Wot I Did On My Holidays....

[prospero]

I was planning a little trip this week-end.

I was going away a fortnight ago, but the car was playing up. Been in the local garage since they towed it there and they have all been scratching their heads trying to fix it. I rang them last Monday I they said they are just waiting for a part and it would be ready this week. Got it back Friday. Did a few short trips - fine. I the meanwhile I had been going like mad to get all the framing jobs done. Got about 2hrs sleep Friday night. The last big consignment loaded up Saturday lunchtime. All done and dusted. Finished loading the car and set off about 3pm. Got about 50yds and the engine cut out. Bank Holiday Saturday. Not a good time. Rang the AA. The guy said the it was most likely the coil was knackered. Well at least it maybe wasn't expensive. New coil about £15 and I can wack it in myself in 5 mins.

Every tried buying car parts on a Bank Holiday week-end? If there was a place open I couldn't go fetch it. Have to wait until Tuesday.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b67l_yxUc

On the bright side, at least it did it close to home and not in the fast lane of the motorway.

[Roboframer]

I was supposed to be going to a reunion of the regiment I served in this weekend - N Wales.

The annoying 'sevice overdue' message had been ..... annoying for a couple of weeks, but last Friday the exhaust started to blow, not much - only noticed it when revving with the window open driving close to a wall.

So, thought now would be a good time to get the service done and the exhaust at the same time. The garage couldn't fit it in until today, I didn't think it would be a big deal, the exhaust is blowing much more now, but not banging. Garage collected this morning; got a phonecall a few hours later, all the tyres are illegal and the exhaust needs completely replacing - that's £1450, plus the service and they can't get the exhaust until Mon or Tue.

We do have another car - a battered old Volvo (that sails through its MOT every year) but I can't leave Pat car-less over the weekend and part of the fun of the weekend is the drive - it's no fun in the Volvo!

Could hire a car but after this expense ......!! Could get a train, not much fun.

[mikeysaling]

how long since the last service/mot ? you should have been made aware at least of the tyres - how many miles/km has the car done - its a merc i think and service does not come cheap .

[Roboframer]

It is a Merc - (71000 miles) and up until I bought it, it had been regularly serviced by a Merc dealer, but for what I paid for it, no way will that be continued!

It was serviced/MOTd/RAC inspected by the dealer (non-Merc) I bought it from last Oct/Nov, the tyres must have been borderline then, but they never pointed that out - or maybe they did on the documents I never bothered to read or couldn't find now if you asked me!

It's my own fault for not physically checking them myself, just like I never did with the tyres on the car they took in PX - and gave me change for. That was bought new and was still new enough to not need an MOT, but all 4 tyres on that were illegal too! (which affected the change they gave me!) I check tyre pressures (the car I parted with had tyre pressure monitoring so I didn't even have to do that), engine oil level and windscreen wash level - and that's the limit of my car maintenance, and seeing as the last one, and this one, lets me know when those, and other levels are low, the limit of my car maintenance on this one is tyre pressures!

Having said that, for a long trip like this, I might lift up the bonnet to make sure all the caps are screwed on and the words 'Mercedes Benz' each side of the engine's 'V' and the logo in the centre are nice and shiney.

It had Pirellis on - this garage has put some obscure make on without asking if I wanted the same, and left nasty brown sealing gunk over the sides. The garage I bought it from went bust shortly after, blaming the scrappage scheme, shame, I really liked them.

Probably should have bought a Volvo, if ours is anything to go by, they thrive on neglect, but then again, if ours is anything to go by, they are BORING!

[prospero]

Well here we are on Thursday night and the car still isn't running. The new coil made no difference. Won't fire up for love nor money. Local garage baffled. They are going to let another 'expert' look at it tomorrow. Thinking of hiring a car, but that is a lot of hassle.

Bag still packed. Weather has been beautiful. What's the betting as soon as I am mobile again it will turn manky.

[prospero]

Yaaaaaaaay!!! Phone call at five - it's fixed. Two grotty wires in the ignition feeds.

Oh Well...... One Saturday is much like another.

[WelshFramer]

Well, a good garage is worth cultivating.

I'd been having problems with the Honda CR-V. The engine would frequently cut out until I'd been driving for 15 minutes or so. Quite nasty when it happened in the middle of a roundabout or a busy road.

It went to the main Honda dealership in Wales about 4 times and they fiddled with it under the warrantee but didn't manage to improve it - in fact it got worse. The last time I took it to them they said they wouldn't cover it under the warrantee any more as it had done 110,000 miles. They said the only thing they could do would be to take the head off and fiddle about inside the engine. They said the parts would be about £500 plus about the same again for labour. That might fix it, they said.

So I took it down to a small garage in Sussex and left it with them for a couple of weeks while I went back to Wales in the wife's car. They asked advice from a few other garages and Honda's tech support and fiddled about with it. Anyway, they cured it and it runs beautifully now. And I'm getting an extra 10% mpg.

I'm not sure how much they charged for sorting out the engine because they also found a split in the silencer and welded that up and just gave me a single bill for 'labour' and VAT.


The total bill was £57.

[mikeysaling]

thats a good result - my neighbour (ford focus) car was cutting out quite frequently - ford dealer charged £70.00 just to diagnose the fault on their computer system!!! end result was a mouse had chewed some cables and caused intermittant shorts ! he was lucky the car didn't catch fire - cost him £600 !!!!

[Odems]

No holidays..... I had to work to get my machines and new hangers in my website and we made a complete new layout.

[Nigel Nobody]

It's unbelievable that the dealer couldn't fix it while under warranty, then refused to fix it when it was out of warranty. They sound totally incompetent to me. You should report this with all details to Honda's head office in UK. I'm sure they won't be impressed!

I'm surprised at the number of mechanical problems you guys have that are proving difficult to fix and taking so long to fix!

[WelshFramer]

I put it down to being in mid-Wales where there are more sheep than car mechanics. The next Honda dealer is probably 75 miles away so they don't have much competition or incentive.

Still, they did give me a year's Europe-wide breakdown cover with the AA free of charge - which I've had to use a few times. In fact the last time I called the AA out the mechanic spent about two hours trying to diagnose the stalling problem and did find that, when the engine was cold, it was only firing properly on two cylinders - amazing it was going at all. That diagnosis at least gave the other garage something of a head start.

[prospero]

I sure you will all be enormously relieved to know that I did get where I was going.

[mikeysaling]

can i go out now been waiting for a panic PM.

[mikeysaling]

talking of wales

At Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerycwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogoch they stopped for lunch, and one of the tourists asked the waitress, “Before we order, I wonder if you could settle an argument for us. Can you pronounce where we are, very, very, very slowly?”






The girl leaned over and said, “Burrr gurrr King.”