Car ownership - a rant

fossyant

It will still be your fault though. You know what women are like !

graeme_s-2

fossyant wrote:

It will still be your fault though. You know what women are like !

To give her her due, she's taken this one on the chin. She is pretty pissed off about it though!

Ben6899

TailWindHome wrote:

Danlikesbikes wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

Why did you need your wife to get up so you could change the tyre?

Probably because the OP said in his post "I shouted up the stairs to my wife, that if she came down I'd help her change the wheel for the spare. She has once before changed a wheel, I barely drive so have never done it before."

Kinda suggests that they would be helping each other.

Jeez. He couldn't change the tyre because his wife didn't up to show him how to do it?

Poor show.

You're sounding like DDD. Don't worry, we believe that you're totally alpha.

danlikesbikes

Ben6899 wrote:

You're sounding like DDD.

Sounding a little stupid but who/what is DDD :?:

Ben6899

Danlikesbikes wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

You're sounding like DDD.

Sounding a little stupid but who/what is DDD :?:

:shock:

You haven't come across the Great Alpha one of Commuting Chat fame? Does that rock of yours have central heating?

anonymousblackfg

My favourite was the morning the dorris took the car to be serviced as I had an early meeting. She made a wrong turn before getting to the garage so was at a junction, looked left, looked right, looked at the map, then pulled out.

Luckily she put her hand in her pocket to pay the £500 to get the other woman's car repaired.

danlikesbikes

Ben6899 wrote:

You haven't come across the Great Alpha one of Commuting Chat fame? Does that rock of yours have central heating?

Clearly not, or maybe I have but not known, though guessing you might say that I would know if I had done.

rjsterry

Danlikesbikes wrote:

Ben6899 wrote:

You haven't come across the Great Alpha one of Commuting Chat fame? Does that rock of yours have central heating?

Clearly not, or maybe I have but not known, though guessing you might say that I would know if I had done.

DonDaddyD - do a search to find some highlights of his oeuvre.

danlikesbikes

rjsterry wrote:

DonDaddyD - do a search to find some highlights of his oeuvre.

Name does not ring a bell & am guessing that I'm in for some entertaining reading then

Ben6899

Danlikesbikes wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

DonDaddyD - do a search to find some highlights of his oeuvre.

Name does not ring a bell & am guessing that I'm in for some entertaining reading then

Have a 'facepalm' meme at the ready.

rjsterry

Clicky

Kieran_Burns

rjsterry wrote:

Clicky

You could've left the poor guy in blissful ignorance... but nooooo. You just had to get him reaching for mind bleach.

vermin

Seriously chaps, what did your fathers teach you if not how to change a tyre?

I remember with great fondness my first rudimentary car-care lesson from the old man. One day, back in 1983, my Dad went to Belgium. The next evening, he returned home with an interstellar rocketship, or at least that's what it looked like. It was actually a brand new Renault, but I was young and it was dark. (He must have been an early example of the grey importer.) Anyway, the next morning he excitedly woke me to tell me to come and learn about cars. We then spent the rest of that day taking all the doors, wheels, exhaust, lights, seats, dashboard, interior trim and other bits and bobs off, and laying them out in the garden, like a giant mechano set. It was brilliant! The reason? Twofold: First to waxoil everything and second, he wanted to take the whole thing apart and reassemble it himself because he didn't trust those European types to put a car together properly. Mum was delighted.

merkin

I am sorry. Every man should know how to fix a puncture on a bike, change a wheel on a car, put up shelves etc.
I am sure the OP knows now that he shouldn't have left his Mrs to do it. If not just because she was destined to F it up but maybe just through old fashioned chivalry.
But mainly 'cos she was going to F it up.

Applespider

I know I've changed more car tyres than bike tyres despite being a burd, not a car-owner and having cycled many more miles than I've ever driven... Have been caught out by those darned locking nuts on a hire car that was missing the 'key' which the entire car-load, a local publican, several helpful blokes in the pub and a mechanic looked for and couldn't find, yet the hire car company (when trying to charge us for the mechanic call-out after the fact) insisted was in the glove compartment all along... um... nope!

itboffin

Ah the joys of car ownership, after a lifetime of driving BMWs i gave mine up 2 years ago, the last one was a beautiful 740 too now we just have the wife kia ceed which is a nice very economical car but get this I got in the car the other day and drove it to town whilst wrestling with a steering wheel pulling hard to the left :shock:

I says er WTF is up with this ..?

to which she replies "yes it does that" :shock:

So this is an almost new car that's been serviced by the dealer just 1 week ago and you need muscles like Arnie to keep it in a straight line.

I know nothing about cars but sheeet peeps

mudcow007

gtvlusso wrote:

I am in the same position; I cycle or walk everywhere. My wife takes the car daily.

Hence; our car is never washed, cleaned out, fixed or serviced. Issues are only spotted when I drive it.

+100,000

i drive our car on Monday (just gone) an the engine management light is on

so i say to mrs "there is a light on, on the dash in the car"

"oh yeah that's been on for a few days...i thought it would be ok" :shock:

turns out the EGR valve is goosed so the car is running in "get home mode" an from the sound of it has been since last week



women....grrrr

suzyb

mudcow007 wrote:

women without a male brain....grrrr

ftfy (watched embarrassing bodies last night )

gtvlusso

mudcow007 wrote:

gtvlusso wrote:

I am in the same position; I cycle or walk everywhere. My wife takes the car daily.

Hence; our car is never washed, cleaned out, fixed or serviced. Issues are only spotted when I drive it.

+100,000

i drive our car on Monday (just gone) an the engine management light is on

so i say to mrs "there is a light on, on the dash in the car"

"oh yeah that's been on for a few days...i thought it would be ok" :shock:

turns out the EGR valve is goosed so the car is running in "get home mode" an from the sound of it has been since last week



women....grrrr

+10000000

My wife ran our Mercedes in 'get home mode' for almost a month. I drove it and noticed that it would not go over 2500 rpm.....which means sh*t acceleration, even on a 2.7 ltr 230 BHP Turbo Diesel.

My wifes comment; 'Yes, I thought it was a bit slower than usual!'

For a frickin' month?!?!?!?! really?!?!?!?

EGR needed cleaning, 10 minute job with a socket set and some spirit.

SteppenHerring

Cars. Hate them. I think we really need to get rid of one. I worked out that over the last 12 months, I've spent enough on servicing/repairs/tyres to by myself a made to measure Enigma Etape with the handbuilt wheels, Ultegra triple (for touring) and all the other cool options.

Puts it in perspective.

CiB

Not wanting to join in the 'wimmin eh? kuh...' meme but I do find it useful to drive OH's car occasionally just so that I can spot stuff like this, and it's worth a few brownie points on top offering to pop out to get some milk or whatever. Win win. (+ another win as it uses her petrol not my diesel as well)

Sailorchick

We're not all totally inept at car maintenance. I'm far better at it than my husband and my brother. Brother actually took me with him car shopping for his first car as I had a better idea of what to check than him and then ignored my advice and bought a wreck, but hey it had alloys :roll: .
Dad taught me as he didn't want to be doing all the repairs and meant I was rarely stuck by the roadside even with my first car being quite old (C reg Polo Coupe Fox) and regularly breaking down (I was an expert at jump starting that car!)

However, my bike maintenance skills are almost zero. Can do a puncture repair but no idea how to make my brakes behave. In some ways not helped as the Bike Dr visits campus twice a month and does minor repairs for free so I have very little incentive to learn, although I really should.

veronese68

On the subject of ignoring warning lights. When I was about 18 my sister and a couple of her friends were going for their 3rd year of uni in Italy and were driving over in an old black cab, diesel and virtually indestructible. I went along for the drive and to have a couple of weeks holiday over there. A good chunk of the way through France I took a break from driving and decided to have a kip in the back. I woke up a while later and saw a red light on the dash. The conversation went along the lines of:
"How long has that light been on?"
"About an hour."
"WHAT!!!! Why didn't you say something?"
So we stopped and it has absolutely no water left in it at all, I could smell how hot the engine was. Tried to get some water in it but it was blowing plumes of white smoke out of the back. They'd manage to kill the unkillable and cooked it so comprehensively they had cracked the cylinder head.
Thankfully the EPO is a lot better about these things than my sister. Saying that when she was driving to work regularly every time I got into our car it would be running on fumes. She'd only ever put a fiver a time in it so it wasn't too heavy. I told her if she took all her crap out of it that would make the car a lot lighter. Now she doesn't drive to work a tank of juice lasts nearly 2 months.

CiB

Sailorchick wrote:

We're not all totally inept at car maintenance. ...exception to the rule but good to see...

We used to have a young receptionist who was a real looker, very good at the job she did and a bit of a car nut on top. I heard her once on the phone ordering some poor fitter about at the local tyre & exhaust centre, explaining in a mix of despair anger and patronising tones that the back box was for the 1998 model not the 97 version and no the two aren't interchangeable if you could even bother checking before you order me the wrong one. It was a fantastic juxtaposition, a bit like watching a bloke having a stab at knitting but good rather than bad to witness.

wgwarburton

Hi,
For anyone who struggles to understand why some people treat cars like this, it might help to try and see things from the "Cars as white goods" perspective.

From this POV a car is a thing you buy to go from A to B. It's a bit of a style statement and there are good ones and bad ones- it's easy to tell which by the badges since cars are branded, just like clothes and phones.

It is not a toy, a tool or a complex piece of machinery that needs to be maintained. If it leaks or makes funny noises you get someone to fix it. Just like a washing machine, fridge etc. Nor do you need any particular skill to drive it- it goes where you point it. A "sports" car is just faster, words like "handling", "turn-in", "responsiveness" and "balance" are for geeks, just like other blokish stuff.

Does that help?

Cheers,
W.
PS This is actually a wider problem than it first appears- there are too many people who just use cars to get from A to B and don't care about driving as a skill.It explains a lot of crap driving when you think about it. It would be good to have an alternative so people didn't have to drive unless they wanted to, but that's not happening anytime soon...

Drfabulous0

And yet if my clothes, phone, washing machine or fridge were to brake I would repair them myself.

rjsterry

WGWarburton wrote:

Hi,
For anyone who struggles to understand why some people treat cars like this, it might help to try and see things from the "Cars as white goods" perspective.

From this POV a car is a thing you buy to go from A to B. It's a bit of a style statement and there are good ones and bad ones- it's easy to tell which by the badges since cars are branded, just like clothes and phones.

It is not a toy, a tool or a complex piece of machinery that needs to be maintained. If it leaks or makes funny noises you get someone to fix it. Just like a washing machine, fridge etc. Nor do you need any particular skill to drive it- it goes where you point it. A "sports" car is just faster, words like "handling", "turn-in", "responsiveness" and "balance" are for geeks, just like other blokish stuff.

Does that help?

Cheers,
W.
PS This is actually a wider problem than it first appears- there are too many people who just use cars to get from A to B and don't care about driving as a skill.It explains a lot of crap driving when you think about it. It would be good to have an alternative so people didn't have to drive unless they wanted to, but that's not happening anytime soon...

As I alluded to earlier, people apply this thinking to their houses as well. I've had to explain to completely blank looks from a client, that yes, they do have to maintain their house, and that this is perfectly normal. People will spend thousands on damp-proofing, rather than spend an hour with a step ladder and some marigolds.

DrLex

rjsterry wrote:

[...] rather than spend an hour with a step ladder and some marigolds.

"And that, Timmy, is how you artificially inseminate a giraffe."

davis

This morning one of the lads called a one of the marketing droids to let her know her car tyre was flat. She wandered over and started yammering on (there really is no other way of putting it) about cars. As I happen to have a bunch of tools, trolley jack and (car) puncture repair kit and an electric pump with me today (drove in, I know) I was going to offer to help if required.
When she bleated "I'll just call the AA; that's what they're for" I stopped and gave up. It's the attitude that annoys me; if you drive a car you should be able* to change a wheel, in my book. Now some poor AA mechanic gets to be treated like staff because she simply won't countenance the idea of the most basic understanding of something she spends probably 2 hours per day driving.

*: Not including those physically unable to do so.

graeme_s-2

When I was at Uni. a mate of mine decided it would be a bright idea to ignore his oil light, and then keep forgetting to put oil in it. Eventually he was driving along when a piston head decided to forcefully eject itself from the car (punching an impressive hole in his bonnet). Luckily no passers-by were killed.