So I had this plan for today. It being my day off, and my car having yet again hosed a battery yesterday. I carefully constructed a plan; a plan which would cope with me not being terribly enthusiastic about getting up on my day off. A plan which didn’t require me to do so much as to exhaust me.
A simple plan.
I would ‘go to Halfords’ (thus allowing me to not need to get up at get going before 9), and buy some oil, some moly-grease (‘cos minor’s need nothing so complex. Pfer. Modern cars ;-) ) and some spark plugs. I would heap my tools in the back of Brick and head to my mom’s, where I’d promised I would check in for her. I would service my car, clean up the connectors for the starter side of the circuit, tighten the fan belt ‘er so slightly, have a quick poke at the floor, and head home.
The first part went well, I even remembered to check that the letter my mum wanted me to check’d arrived, had arrived (it hadn’t, so I rung and sorted that out). I set to on the car, popping it up on ramps and working my way, rather slowly through the service (‘s been a while, and I’ve never worked on a Viva). Prodded the floor, sadly there’s a bit more rust and filler than I’d noticed before. Still not scary amounts, but mildly saddening.
I cleaned connectors, (I blew a fuse on my mum’s fan heater, doh) and then I went to start the car. And it wouldn’t start. After about an hour of fiddling I shuffled (with much pushing) my car onto the drive, and my mum’s into the garage and rang the AA. Apparently, it’s 95 quid, because I’ve exceeded my call out limit, and I only get local recovery. Uh. So. That’d not help really. So then we went for more fiddling. At 1845, I gave up, shunted my mum’s car back out onto the road, pushed the Viva back onto the drive and drove my mum’s car home. Now I have to sort out why the bloody thing won’t start, get the bits and then get back home on Thursday afternoon to coax the thing into starting so as I can drive it home for work on Friday.
Sometimes I hate being mechanically adept, because if I weren’t I’d’ve just handed the car to a garage and been done with it. But no.
