MOT Failure

Tuesday, 28 May 2013 22:21

Music: Placebo - Placebo

I’ve been without my car for the last four days because it failed its MOT, an annual test of road worthiness. Only needed a small repair but because I the test was booked for Saturday morning of a bank holiday weekend, it meant they weren’t able to work on it until Tuesday afternoon. As my friends and I still haven’t come to come agreement on what project car to get it meant I didn’t have a spare car to take to work today.

My dad went late into his work so he could drop me off early at mine and my aunty picked me up and took me to the mechanics to get my car. For a while I’ve been wanting to do more things to the car myself instead of just paying someone to do work I don’t know is required. I like making stuff and as I’ve grown I’ve moved from computers to my bike and now towards cars. My car is back on the road for another year at least but I may still get another car and give this one to my brother when he passes his driving test. One reason I want to keep the car is for him. It’s been in my family since 1997 and I think it’s a nice car.

I got my car back today and went out for a drive with my friend. We got one of our cameras that can record HD video and mounted it onto the wind screen. Got a pretty nice video too of us just driving about. If we can plan a proper route of the countryside it would make a nice video.

Dad bought the car in 1997 when my bro and I were still little kids and I’ve been driving the car for over five years now. I’ve gotten to know its quirks, its squeaks, rattles and the occasional thump. Ricky and Dom give me confidence to work on the car myself with them helping if needed. This has taught me how changing things affect the car, like when we replaced the front brakes it fixed a problem we’d had for years. A problem that hide whenever it was taken to a mechanic to be checked for.

When I’ve got a project car I can take to work I might look into replacing the rear sills on the car and getting the rear drums rounded to see how this improves the breaking. I know one of the drums is off from when I lost it on ice and smacked it into the curb. Buckled the wheel too and never got around to replacing it. I have the time and money to do these things but I’d only gain by learning from it since the car isn’t worth very much. It’s got a lot more sentimental value than actual value. The actual value goes with with the fuel gauge.