GrumpiusMaximus

The chap that replaced my fuel pipe yesterday (a Sunday) charges £25 an hour…… on a fecking Sunday!!! He took 1.5 hrs, I gave him £50 and a pack of doom bar. I asked if he’d do the lower ball joint, he told me to fuck off. Okie dokie! 🤣

Gained a customer recently, she booked a 21 plate Aygo in for a clutch (!?!) because my quote was less than half the main dealers price - they'd just done the first mot, charged her £400 for front pads and a handbrake adjustment and told her it needs a clutch.
Found myself looking at a 7000 mile car with a very high pedal. Drove it and found the bite right at the top so... Looks like I found the only 2021 car where some shit can wind the manual cable adjustment up to con someone into getting a clutch job.
Set the adjustment to spec, checked pedal, charged her £40 and sent the clutch back.

Far be it from me to defend main dealers, but the ones to blame for all this are the manufacturers.
Margins on new cars are low. The manufacturers insist on the franchise having a huge glass showroom, they also change signage and point of sale graphics at their discretion, but the dealer has to pay for it.  Likewise with a complete set of special tools and diagnostic equipment, where the manufacturer sets the exorbitant price. If the car maker decides to can you, that's it, they can do it on a whim, with a very short notice period, leaving the dealership in hock to the eyeballs with no way to pay the loans off. They will remove the signage etc. that the dealer paid for very quickly. So you get £210+VAT labour rates, because it's only through parts and service that the company can make enough money to ensure that loss of the franchise won't result in immediate bankruptcy.
It seems to be a particularly UK/Ireland system of doing business. French, German, Spanish, and Italian dealers are much more modest in size. In France there's an unpretentious Citroen, Peugeot, or Renault dealer in every small town, sometimes more than one.

It's about five litres on the reserve, based on my experience of a MK4 Golf.

In fairness that's how it is. A lad I know a bit recently got quoted 500 quid approx to do some work on his rs6 by an audi dealership. He bought the parts at £ 259 and did the work himself and was scathing about what Audi wanted. The extra 250 quid has to pay for the building, the wages, the utilities etc etc. Sometimes I think people think other folk should work for nowt.

Just around the block to park it up. Gearbox feels nice, but needs a bit of a serice/ tune up. Much choke and some bogging down. Much preferable to a weldathon!

Ah, it's great. Well bought. The only thing I prefer about the earlier models is the older style 2 spoke steering wheel.

So the paints knackered, and its a bit accessorised. So very 1990. But then again its unwelded and original- not very 1990 at all.
 

However- 
this one can stay

And this one ive added….

But first matter of business…. lets just turn the orgy of stickerage down a bit….

 

 

 

Once off loaded….

1990 just arrived with someones first set of wheels…..

That's brilliant.  Tatty and honest - just the ticket.
I remember in 1999 I was 16 and me and my mate knew another guy who was a year older than us and he'd just passed his test.  Lovely guy - Christian family - and his NAN insisted that her car went to him.  Robert therefore had a brown Mk2 Escort on a V plate and everyone (other than me) felt sorry for him.  His contemporaries had Clios, Fiestas, the odd 205 and Novas - and he had to park his Mk2 Escort around the corner to avoid getting RINSED by his mates.  
Nowadays, he'd be everyone's hero.
Same with Cortinas.  Our caretaker had a brace of MK5 Cortinas and by 1999 I remember marvelling at them in the school playground thinking 'Fucking hell they look shit nowadays'.  They were both 17 years old, my daily is now 25.  
Crazy how things change so quickly.
Anyway, enough bumbling of the insane - well bought @HMC

Its being dropped off at the weekend.
I found a pic of when it first arrived on uk shores about a year or so ago.
So it turns out they added sporty tat to it after it arrived in the uk to emphasise the heritage / boy racer/ motorsport aspect that makes the 2dr models that bit more expensive… make it look a bit more like@egg ‘s old one in original guise….

 

Im unsure- keep the tat or go original? part of me likes the late 80s chav vibe as @Burnside mentioned

I either didn't know or had forgotten about the Linnet - what a classic piece of Ford marketing to shift some Popular Pluses.

My Dad had a brand new 1.3L 4 door in 1980 as his first company car, it was a huge improvement on his Viva which got passed on to my Mum. Seven years later my brother bought a 4 door Popular Plus as his first car. He got it resprayed, fitted a black vinyl roof and front and rear spoilers plus 4 spoke Capri Laser wheels, it looked great. He was stopped by the Police for speeding over a hump back bridge with all 4 wheels off the ground, when they stopped him they asked why he was speeding, he said he was late for an appointment. They then told  him that they had been watching him go back and fore the same stretch of road perfecting his jump.
A few years later I bought a 4 door 1.3 Linnet off my next door neighbour for £200 just to sell on, all three in our family were  4 doors in Venetian Red. 

Indeed that’s why I thought a Volvo 360 gls was a better life choice for a 23 year old  (it wasn’t ).

On the day of my Daimler Hearse passing it’s MOT, this happens. Body shop has quoted £400

No, he was raging so hard he had to pull over and let his personal coolant level drop
Mind you - those number plate are shite (and inside lane is left considerately clear so that us folks in 60mph limited HGV type things can safely* undertake the 57 mph car things in lane 2)

Driving.
The South.
Driving IN the South
Fuuuuuuuck.
How many fuckers just sit in the middle lane FOR FUCKING EVER when there is NOTHING in the inside lane for FUCKING MILES.






Plus Southern folk - what is the fucking obsession with cameras? EVERYFUCKINGWHERE?  Traffic lights, gantries, country lanes, box junctions, outside some random old ladies house, where a sign saying doing a U turn isnt allowed, to check if you are venturing 1 inch into London in a smelly diesel????? Everywhere had a bloody camera.
Also: Smart motorways - UTTER FUCKING SHITE. 
Not only are they partly built with No work at all going on, but just miles and miles and miles of Average Speed cameras and 50mph zones where they are in operation every fucking gantry has a camera on it and TWICE today I saw people pulling out from the emergency refuge and having to get up to speed on a bloody live lane of the M6 and the M40
And once a car that had not made it to the emergency refuge and was stuck nudging the crash barrier on a live lane of the M6 whilst the signs simply said "obstruction" and dropped the speed to 60 FFS.
And Breathe:
Have a ZX estate....

And now wankers who wobble because they loaded the Mondeo arse first onto the trailer...
Why would you do that?

 
And I FUCKING HATE these number plates - almost always without fail found on something black.

 
 

And if it was, there's no way that said person wouldn't be a serial killer by now.

I've been looking at what I can cut out of my current work responsibilities, stuff that I don't get paid for but do in the hope that one day I will, and there's enough hours I can get back to put into a part time position easily enough.  Part time work would be great for things like paying the rent, artwork could then pay for the rest and still make me better off so that's the current plan.  I suspect I'll drop the artwork completely if things don't improve drastically within the next two years and I'm definitely re-assessing it at the end of this year.  So having a low demand position where I can focus on getting on with my colleagues and generally being the best [insert basic job role here] I can be is going to be ideal.
I'm having to make some very uncomfortable decisions.  I'm running out of time.  If I don't pay some attention to money I'm going to be properly screwed when I'm actually old.  Worst of it is I've been given an opportunity to improve my lot in Wiltshire which I've so far declined because it's so damned expensive down there and if it goes wrong I definitely wouldn't be able to escape.  I've been homeless once, and close to homeless several times, so there's certain risks I just won't take no matter how good they look on the surface.
I just want to live a quiet little life and not worry about things like rent and bills and whether or not I can afford food from one week to the next.  I'm tired, I just want a nap.

I made sure to staple a business card to my CV.  Do you know what, it was a woman of a certain age on the counter too.  I'm halfway between their two shops, distance-wise so I'm quite literally ideally placed for location and neither are particularly far away from current home.  There's been a couple of funeral director vacancies come up too, as usual the hours are the problem since they do tend to be a bit all over, which would be fine if the pay was a bit higher so I could afford to just have that as a job so I didn't need to worry about juggling current job and the weird hours.  Funeral work doesn't particularly bother me, it's a career path I've tried to get into before, but the hours and the need to have a very reliable car to get you where you need to be at short notice has always been the difficult bit.
Happily, not in a mega rush here so I can be a little bit picky.  Hopefully something part time will pop up that will work well alongside my current job and give me some work variety and wage security which is what I want most.  I'm literally looking for the sort of job that doesn't expect me to work towards climbing the corporate ladder, or Being Part Of A Team, or whatever.  Just a job that pays a wage and expects nothing more than my regular attendance and sunny disposition.
 

They are reproductions I had made of the original plates which I still have- they were just looking a bit tatty and were letting the car down, but these are 100% identical.
Thanks for all the kind comments.
Up until 2 years ago I worked as the Fiat/ Abarth specialist at my local Fiat dealer for 11 years, so most of the parts to rebuild it have been genuine Fiat, surprisingly hard to find, even with access to Fiat parts systems.
it spent a bit of time in the showroom too.
exploit yellow was the colour that Fiat did most of the early advertising with. My mum bought an exploit yellow 55sx (one up from base with black bumpers) in 1995 so I had to have one in this colour.
it also has a lot of very hard to find new old stock accessories, probably worth more than the car as a whole 🙈
headlamp protectors, mats, mud flap kit, boot liner, Philips 6 disc CD changer
I still have the original 14”steel wheels with correct brand new ELX trims, but you could spec Punto GT/ Sporting wheels as a cost option so I’m happy to run them.
its won a prize at the Scottish Italian car day last two years in a row- most people seem to be more impressed in a near 30 year old Punto than all the exotic Ferraris/ lamborghinis’s etc