Until last week I've always managed to do roadside repairs to get my cars home, but last week with a crankshaft sensor fault I had to get it recovered, by my neighbours boy who has flatbed recovery lorry.
Today, his dad, Tommy came round to see if I could find a part number for a Merc coil pack where he has a misfire. I asked him if he had changed the plugs he had bought last week to try and cure the problem, to which he replied, no, he had not got a long reach plug spanner. Now I've always got time to help Tommy as until he retired from collecting scrap cars, he would always get me parts for my miggy off scrap ones for for nothing and he used to bring round bags of tools, CD's, bulb packs, first aid kits etc that had been left in scrap cars.
The Merc gorilla had obviously used a scaffold pole to do up the plugs, as it broke my cheap plug spanner rather than undo. His lad came out with another plug spanner and long bar, so I was able to change the plugs, now Tommy said lets take it for a test drive...
Immediately you could tell the problem was still there, so I said to Tommy, lets abort any further testing, now at 78 I think it is fair to say Tommy's youthful driver days are behind him, but he insisted on taking it up the steep hill on our local 60mph bypass, half way up the hill we were down to 20mph, by the time we got to the top 10mph
. Now the road up the steep hill is two lanes, so we didn't hold the rush hour traffic up too much, we managed 40mph on the downhill bit to a roundabout. I said to Tommy pull into the no-through-road off the roundabout and to get his boy to recover him, Tommy said we will be ok, it will get us home....
Now on the return trip it is all single carriage and very, very busy, now doing 10mph max, with Tommy saying let them wait, with horns beeping and lights flashing it was not my idea of fun, I couldn't find a seat button to eject me or to lower it to the floor to hide my embarrassment
, by the time we were down to 7mph
I managed to get Tommy to pull over and get his boy to recover the Merc. Two recoveries in a week!
I'm 99% certain it is mass airflow meter. Merc stealers want £120, the local auto-factors trade price £249, and where Tommy's eldest boy runs an independent garage, he getting it for £48. I'm not sure what the moral is here apart from shopping around and auto-factors are not always the cheapest.
One thing I'm certain of, next time Tommy want me to accompany him on a test drive, I will make my excuses and beat a hasty retreat.
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Topic: Two recoveries in a week (Read 859 times)