You got a great car
Sep. 28th, 2004 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaThis morning, I took my elderly car, William, up to The Slade Garage to be MOT'd.
He passed. Woohoo. Woohoo. No work required, unless you count the garage insisting I took the new sidelight bulb I bought a week or so ago out of the ashtray, and put it in the duff sidelight. Woohoo.
The Slade is a small garage, set back off the road and rather tatty-looking. They don't have fancy hydraulic ramps to inspect your car's under carriage, just old-skool pits that they climb down into. They have a customer waiting area: it's a couple of beaten up chairs behind a gaffa-taped barrier just to one side of the pit.
Which meant I got to watch what actually happens during an MOT test; I have to admit the whole process is rather less hi-tech than I was expecting. They check that all your lights (on all settings), your wipers, wour horn work. The lights are checked the same way I'd do them myself - one person inside the car, one out: "Left indicator?", "Aye, that's OK." I dunno how else you'd test them, mind.
They run your car over the pit, and insect its front wheels (with a big torch), someone inside turning the wheel to full lock in both directions. They jack up the front, then the back, of the car and peer at it, and grab hold of the wheels to see if they waggle (or, presumably, don't waggle) correctly.
On the other side of the garage were slightly more impressive bits of kit - a rolling section of floor for checking brakes (front wheels and back wheels, foot brake and hand brake), and a weird lamp-like thing that tests headlight alignment. And, presumably, something to check exhaust emissions, though I was half-reading and think I missed that.
And that's pretty much it. Thoughout the MOT, the guy who appeared to be doing the testing (as opposed to the one who was just sitting in the car applying brakes and switching on lights) whistled the opening bars of the Muppet theme tune over, and over again. Out of tune. And occasionally broke into the opening lines of Tears On My Pillow.
So, woohoo. £40, and I'm safe to drive for another year.
Hurrah, I thought, a friendly garage. After a fairly poor experience of Bristol Street Motors (on Iffley Rd), I'm quite fond of the idea of a garage where the person who talks to you is also the person who did the work - I don't like trying to have a third-party conversation with a mechanic via a help-desk person who blatantly knows less about cars than I do. When Swans closed I wasn't sure where to go, and was being really quite encouraged by The Slade.
Sadly, it seems the landlord who owns the garage has decided it will be more profitable to demolish it and put flats there instead. "And he's already worth 6 or 7 million, and only 40 years old. He doesn't need the money", I was told. The Slade will be closed within the year :(
Apparently Swans have a new guy in, though. If anyone has any experiences with garages (good or bad), or testdrives the new Swans mechanic, I'd be interested to hear about it.
And a newsflash, brought to you courtesy of me having had MTV2 on in the background for most of the morning:
Goldie Lookin' Chain are mental.
He passed. Woohoo. Woohoo. No work required, unless you count the garage insisting I took the new sidelight bulb I bought a week or so ago out of the ashtray, and put it in the duff sidelight. Woohoo.
The Slade is a small garage, set back off the road and rather tatty-looking. They don't have fancy hydraulic ramps to inspect your car's under carriage, just old-skool pits that they climb down into. They have a customer waiting area: it's a couple of beaten up chairs behind a gaffa-taped barrier just to one side of the pit.
Which meant I got to watch what actually happens during an MOT test; I have to admit the whole process is rather less hi-tech than I was expecting. They check that all your lights (on all settings), your wipers, wour horn work. The lights are checked the same way I'd do them myself - one person inside the car, one out: "Left indicator?", "Aye, that's OK." I dunno how else you'd test them, mind.
They run your car over the pit, and insect its front wheels (with a big torch), someone inside turning the wheel to full lock in both directions. They jack up the front, then the back, of the car and peer at it, and grab hold of the wheels to see if they waggle (or, presumably, don't waggle) correctly.
On the other side of the garage were slightly more impressive bits of kit - a rolling section of floor for checking brakes (front wheels and back wheels, foot brake and hand brake), and a weird lamp-like thing that tests headlight alignment. And, presumably, something to check exhaust emissions, though I was half-reading and think I missed that.
And that's pretty much it. Thoughout the MOT, the guy who appeared to be doing the testing (as opposed to the one who was just sitting in the car applying brakes and switching on lights) whistled the opening bars of the Muppet theme tune over, and over again. Out of tune. And occasionally broke into the opening lines of Tears On My Pillow.
So, woohoo. £40, and I'm safe to drive for another year.
Hurrah, I thought, a friendly garage. After a fairly poor experience of Bristol Street Motors (on Iffley Rd), I'm quite fond of the idea of a garage where the person who talks to you is also the person who did the work - I don't like trying to have a third-party conversation with a mechanic via a help-desk person who blatantly knows less about cars than I do. When Swans closed I wasn't sure where to go, and was being really quite encouraged by The Slade.
Sadly, it seems the landlord who owns the garage has decided it will be more profitable to demolish it and put flats there instead. "And he's already worth 6 or 7 million, and only 40 years old. He doesn't need the money", I was told. The Slade will be closed within the year :(
Apparently Swans have a new guy in, though. If anyone has any experiences with garages (good or bad), or testdrives the new Swans mechanic, I'd be interested to hear about it.
And a newsflash, brought to you courtesy of me having had MTV2 on in the background for most of the morning:
Goldie Lookin' Chain are mental.
