How's your week been then?

I thought it would be nice to have a thread where we could offload the trials and tribulations of the week. We could get issues off our chests, and maybe, just maybe, gain a few words of support from kindred spirits in return.

Here goes. My car was serviced and successfully put through the MOT in April. Since then it has been in and out of the garage as they have done their utmost to be completely ineffective in locating, diagnosing and providing a remedy to a persistent droning noise it has been making since the service. In the last three weeks they have replaced:

All four tyres
Front ns hub bearing
Both front track rods
Rear suspension ball joints and bushes
A complete front bumper
A complete front wing

The cause of the persistent drone has finally been attributed to the front tyres, and replacing them has fixed the problem. That is the good news. The rest is not so good.

The rear tyres had to be replaced as they had gone bald on the inside edge due to the rear suspension being worn; rear suspension which, whilst spotted at the service, was not picked up as an issue at the MOT. The garage advised I could leave the work until 2008 when it would be needed to pass the next MOT. In the meantime it would not cause any problems with the car. At all.

The track rods were replaced free of charge by the garage as they were embarrassed to admit that when the rear suspension was done and rear tyres replaced, they forgot to do the promised wheel alignment, so didn’t notice the seized track rod ends.

The ns hub bearing was replaced as the senior technician thought he could hear a rumble which he had misinterpreted as my persistent drone. The obvious solution here was not the corrective solution.

The replacement of the seized track rod ends corrected a steering wheel misalignment, but caused the persistent drone to be louder and the steering wheel to shimmy when braking. In frustration I took the specialist technician for a drive in the car to make sure he could hear the drone I was banging on about, and to experience the steering wheel shimmy.

The garage rang me on Friday to tell me they had solved the problems. A new set of front tyres was the solution, and both the drone and the shimmy had gone. Delighted I looked forward to picking up my drone free/shimmy free car. That was last Friday. I still don’t have my car back. Why? The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed the mention of the new front bumper and wing earlier in the post.

When the garage was returning my car to the customer parking section having kindly washed it, another customer reversed into my car, demolishing the front bumper and wing. The garage said not to worry; they would put things right at their expense.

Today they rang to say my car was ready. The new bumper is nice, they said, and the wing is sorted out, they said. The new bits have fresher paint, they said, so they may look a little different to the rest of the car, they said.

I am now looking forward to an interesting conversation with the garage this evening.

Kind regards

Rob