Walking past a busy junction , saw a car stuck in outside lane causing a bulge with others behind struggling to undertake and overtake in opposite lanes to make the lights. It was a 3 - 4 yr old Mercedes Estate with a woman driver. It was right next to a busy caff and a few builders were laughing at her predicament
Ever the knight , I came over and said ' can I help ? ' - turns out her autobox lever had jammed in P and she couldn't drive off. Ist thing she asks was for me to take away her coffee cup, which I placed on the pavement ... she then says , ' no, pls put it in a bin .. ''
She is then screaming at her husband down the phone that the car has broken down and that he must come and get her . Meanwhile I jumped in the driver's seat and tried getting the lever shifted - no chance , jammed solid in Park .. Even with a few lads, we couldn't push it into the near lane.
Finally, with her being flustered, the husband rocks up in another car , gets on the phone to a Merc dealer and starts screaming that the car needs collecting as it's broken down ... warantee blah blah blah.. and tries organising a pick up. Then I found out the truth from a builder in the caff ; the silly woman had spilled the coffee down her transmission gaitor , and it locked ... she got me to get rid of the evidence and was going to tell her husband the car just froze on her - she done nothing wrong ..
I feel sorry for service managers - getting told lies and half stories . Am sure the husband wouldn't have believed MB service dept if they phoned him later and told him the truth ???
I now know the other side and will treat stories of ' robbing dealerships ' with a pinch of salt..
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You cant hide dried caffe latte when its seeped into the various parts, her sins will be revealed at the garage.
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Sounds like yet another reason to avoid Benzes. Not that anyone sane would choose an auto car with a floor-mounted gear selector lever if they could fine one with the selector in the proper place behind the steering wheel.
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Chrome of course - with a silver arrow pointing to RPND1D2
you old dinosaur you.
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No, black, with some bling-free way of indicating what position it's in.
We dinosaurs just love being able to tell what gear we are supposed to be in without changing our spectacles, leaning over, scraping all the rubbish away and peering at the transmission hump. But I know those macho T-bar things appeal to the younger, less rational element.
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Working in IT support I hear this a lot. 'It just stopped working'
Open up the PC/Laptop/Printer and find it full of coffee/tea/Coke/etc.
'Well I didn't do that, it must have been there all the time'
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Mercedes? Huh! Call themselves a quality car these days?
In an old Merc you could pour three steins of Dortmund Schaggenlager and a bottle of Blue Nun down the auto selector and get nothing worse than slightly lower grade performance down the autobahn on the way to Poland.
Cafe latte? Gott in himmel!
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I have had a customer want there laptop replaced under warranty after they ran over it in there car, tyre mark still on the laptop bag. Also the customer who managed to melt their screen on there laptop with a candle. That one took a bit of persuading to get them to admit what they had done.
I could go on and on and on and on.
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With such idiocy, such effrontery and such moral squalor so commonplace, is it any wonder that those past their first youth form the conviction that the entire planet is going down the toilet?
The only consolation is that people past their first youth seem always to have thought that since the beginning of recorded history. However this leads to another worrying thought: is it not possible that they have always been right?
Doom! Doom!
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Skinny latte - £1.90
New MB shift control ECU - £1,900
Barely-concealed smirk on service manager's face - Priceless...
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I wonder why she was in park while in traffic. She also should not have been consuming the drink while driving anyway. Deserves all she gets in the way of a bill from MB.
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I suspect she was in D waiting for the light. Drops coffee. Panics. Shoves car into P to try and mop up. Car objects and won't move from P ever again until large amounts of money are applied.
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>>She also should not have been consuming the drink while driving anyway.
She couldn't have been driving, she was in park remember. :-)
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Skinny latte = cheapskate.
Bottle of quality champagne: far better
Result : breathalyser.
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I have had a customer want there laptop replaced under warranty after they ran over it in there car tyre mark still on the laptop bag.
They should have bought a ThinkPad: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjbqRihc35s
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that IBM thinkpad - bet you could still recover data from the HD....
...Merc driver - says it all.
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If she was prepared to lie about a bit of spilt coffee in the car, what else was she concealing from her husband?
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.
Edited by woodbines on 05/09/2008 at 17:08
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When computers had separate modems, a colleague put a house plant on his.
So far so not very good, but he decided to feed and water the plant.
There followed a flooded modem and accusations from IT of spilt black coffee or Bovril.
They never did suspect Baby Bio.
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This happened to me recently with a Tic Tac.
I couldn't get the damned thing out, couldn't select a gear (didn't want to crush the Tic Tac).
Had to suck it out with the hoover in the end.
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Where was it stuck Dave ?
;-)
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New MB shift control ECU - £1,900 >>
How can that be? Isn't an ECU an electronic chip?
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Could someone please explain how spilling coffee on gear selector can lock up transmission?
[I don't have much experience on automatics]
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I was thinking the same - presumably it's all chips/relays, stuff like that.
Most auto T-shifts from years gone by were connected by metal rods and linkages to the box.
One exception is Rolls with their column stalk, hardly bigger than a modern indicator or light stalk.
I remember doing a breakdown on a Silver Spirit.
Dead flat battery so it was stuck in park, you could move the stalk to drive, reverse, or whatever, but with no electricity it didn't do anything.
Got some power into the battery and away she went.
Well, hunted around for the battery, found it in the boot under about five inches of Axminster, got some power.. etc etc.
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Could someone please explain how spilling coffee on gear selector can lock up transmission?
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Probably shorted out some relay which prevents you getting the thing out of park - most autos won't let you out of park unless you have your foot on the brake. If that sensor gets shorted, you won't be able to get out of park.
Most automatics have a little button somewhere near the gear shift which allows you to over-ride this for situations just like this one. Maybe the merc doesn't.
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