Finding the boiling point of urine
Now I am really pissed off.
On a happiness scale of nought to ten, I reckon I am somewhere around minus twenty.
Yes, it’s the fucking car again. And if you lot are tired of hearing about the saga you couldn’t hold a candle to my levels of annoyance, frustration and generally piss boiling that I’m going through at the moment.
I looked out the window this morning. There, under a gentle little blanket of snow stood my car. At some stage Spanner had returned it, put the keys through the letter box and had taken his car. He had even taken a parcel he had found under his windscreen wipers and had put it in the flower box. Apparently it was late when he came and he didn’t want to disturb us. For a taciturn grumpy old fart, Spanner has a heart of gold, but it’s sometimes difficult to see under all the oil.
So I phoned him to thank him for returning my vehicle. I could have just pretended that the car had been there all along and that Spanner had never been near the place, but unfortunately he has a great memory when it comes to being owed money and it’s unlikely he would have fallen for that little scam.
Anyhows, he had checked the battery, and sure enough it was fucked. Good news. There may also be a small problem with the central locking that is draining power and he said he would check that again at another time. I was beginning to feel quite cheerful at this stage.
Then he hit me with it. My rear wheel arches had indeed rusted through and this requires a major welding job. He said I could of course do the car test tomorrow, but he guaranteed that it would fail, and that they would insist on a repair and an engineer’s report that would cost a couple of hundred quid. Damn blast bother knickers and spit!
So I cancelled my test. I have put it off for a couple of weeks to give Spanner time to play with his acetylene gizmo. The NCT shower charged me a fucking penalty for a late cancellation but it was less than a couple of hundred.
Spanner hasn’t told me how much all this is going to cost. He cheerfully said he would bill me when everything is done. All I know at this stage is that it will be more than I can afford.
I really HATE that fucking car test.
I’m really sorry.
No need to apologise! Unless you put the rust there?
I like the system here in England where the garage does the test – and fixes anything that needs to be done (and it’s cheaper!)
That sounds sensible. Though I could imagine mechanics here would be up to all sorts of tricks. [“Sorry sir. I know you needed a new gearbox last time but you need another one this year if you want to pass“]
I can feel your pain, I just received my registration renewal papers in the mail and I have 1 month to get this done. Here in Oz we have a similar system to to England, you go to the local garage or your mechanic and get a “pink slip” to say that the vehicle is roadworthy. If you have a good relationship with your mechanic than he will usually be pretty forgiving if anything shows up i.e. those brakes on the rear wheels are getting a bit worn, she’ll be right as long as you come in some time before the next rego is due and get them done”
The extra bloody burden we get is called third party insurance, “Compulsory third party insurance (CTP) or ‘greenslip’, as it’s most commonly known in NSW, is something all vehicles are required to be covered by in all states within Australia.It provides the driver cover for any legal liability for injury and death as a result of an accident for which the insured is responsible – be it for other drivers, passengers, pedestrians or cyclists.” This is on top of the comprehensive car insurance that I already have which also covers the above!!!! The reason for CTP is to cover all the drivers who can’t be arsed to take out any insurance on their cars, this results in my 6 cylinder Ford costing about $940 to register.
I am guessing that the reason for all the rust is because you live in a damp/snowy climate? Down here you will get the occassional rust spot on the car but nothing that would ever need welding.
Good luck!
I remember the third party insurance thing from when I lived in Melbourne in the ’70s. You had to pay for it at the same time as the road tax. As I recollect, it wasn’t terribly expensive, either. Certainly less than a hundred bucks. As I always had old cars, I wouldn’t bother with any other insurance. I quite liked the system, as it meant that all cars were insured for any driver, which meant lending and borrowing cars was the norm, as in “Anyone fancy some tinnies from the bottle shop?”
“Sure. Here, take the car (throws keys) and grab a few packs…”
Here in Ireland there are three compulsory items. Driving licence, road tax and third party [minimum] insurance. Once the car is older than three years, you can add the National Car Test to that.
The licence is cheap enough. I’m not sure what the cost is but it is easily affordable and lasts for ten years. Even minimum insurance will cost an arm and a leg. I’m not sure quite what mine is at the moment but it’s relatively cheap at around four to five hundred for full comprehensive. New drivers can expect to pay well into the thousands mark. Road tax for my yoke is around the three fifty to four hundred area. The NCT is reasonably cheap [€55] on the face of it, but because they are so fucking picky it’s almost essential to have a full service and probably a set of tyres beforehand.
Driving is not cheap in Ireland.
Not sure if they do it in Ireland.
In the UK, whenever there’s ice or snow on the roads, they “grit” the surface. This grit contains a very high concentration of salt, so lowers the temperature at which water freezes. Ice melts in a few hours and all good for the next 10 to 12 hours.
Trouble with this grit is it gets everywhere and tends to lodge in every nook within the wheel arches as well as the chassis, under the kick plates.
Real careful owners spray the underside of their cars asap once the freeze is over, so diluting the salt or even removing it all.
All well and good, except when it stays close to freezing for weeks. They continue gritting, that leads to a thudding great pile of the stuff in every gutter. Owners can’t always wash down their vehicles after every run to the shops, so it stays, going to fluid when the car’s hot, then to solid overnight.
Invariably there’s rain after a big freeze and for several days the main roads are like driving along the sea shore. It’s very corrosive stuff and it chews away at the undersides, with the original Mini being one that’s most affected, having naff all ground clearance.
Scooters are also horribly affected by this stuff as their swing arm is made of an alloy that results in that white fluffy stuff, meaning the surface layer’s been compromised. Piaggio motors are awful bad for this. I believe it’s called oxidisation.
As Pop’s only admits to washing his rattle trap once a year and has a fondness for taking holidays on some isolated spit of land on the western coast of Ireland, his wounds are self inflicted.
Apparently the problem stems from sound insulation that is sprayed under the wheel arches. This stuff breaks down after a while and absorbs moisture, which of course leads to rust. According to Spanner it’s very common in old Focus and Fiesta models.
They used to just grit the roads here with sand. However in the last decade or so they have started using salt [everyone else used salt so we had to as well]. We don’t get that much snow so it isn’t really a problem anyway.
So it’s all my fault huh? Feck off….
Does this bs have anything to do with boiling piss or not…
What do you think?