Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Pink Fluid

I would like to call these stories Bay Area cronicles or something, which quite doesnt rhyme as much as Sunnyvale slut [ The enlightened ones know ]. But I would resist temptation as that is not a central theme here -

So here goes another incident. This is more WikiHow'ish in nature. So the place where I park my car has a tree overlooking it and I dont know what that tree's problem is but everyday my car is sprayed with more and more stickeyish substance.
While this wouldnt matter much otherwise, but on the windshield it hampers my visibility so much that, eventually I ran out of windshield wiper fluid.

When this happened and I used the vipers it left weird sticky scars of the sticky substance all over the windshield and made a big mess. I tried the Jim Carry way of driving in Me Myself and Irene but did not help. Although owning a car back home I wondered why I wouldnt know about this thing called WWF [ Windshield wiper fluid ].

Initially I thought its OK to put water in there, which would sound THE normal thing for anyone. BUT I was wrong, they dont do it that way here, because in colder climates the thing can freeze and can lead to fuse being blown off etc etc. Although being in bay area, I decided to give the scientist in me a try.

So I got to know that after googling and checking number of discussion boards that

1] Its not water, its mix of water detergent and methanol for changing its freezing point.
2] There are howtos about how to make one yourself at home. I Concluded myself that I didnt care about the freezing point here, using my desi more than average sized brain. So I did not care about the methanol part. Else some Jack Daniels I got free due to the store guy's mistake would have been handy. [ Ethanol / Methanol, point is to bring down the freezing point ].


Now comes the big question - The prepartaion.
So here is the recipe.

Ingredients -

1 - Empty mineral water bottle
1 - Loo [ Preferably with not many people in it ]
1 - Office [ With a water dispenser]

Method -

1] Get the empty mineral water bottle from your car.
2] Take the bottle and head to the loo.
3] Pump the liquid soap in the bottle.
4] The bottle is tall enough not to let you use the tap to fill water in it. Consider getting those plastic cups in loo to fill bottle. Else go back to office and use the drinking water dispenser to fill it upto the brim.
5] Smile at everyone and greet everyone who enter the loo, or collegues who look puzzled about the pink fluid in an Aqafina bottle.
6] Close the cap. Shake well.
7] Walk up the car. Open the hood [ Requires some research, but not a big deal ].
8] Read step 5 when people in parking lot give you puzzled and weird looks.
9] Observe the various tanks and caps and read the labels. DO NOT, DO NOT pour this stuff in the tank labelled power steering fluid, or even the radiator [ It doesnt tell you it IS the radiator ].
10] Look for the sign of wipers or familiar on a cap, pour the stuff in that tank.
11] Try out the wiper washers to check if this works.
12] If you cant locate the WWF tank,during 9] ask a collegue who doesnt demand that you fill his WWF tank too with this stuff.
13] Ignore the poor sod who says its a "special" liquid and you will have to get it from the store. He is an ass.

Disclaimer: To be tried at one's own risk. Also not to be tried in cold climates. The author is a cheap bastard and was desperate to save some bucks.

1 comment:

Sudhi said...

nice recipe buddy.... will bookmark this for phuture use!!!