Friday, July 03, 2009
Can we fix that too?
Er... possibly not.
I took the car for its MOT-equivalent today, to find that there are several other things that need fixing. The most important one is that the right front brake is showing a tendancy to seize up (which would explain the intermittant shudder I get occasionally and is almost certainly because I didn't use the car for quite a while even into the early summer thanks to the snow). It's not a death-no-saving-throw fault, but one that I have to get fixed by the end of August and then take the car back for a retest.
This fix and retest within a set time-limit is, in my view, a far better approach than the UK can't drive it until it is fixed one. I've always wondered what you're supposed to do if you maintain your car yourself but then it still fails, as I doubt that many garages would be happy to have you fix the errant item on their premises. Perhaps its just another part of the no user-serviceable parts philosophy.
For a brief moment I considered picking up the Haynes manual while I'm in the UK and then doing the job myself... but as I don't have a large lump hammer with which to hit them, nor a suitable workshop in which to do the deed I suspect it's going to be a garage job once I get back from the UK.
So for now, instead of having a nice new red '10' sticker on my licence plate I have a luminous green '8' sticker instead. The stickers are used instead of the UK tax disc, and are stuck to both plates. This makes it a lot easier to work out from a distance if a car is legal or not. The final digit of the licence number dictates the month that you need to have the car tested, although you do get 2-month period of grace after the end of that month before you have to pay extra. Once you've passed the test you then get a sticker with the year in which the next test is due; these are colour-coded for ease of recognition - 2009 is yellow, 2010 is red, 2011 is blue and so forth. Cars don't need to be tested for 3 years from new so you start seeing two colours ahead at the start of the year.
Not too surprisingly, while there are many 2011 cars around, I have seen very few 2012 cars. I suspect that this is a clear result of the economic crash, as no-one can afford to buy a brand new car at present.
I took the car for its MOT-equivalent today, to find that there are several other things that need fixing. The most important one is that the right front brake is showing a tendancy to seize up (which would explain the intermittant shudder I get occasionally and is almost certainly because I didn't use the car for quite a while even into the early summer thanks to the snow). It's not a death-no-saving-throw fault, but one that I have to get fixed by the end of August and then take the car back for a retest.
This fix and retest within a set time-limit is, in my view, a far better approach than the UK can't drive it until it is fixed one. I've always wondered what you're supposed to do if you maintain your car yourself but then it still fails, as I doubt that many garages would be happy to have you fix the errant item on their premises. Perhaps its just another part of the no user-serviceable parts philosophy.
For a brief moment I considered picking up the Haynes manual while I'm in the UK and then doing the job myself... but as I don't have a large lump hammer with which to hit them, nor a suitable workshop in which to do the deed I suspect it's going to be a garage job once I get back from the UK.
So for now, instead of having a nice new red '10' sticker on my licence plate I have a luminous green '8' sticker instead. The stickers are used instead of the UK tax disc, and are stuck to both plates. This makes it a lot easier to work out from a distance if a car is legal or not. The final digit of the licence number dictates the month that you need to have the car tested, although you do get 2-month period of grace after the end of that month before you have to pay extra. Once you've passed the test you then get a sticker with the year in which the next test is due; these are colour-coded for ease of recognition - 2009 is yellow, 2010 is red, 2011 is blue and so forth. Cars don't need to be tested for 3 years from new so you start seeing two colours ahead at the start of the year.
Not too surprisingly, while there are many 2011 cars around, I have seen very few 2012 cars. I suspect that this is a clear result of the economic crash, as no-one can afford to buy a brand new car at present.