Repairs wot I have known..

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Wed 3 Oct 2001 14:29
Repairs wot I have known.. - Mark (Brazil)
Sadly I have been driving a Fiat Marea of late. Its pretty horrible, but at least its not mine, its a rental due to the fact that my car broke and hasn't been unbroken yet.

However, at the weekend the Marea (which is a *really* stupid name for a car) started making a bunch of rattly noises. It seemed to be coming from one of the boxes on the exhaust. Being smart, I knew that rattly noises weren't good especially when they're loud enough to drown out my new Enigma CD.

So I called one of the local crazies, and a couple of garage-owning bandits wandered off with the car yesterday morning and then brought it back later in the day. No rattle, and as far as I can tell everything ok. Judging from the mileage that hadn't even been up the airport for a quick spot of taxiing.

They'd even cleaned up the store of "things that I have chewed and may want to chew again" which the dogs have hidden under one of the seats.

This is not usual service, but gift horses and all that.

I drove home last night and everything was fine.

Walking out to the car this morning it occured to me that the exhaust tail pipe didn't look very new, and since it was the last box which was rattling, I'd assumed that it'd get a new tail pipe as well.

Out of curiosity I looked underneath to see which parts where new....none of them ! The back box on the other hand had three extremely large hammer dents in the side where it had been crushed in to trap whatever was rattling inside.

doh!

M.
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Wed 3 Oct 2001 14:38
Re: Repairs wot I have known.. - Michael
i guess it depends on whether you asked them to fix the rattle or replace the exhaust. If the former, and they didn't charge for a new pipe, they did!
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Wed 3 Oct 2001 15:06
Re: Repairs wot I have known.. - Mark (Brazil)

I dunno, its a rental so I have no idea what was charged for, or even the repair that was requested. However, it doesn't rattle and if stays not rattling I'm happy enough - at least its not my car !

M.
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Wed 3 Oct 2001 22:02
Re: Repairs wot I have known.. - Brian
My father-in-law, when he was driving, used to change cars quite frequently: that's how I met my wife, by offering to teach her to drive!.
Anyway, we took his latest aquisition down to the seaside (well, Southend on Mud, actually). Half way down the A127 we smelt burning and noticed we were trailing smoke.
We stopped and I had a look underneath. Wrapped round the exhaust pipe, to stop it rattling against the bodywork, was a bandage of sacking which had caught fire when the exhaust heated up and the flames were too close to the petrol tank for comfort.
Fortunately the flames weren't too big and the sacking wasn't too tight,so I managed to drag the sacking off before the tank went up.
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