Sunday 17 February 2008

Nearly went for a good meal.

My weekend started off well, with a 40K war game in the Chimera shop with Jock. We had 4 players turn up who played the early game, two of them very young there 1st proper war game. Of these Jock looked after the one that was very intent and lisened to what was said while his dad watched on not realising a war game take about 3 hours, the other child I looked after was I'm afraid the opposite he was playing his own game making up his own the rules as he went along, moving random distances, throwing dice for no particular reason, and goading the other children with the size of tank I was shattered by time we had done the 1st game. For 2nd game we only had the 2 older children who knew a bit about the rules and Gabriel, this made a far better game, and while we my side lost big time, Gabriel knows how far to move and listens to advice, although he seems to like throwing 1's, that is except when 1's are needed then he throws six's, I enjoyed the game unlike the morning game which I found hard work.

Sunday I was going for mid day meal to celebrate my sister birthday, I picked my Mum and sister up and was driving along when I changed down gear as we approach a set of red traffic lights, I felt a shudder through my clutch and could not find gear. I put the clutch in and manged to keep enough momentum in the car to keep it going through the lights and round the corner onto a industrial estate, as I tried again to find gear again. I then heard and felt a bang as the clutch pedal snapped to car floor. I had just got the car back from the garage 3 days ago having had the clutch arm replaced due to difficulties finding reverse gear. I phoned the recovery service and my mother and sister arranged with my brother to picked up and to go on for their meal while I waited for them to turn up.
The recovery guy turned up 2 hours later with me feeling rather hungry probably because my mind was all set on some good pub grub.

Prognosis the new clutch arm had shared off, the mechanic waddling the nice new clean and shinny part in front of me on the end of the Hydraulics cable, "not be fixing that" he says showing me where 3" of metal had just snapped, needs a new part and your gearbox out again.
So since he couldn't tow a 4x4 and the car wanted sending back to garage for repair anyway which was 10 miles in the other direction to my home and shut until Monday, I got a lift home and left them to organise my cars transport to Derby.
My warranty as well as providing recovery also provided a free hire car in case of breakdown so I phoned them up only to discover because its Sunday only the East Midlands airport is open and I either have to get there (they did offer to pay for a taxi) or wait until Monday for a car, so tell them to forget it and arrange a lift to work, I will then phone Land Rover Monday am to find out what they intend.

So I arrived home 3 and 1/2 hours after setting out and raided the freezer for food.

My sister did phone me up later to console me on missing a good meal.

Cars!

2 comments:

  1. This is not good. Not good at all and sounds like shoddy workmanship to me. Either that or substandard parts!

    You were lucky it happened on a relatively quiet road and you weren't going fast at the time as I suspect this would have been nasty. :(

    I hope suitable apologies/explanation/compensation were offered by Land Rover?

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  2. So what did Landrover do then??? I would not be happy about that at all (can you picture me screaming at the garage!)

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