Inconvenient/unusual repair situations.

[SherpaMog]

An old gimmer waited patiently for 20 mins in a pay and display car park, for the space adjacent to my van, that we were occupying while changing the brake pads. It was an essential repair, they only grumble, squeal for a few miles to warn, then bang, fly out or lock the wheel. The guy was obviously retired, and in no rush, and a pleasant chap, he had obviously worked on his own cars back in the day.

During this time, another car beeped his horn a lot and we were called 'fucking ridiculous' by another cunt. One more cunt took my registration, I don't know what law I could be breaking. Is repairing a vehicle yourself now completely alien to people?

Does anyone else not give a shit, or have been forced into repairs in antisocial spaces?

[oldcars]

The position i had to get myself into was antisocial doing the headgasket on the Rialto. 

[M'coli]

You mean like swapping cylinder head on my Fiat 126 in a Glasgow backstreet, because my old man would have had a meltdown if I'd done it at home?

[tooSavvy]

Ha Ha... Old giffer shambled past me [in back lane, behind my own place] as I was doing back brake shoes on my Savv, and commented 'eh lad, no one seems to do their cars nowadays'.

 

I'm 60... I don't know why 'lad' &or I'm really just too old for $hite*

 

*aye.. My MOT guy has titivated ToMM© recently - losing heart, it seems...

 

 

TS

[MikeR]

swapping the head gasket on a 126 is bit of a job with all that air cowling to sort out !!!!

[sierraman]

My dad once swapped a caliper on a Sierra on a campsite in France while we were on holiday.

 

Done emergency stuff like swapping a battery on a Saxo in a snow drift. The clamp holding it down was being a pain in the arse, my fingers were so fucking cold, I just bent the fucker back with a hammer. Didn’t give a shit, it wasn’t my car and I just wanted to go back in the house.

[Pillock]

Some carparks do have rules about not filling tanks or doing repairs, but it'd be a civil matter if they did and I'd be very surprised if they acted on some nosey tosser forwarding your reg to them. It's more if they catch you operating a full on repair business for 50p an hour I guess.

 

I once had to swap an aux belt on a Corsa 1.5TD in a Tesco carpark. Basically getting a phone call to bring tools, going to get a belt, onwards to Tesco and fixing it without busting the two hour time limit. Managed it.

[SherpaMog]

I actually enjoy the fact that certain people consider working on cars to be antisocial. Freeing a hub with a few whack with a sledgehammer got lots of complaints from my ex girlfriends neighbours, nice new modern housing development. The guy a few doors down was really rude and angry, so we carried on hitting it for an hour or so while having a beer or two.

[bub2006]

Many moons ago we was going on holiday to yarmouth. Dad,mum,sister and gran in a austin princess,other grandad and granma in grandads sierra. Sierra engine shit its headgasket somewhere near kings lynn. My dad took us to campsite,came back to fetch grandma and grandads caravan and took that to campsite then came back for grandad and towed his sierra to campsite too. Caravan site owner was very helpful and assisted in removal of the engine,sourcing a spare lump and refit of said new donkey. Doubt can get away with that today!

[Dirk Diggler]

Many people justify their cuntish lives with regular bursts of outrage; fuck em, only run with your own tribe

[Asimo]

It is envy of your ability and initiative that winds these people up.

 

They wouldn't bat an eyelid if the fix was being done by the RAC man in his nice professional orange van.

[cort1977]

I actually enjoy the fact that certain people consider working on cars to be antisocial. Freeing a hub with a few whack with a sledgehammer got lots of complaints from my ex girlfriends neighbours, nice new modern housing development. The guy a few doors down was really rude and angry, so we carried on hitting it for an hour or so while having a beer or two.

People really do have an issue with it don't they? I lived on a new estate once and people would look daggers at you if you were outside working on your car. I used to wave politely at them as a wind up...

[SherpaMog]

I think you are correct although I think most of the people living there PCP their cars (I'm not getting into a PCP debate, it suits some), and they think you have to take it to a main dealer to be fixed.

The shock of a man putting brake shoes in a hub upset them a little. Next door thought it was scandalous, jacking a vehicle up on the street.

I think they cost me thirty bufters, garage price$%#@#$$$, its not even difficult to do!!

[Tamworthbay]

Coming back from a fencing competition when I was at uni, one of the back wheels suddenly locked on the very aged transit minibus and ground to a halt in the inside lane of the M6 just north of Brum. A few minutes later a police Astra turned up and told us to shift it asap, we pointed out it was fucked and not going anywhere. He radioed for a recovery truck only to be told it would an hour due a big smash on the M5. So he got another car down and stopped the whole fucking motorway while we whipped off the offending drum and took out the shoes then rolled it onto the hard shoulder. The abuse we got when the motorway reopened was quite interesting and it took us 7hours to get towed back to Coventry in the end. I wasn't driving but have never been so embarrassed in my life. The minibus lived on, even when second gear died (becoming quite famous at Warwick uni) and you needed to thrash the nuts off it in first then go for third as quick as you could which was real laugh on a hill as you can imagine.

[sierraman]

At my work we went on about this the other week, a collegue had a £700 bill for some work to his car so he said he’d thought of sacking it off despite it giving him 100,000 without much grief. Everyone was like ‘get rid it’s done 100k it’s fucked now’. It’s that mentality that stuff be it cars or houses or whatever just go on forever and you shouldn’t expect to have to spend a penny maintaining them.

[Kiltox]

If you’ve all paid for a space it surely doesn’t matter if you’re doing some repairs. It might be against the terms of the car park but ultimately both cars would still be there regardless!

 

If you’re occupying an empty space with tools etc that’s not really on IMO.

[lisbon_road]

I'm disturbed by the abuse people get in these situations.  Not long ago, we lived in a flat and my wife's Zafira broke the waterpump shaft in the carpark.  I had to fix it, took three days of taking the head off and reassembling it all (not full days).

 

Have to say, lots of people were interested, but no-one complained.  I tried to keep the mess and tools and so on down, but I couldn't hide the fact that I was doing it.  

 

I like where we live now; people are generally tolerant and I can just get on with all this stuff on my own without feeling like I am being watched.

[RoadworkUK]

Not in the spirit of 'inconvenient for other people' generally, but I had grief immediately after setting off to drive home after my 75-mile walk.

 

Somehow, when parking early the morning before, one of the under-tray supports (which are there to support a set of undertrays my A4 hasn't worn in at least a decade) had caught something in the long grass and been bent to a jaunty angle. This had been fine when reversing, but on trying to move forwards it jammed right into the ground and made a terminal scraping noise as it drove a groove into the tarmac rack.

 

So, having been near crippled by the walk, with impressively blistered feet and severe aches in my ankles, back and shoulders, I really* enjoyed lying on my back trying to whack it straight with a camping mallet, by torchlight at 23:30. And again when it managed to spring back out after driving through South Woodham Ferrers.

 

The trail of sparks it made was quite a sight, though.

[M'coli]

I've changed front anti-roll bar links in Morrison's car park on a Sunday evening, and changed the oil on my Avenger in Sainsbury's car park on a Saturday afternoon.  It sounded sooo much better afterwards!

[Bren]

An old gimmer waited patiently for 20 mins in a pay and display car park, for the space adjacent to my van, that we were occupying while changing the brake pads. It was an essential repair, they only grumble, squeal for a few miles to warn, then bang, fly out or lock the wheel. The guy was obviously retired, and in no rush, and a pleasant chap, he had obviously worked on his own cars back in the day.

During this time, another car beeped his horn a lot and we were called 'fucking ridiculous' by another cunt. One more cunt took my registration, I don't know what law I could be breaking. Is repairing a vehicle yourself now completely alien to people?

Does anyone else not give a shit, or have been forced into repairs in antisocial spaces?

What did they expect you to do? Wait that fucking long the car acheived consciousness and did the job itself?

 

Tell them all to get fucked.

[spike60]

In 1985 I had to buy a U/J, 8mm Allen key and circlip pliers so I could change the rear propshaft joint in a smart Transit camper, LDC9T, at the side of the road. I was 200 miles from home with my heavily pregnant girlfriend.

Fast forward 20 years and  I had to buy a U/J, 8mm Allen key and circlip pliers so I could change the rear propshaft joint in a scruffy Transit camper, C368AWY, with my 20 year old son in a French orchard.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as the French say. Mebby.

[beko1987]

I'm glad I live where I do! No complaints from anyone, infact they come to me with their car issues, which I don't always know how to fix because modern

 

Next door helped me bleed the gooners brakes when he came back smashed from the pub in the afternoon!

[John F]

About 4 years ago, I spent about 45 minutes trying (unsuccessfully) to repair the borked remote fob of my Disco 300 TDi while sat at a pump in a filling station in Duisburg.

 

Realising that I wasn't going to get it working again, I called a mate back in Britain that has all teh skillz with Discoveries. Acting on his advice, I managed to get a wire to the positive side of the starter solenoid, bypassing the immobiliser. Touching the wire to the positive terminal of the battery started the engine

 

Disco stayed like that for the next 3 weeks or so until I got back to the UK. Folks on the ferry weren't best pleased when they saw me (at the front of the boat, blocking them all in) popping my bonnet when we docked in Dover

[sierraman]

If I went round someone’s house on our street and told them I didn’t like them doing car repairs they’d tell me to fuck right off. Rightly so. It’s nobody else’s business what you are doing on the driveway or side of the road.

[cort16]

It's weird that I mean what business is of anyones other than the person who owns the car park and you? it's just that old classic of people getting angry at things they don't understand. Standing shaking their fists at aeroplanes taking off as they don't believe in aerodynamics.

 

I've only every had issues at one flat I lived in that was full of snotty just retired types who had nothing better to do than tell me all the things I was doing to up set them. I had to break it to them I paid the same rent as they did and while the could get up at 10am and have some prune juice and bran flakes I needed this car working to get me to fucking work at 9am so I needed to work on it.

[anonymous user]

I learned that cleaning the (oiled up) spark plugs on an Austin Allegro was frowned upon in Belgrave Square. Someone called the police; once the policeman was happy that I was not up to anything nefarious I was told to hurry up and get gone.

[D Spares & Tyres]

Had a flat tyre on a Capri many years back, pulled safely into a cul-de-sac not blocking any driveways. Proceeded to change the tyre.

 

Lady came out asking what I was up to? How long would it take? This is my space, you shouldn't be there etc.

 

Then she started moaning about some rubbish on the pavement that was nothing to do with me but she was blaming me anyway. She was a total fruitcake.

[jonny69]

Some bloke put out the word on the old UK Hotrods email group looking for someone to go to Le Mans in a few weeks. He was local and I said why not. Let's call him Steve. That's his real name so no need to pretend.

 

So a week before we're supposed to drive down from London to Portsmouth and then across France, he bought this stripped out Zodiac with a 289 V8 off some drag racer. Quickly transpired this car had never really driven very far and it conked out about 5 miles in just as we went on the A23 with a bad misfire and a dead battery.

 

I walked about a mile up the road to a spares shop with his battery and got another one so we could start the car again and get moving. We limped this thing up to the spares shop and bumped it up the kerb outside. I went in with his credit card, popped it on the counter and told the guy I'd be in and out, keep an eye on what I take and we can ring it up at the end. We basically stripped out all the electrics outside the shop on the dual carriageway using tools from the shop and started again.

 

Didn't miss a beat after that. Until it ran out of petrol because there was no fuel gauge. And then we couldn't fill it up because the tank was split. And then the terrible whine from the back end which started because there was no oil in the diff.

 

Yeah. Took us a while to get down to Le Mans. But it's up there as one of my favourite road trips!

[NorfolkNWeigh]

About 15 years ago on holiday on the Costa Del Sol , our Ullysee needed brake pads, or losenges de frenos as the Spanish probably don't say. I bought some and proceeded to change them at the back of a very swish beach between Marbella and Puerto Banus, whilst Mrs N and the kids played in the sea.

Two heavily armed coppers in a Nissan Patrol pulled up, I thought they were going to give me a bollocking but they just wanted to know if I needed any help! One of them offered me some water and they got the bottle Jack out of the Patrol to help support the dodgy Fiat scissor thing.

[Timewaster]

I remember a guy from the flats down the road who had a Mk3 Cortina he was customising in a lock up garage who would regularly hoon it up and down the road in various states of dismantlement.

Mostly grey primer, sometimes no windows, one time no bonnet and usually no exhaust.

I think he eventually painted it metallic purple with slot mags, a jack up kit and a fury interior.

We thought he was cool. I was 8.