Leela's First On-call, Richard's First Trip to the Garage, and Other Short Stories

Last night was Leela's first on-call, and everything went fine. Until 11.30, when she was just off to bed - the phone rang, and they wanted a drug. She went in, and despite their records saying they had plenty, they didn't have it in stock, and they didn't have it anywhere else in the hospital. So she had to ring Gloucester and get them to send it over in a taxi. At midnight. Baptism of fire!

And today was my first trip to the garage. I took the car in at 8.15 this morning, and they rang me at 12:45 to say it was ready to collect. When I first saw the bill I gasped, but on reflection it's actually very reasonable. I will go there again.

They've given it a good service, replaced a whole bunch of bits and pieces, and reset the engine management system. The emissions light was apparently a sensor fault, but they couldn't see why it had triggered. Hopefully it will work fine now - I've got to drive it around a bit to teach the engine management system how I drive, and then see how it goes. Although, joy of joys, it looks like I need to have the dashboard stripped down to replace the blown bulbs, I need a new auxilary drivebelt and cambelt, which sound terrifyingly expensive, and I will need to replace my exhaust system within 12 months. Yay! Cars are such a joy!

Comments

Bud

One thing not to put off is replacing the CAM belt if its due.

Ben

Yeah, I'd second that - the cam belt is cheap to buy, but quite costly to fit, but the cost of it going wrong is *huge*...

We had our cam belt and alternator belt done for about 150 quid all-in a couple of months back.

radiac

Interesting, that's the price they quoted me! They told me to check the invoices for my service history to see if it had been replaced - if it hasn't, should replace it.

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