Hard and curled and ready to snap

[venta]

Ye saga continueth:

Venta v. the AA, part 2.
(Part 1)

I've just been to pick the car up from the Slade.

Whenever my car goes wrong, my first response tends to be to ring Andy - given a coherent description of the problem, he can usually tell me whether it's dangerous, a quick fix I can do myself, something that needs to go to a garage, etc. On Friday, my description of the problem was "The accelerator's lost most of its resistance. It still just about works. It feels as if there are usually two springs pulling it back, and one's broken."

The official result from the Slade: there are usually two springs on the carburettor pulling the accelerator back, and one's broken. I have a little slip of paper from them saying this. Hurrah.

I didn't notice this before because the big, obvious spring is fine. The other, broken one is hidden away and you can't see it unless you know where to look (which I didn't). It was in view of this that Andy and I came up with the idea that it was the cable that was at fault.

So, to repair the car I need a new wire spring. The sort of thing that would probably cost about 25p. Except, of course, Peugeot don't sell the springs. They sell kits containing an entire new carburettor, many other things, and the springs. The cheapest the Slade could find one was something like £46.

Having correctly deduced that I wouldn't like that idea, the Slade tried various ways of bodging it, but eventually couldn't manage it. They recommend I go to a scrap yard and get some springs myself. And for all this, they didn't even charge me.

You know, I'm going to enjoy writing to the AA about this one :)

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Yay! Good-o!

(Well, regarding the AA man being a prat. 46 quid sounds sucky though. When's the carb due for a replacement anyway?)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, I'm not sure how often the carburettor needs replacing - it's not a very frequent thing, I don't think ? I think it's been replaced while William was in my ownership (so in the past two and a half years or so), but would need to check with Andy.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My available Haynes manuals (Citroen Visa and Renault 19) don't have schedules for replacing the carburettor. They've got instructions for examining and overhauling it, but, I guess, the idea is that you replace it when it breaks. Like you do for body panels ;-)

[bloodnok.livejournal.com]

Replace as and when, I think. The jets can wear, so instead of a fine spray of petrol you get drops and it runs rough. That's what happened to one of my old bangers, anyway. £46 for a new carburettor doesn't sound that bad to me, unless, of course, you really don't need it.

Scrapyards are wonderful places for those of us with *cough* vintage cars ;) Good luck with taking on the AA.

[hjalfi.livejournal.com]

There's a decent scrap yard just south of Reading that I've scrounged stuff from in the past.

Or you could just eviscerate a biro.