One of those days

[rainagain]

Anyone else had one of those days recently?

 

The dreaded DCi Megane failed its MOT on the steering lock not working and a cracked front coil spring.

 

So I paid my pound to get into upullit only to discover there were no Meganes being broken so I couldn't get a replacement strut

 

I went home and thought I better get the steering lock sorted. Initially it looked like it was going to be an easy fix when I discovered the unit was loose. However even with the bolt holding the unit tight it still wouldn't engage properly, so I removed it. I read online you could grind part of the locking pin away so it would stick out more, tried this with the dremel, an hour later it still wouldn't work.

 

I then came up the great idea of drilling and taping the end of the pin and inserting a small bolt to make it a bit longer. Whilst doing this the pressure from the drill made pin drop further into the unit and it wouldn't come out properly again.

 

I then realised that this meant it wouldn't engage at all rather than half engaging as it is now, so I just refitted it and I'll tell the MOT guy its been removed as post 2001:

 

steering lock present but not working = fail

steering lock missing = advisory.

 

I then went about swapping the battery from my Alfa (which I've taken off the road to use the Megane) into the Megane as it failed to start the previous week. Whilst I had the battery out of the Alfa I thought I'd swap the senders round on the thermostat as the replacement thermostat I'd fitted (which included a new sender) never read right on the gauge, with the battery out I could access the sender. Easy job, unscrew sender and remove then screw in the original one, until the original one sheared! I wasn't looking forward to wasting a day removing the thermostat as I'd done previously when I changed it. 

 

So feeling crazy I tried to remove the remains with an easyout once I'd warmed the engine up and bugger me it actually worked! So I could joyfully screw the sender I'd just removed back in to put me back in the same place I was an hour and a half ago.

 

All in all a pretty wasted day

[mercrocker]

Been to a similar place this week  already....You just  have  to write it off as  practice...