How many computer programmers does it
take to change a radiator hose?
Peter B. Steiger
04/05/98

There is a small but devoted fan club at my office who has seen
me perform miracles with computers that rival that of raising
Lazarus from the dead (in fact, a common "signature" of my work
when I manage to recover a partially damaged hard disk is to
assign it the name "Lazarus"); these people believe
wholeheartedly that I am a certified genius and that I know
everything.  Try as I might to discourage them, I can't shake
their devotion.

I only wish they had been here to seen me try to fix a radiator
hose by myself this weekend.

To say that I am not mechanically inclined would be like saying
Moammar Khadaffi is not a pacifist.  However, I'm proud to say
that I knew a radiator hose had come loose the other day... I
knew this by the simple expediency of having some guy drive by
and shout "Hey, stupid, your radiator hose came loose!"

How he could tell this just driving past is beyond me.  OK,
there was the huge white mushroom cloud blossoming over the hood
of our borrowed truck which made me pretty sure something was
wrong, but he even went so far as to observe from the shape or
color or smell of that cloud that it must be the _lower_
radiator hose.  I'm not kidding.  I pulled into our driveway and
he stopped in the road and started delivering a lecture about
how he could tell it was my lower radiator hose as soon as he
saw the clouds coming out from under the hood of the truck, so
he followed me home to tell me all this.

I opened the hood and tried to look knowledgeable so he'd go
away (while I appreciated the tip, having total strangers follow
me home to offer car repair advice makes me nervous), but
frankly I don't know a hose from a sprinkler.  There was a
spaghetti bowl full of sooty black car intestines all interwoven
around a big central piece of metal I can only assume was the
engine itself.  I left he hood open so the engine would cool off
and went inside in the hopes that the problem would solve
itself.

Leaving the hood open was a good idea:  The guy who sold us our
house last month stopped by to install a new countertop in the
kitchen, and being hardware-literate, he asked after the health
of the truck with the hood open.  I explained the problem and
added with some embarrassment that I couldn't find any hoses
under the hood because there was nothing green-and-white striped
down there. He took me out and glanced at the engine for
approximately 17 milliseconds before saying "Here's the problem,
this hose right here... see, I can practically put my fist
through the hole in it!"

Well, sure, after you point it out it's obvious.

Anyway, he proceeded to remove the little clamps that screw
around the hose to keep it on, but he had to stop when he
realized that one of the clamps had apparently been put on with
a socket wrench - the little slot for a screwdriver was at such
an angle as to prevent him from getting it without a socket
wrench, which he didn't have.  I thanked him profusely for his
advice and assured him I could figure out what a socket wrench
is and how to operate one, and he went back to his countertop.

Well, I finally had some time to take care of the hose problem-
it really did look easy enough to replace on my own, and I
thought Sylvia had plenty of socket wrenches or something
wrenchlike that I could use to remove the old hose.

My troubles started when I discovered that Sylvia, the Gadget
Queen, does not in fact own any socket wrenches.  I had to make
do with a rusty pair of pliers and a couple of screwdrivers.  I
found that I could use the side edge of a screwdriver blade to
lever the screws up about 1/4 turn, then get enough of a grip
with the pliers to turn the screw a little more... in short, it
took me about an hour to remove two screws.  In this same amount
of time, our next door neighbor - I am not making this up -
opened the hood of his car, removed several parts, inserted
several more, and drove off in the repaired car.  Nevertheless,
I got those stupid clamps off, pulled on the damaged hose... and
nothing happened.

I began to worry that the short time the truck overheated was
enough to melt the hoses directly onto the metal pipes to which
they were connected.  I struggled to pull the hose off for a
half an hour or so, but finally gave up: that big tangle of
metal innards was so densely packed I couldn't get a good grip
on the hose to pull it hard enough.  I decided to go get the new
hose before the parts store closed, and maybe see if they had
advice on removing a stuck- on hose.

Now, house guy had warned me that I should take the old hose
with me because I would need a precise match.  Fortunately, the
part number was displayed clearly on the hose: "MOPAR 63735".
There was even a MOPAR store of some kind just a few blocks from
our house! I hopped in the car - feeling only slightly guilty at
not walking - and drove up to the store in question, where two
big cheerful "OPEN" signs flanked a door that was locked shut
with a chain and padlock heavy enough to keep Godzilla out of
Tokyo.

Fine, there are parts stores all over the main drag on the
south side of town, so I headed up to Lincolnway and drove
from one end to the other, eyeing each "closed" sign with an
increasingly baleful glare.  At least I knew "Parts America"
was open on the north side, and although I couldn't remember
where exactly it was I had a phone book in the back seat.
Putting the car on auto-pilot (which means steering with one
knee), I reached around, got the phone book, looked in the
business white pages under "P", and found... nothing. Several
near-misses later, I managed to get the yellow pages open to
"automobile - parts - new" and found a Western Auto somewhere
on the north side of town, so I turned around again and headed
back in the other direction.  I got to the Western Auto and
found that "Western Auto" was in tiny letters under a big sign
that says "Parts America".  Why didn't they SAY SO?

Well, at least I found the place and it was still open on a
Sunday afternoon that was turning into evening all too quickly.
I had written down that part number and strode confidently to
the desk where a cheerful attendant asked if he could help me.
"Sure", I drawled, trying to look knowledgeable, "I blew a
radiator hose; I need Mopar part number 63735".  I knew I'd
impress him that I knew the part number right off the top of my
head, but he wasn't buying it.  "What kind of car?" he wanted
to know.

What kind of car?  Yikes, I had no idea!  I don't know a Subaru
from a submarine!  In a panic I visualized everything I could
remember about the truck and finally remembered that the hood
ornament was a life-sized replica of a ram's head. "Ram!" I
cried exuberantly.

"What year?" he asked, clicking away at a computer terminal.
Defeated, I dropped my cover.  "I don't know," I confessed
bashfully, "We've only had the truck a couple of weeks and I
didn't think I'd need to know that when I had the part number."
The store attendant explained patiently that the part number I
showed him was a MOPAR part number, and Western Auto uses
Western Auto part numbers.  He repeated his need to know what
year model this truck is, and then rattled off a series of
sample years in the hopes that one of them might sound
familiar:  "1977?  1984?  1990?"  Eventually I convinced him
that when I say "I don't know", I really mean "My brain is
completely devoid of anything resembling a useful fact."

I tried to be as helpful as possible:  "Well, there are only
three or four hoses coming out of that radiator thingie, and
this was the only hose that's about this long (hands six inches
apart) and bent at a right angle at one end."  Parts guy
explained that my description narrowed it down to 173 different
hoses.  Since I didn't know what year model the truck is, he
asked something I was sure to know:

"How many cylinders does the engine have?"

If I had a transmogrifier with which to turn myself into a bug
and crawl into a corner, I would have done so.  He asked like
it was such an obvious question... but it had never occurred to
me I'd need to know this just for a lousy 6-inch hose, I've
never looked under the hood before today, and I just wanted my
mommy.  I told him as much (except for the part about my mommy)
and he dug under the counter with a sigh and pulled out a parts
book the size of South Dakota.  One section at the back caught
my eye and I breathed a sigh of relief:  "Part number
interchange list", or something like that. He turned to the
MOPAR section and started scanning the part numbers.  "What
letter did that begin with?"  Letter?  We don't need no
steenkin' letters, we got a 5-digit number instead.  All the
MOPAR parts start with letters, I quickly discovered, and at
that point we were both out of luck and out of patience.  I
shuffled in embarrassed silence to the door, feeling the eyes
of everyone in Cheyenne upon me.

Back at the house, I tackled the old hose again, using
screwdrivers as suggested by the Western Auto (Parts America)
guy.  It took two screwdrivers, a large hammer, my pliers, and
another hour, and I had to shred one end of the hose into
confetti (the end with the part number on it, of course) but
eventually I worked it loose. Victorious, I went back to
Western Auto - now I could just SHOW them the part and say
"Give me one of these" and everything would be solved.

I strode confidently up to the counter where a different parts
guy waited (the first one must have seen me coming), and I
plunked down the hose and said "I need another one of these."
He turned to his computer and I added helpfully, "It's for a
Dodge Ram."  He turned back to me and gave me the answer I had
been expecting...

"What year?"

It is to my credit that I did _not_ start crying at that point.
I did, however, start babbling about that Part Number
Transmogrification book that Parts Guy #1 had been looking at,
and showed new Parts Guy the original hose with the part number
on it.  I had to hold the broken pieces together to get the
whole thing, but there was my original 63735, preceded by a
tiny "H" and two zeroes.  Together we scanned the huge volume
and found the "H" series, and just as he was saying "I don't
see anything with 637..." I found my H0063735 almost at the
very end of the list.  Parts Guy looked up the Western Auto
part number equivalent, pulled out a box, and showed me a hose
roughly the same size and shape as the broken one.  "It's not
nearly as swollen as that one," he said apologetically, "and it
doesn't have a big hole in it like yours, but it should do the
job." (yes, he really said that).

The rest of the story is anticlimactic:  I had a little trouble
sliding the new hose over the metal pipes, and the screwdriver
kept slipping in all the grease, but it was only 10 or 15
minutes to get everything tightened.

OK, so it cost me nearly six hours of my time, destroyed a pair
of gardening gloves with grease, and caused me to go through
four baby aspirin (we were out of regular aspirin) and an
Advil... but by golly, I FIXED A RADIATOR HOSE BY MYSELF.

I even know what a radiator hose looks like now.