God! was I scared?

[JohnD]

As I've mentioned elsewhere, we're just back from a tour of Italy. One afternoon near Venice, I drove onto the forecourt of a roadside fruit warehouse. I drove in, turning to the left, stopped and reversed to a parking spot to the right of the gate. We left the car to walk to the shop. I was horrified to see, on the block paving, a trail of black engine oil marking the route I'd just driven. Looking back to the car, I could see the puddle underneath. We continued into the shop with me keeping my despair to myself. After a miserable five minutes we returned to the car, pointing out to my passengers the evidence of the pending trouble. I started the car and with the thermometer recording 36C, reversed to a spot in the shade. I raised the suspension, got out a mat and laid down to look underneath. I couldn't believe it! Everywhere as dry as a bone and clean as a whistle. All I could see dripping was the aircon. The oil trail I'd seen was some other poor b-----'s trouble waiting to happen.

[tomsheppard]

Having just replaced some front spheres recently I had a similar experience but parked up sitting in a huge puddle of, believe it or not, LHM! That brings on paranoia big time. Lifted it up, looked for drips, nuffink. checked reservoir, full. Then I remembered the car that pulled away from the space as I arrived. Scruffy Xantia-phew!