On Valentine's day 14th February 2012, I drove into an upstairs NCP car park, however there was a queue getting in and so the engine was idle, and stationary using its clutch biteing / throttle point. A bit later and there's a terrible burning smell coming out of the front, but looking closer the land rover in front was emitting a bit of a exhaust smoke so thought nothing of it. It wasn't however till about 3pm when we got back to the car and the smell still being there did we think there was a serious issue. Not being anywhere near home and without any tools etc I couldn't do much so drove it home.
When I got home the smell was still there and could be determined by use of my nose that it originated from the bonnet and this is what I found:
As you can see 4 and a half year driving over 32k miles = 7100 miles a year which isn't much!
What's that but a burn mark from the cover of the engine!
Similarly why is the live 'Red' Battery terminal cable burnt through? There's a dust style cover, which has stopped any wet leaves flowing through the front exhaust.
A few days later I take the car to work for Karl, resident mechanic, to have a look and he notices another issue: A scrapped mark along the fan belt but cannot feel anything out of place, such as a stone...
The bad thing was that for a week I had to get public transport whilst I left it with my Dad to sort out with the garage. Even worse was that I wasn't working at my local workplace and instead at another branch 20 miles further away which meant I had 4 hours of travelling to do a day rather than the 30 minutes -1 hour daily that I did with my car so you can tell how much I missed it as could the numerous people who may have witnessed me sleeping on one of the 4 buses I had to take a day!
Anyway back to the topic at hand. Vauxhall Grimshaws report that the issue was a faulty clutch and that it would take £1000 to repair. no idea how much the bill was as my Dad paid and refused to tell me.... But he did get the brake pads swapped as well as they were borderline of failing the next MOT test.
No comments:
Post a Comment