidays.