Car-related woes

Took my little Fiesta to Anglos for its MOT in late April, only to have it fail on three tyres – OK, I understand those get worn – and, more seriously, a bent wheel rim on the offside rear wheel.

MOT: failure 1

As, for whatever reason, the Fiesta has alloy rather than steel wheels fitted to it, replacing one is a surprisingly tricky and expensive business. Can only guess the damage was done on a pothole. Although they did replace one of the nearside wheels for me around six years ago, Anglos apparently no longer ‘do’ wheels – Shelly advised that my best bet was to try and get a cheap one on eBay. As I haven’t been in the most robust frame of mind over the last month or so, I made the mature decision to ignore the whole issue until I could face dealing with it, with the result that I spent about five weeks travelling around entirely by public transport. Which was surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable, and I also lost a few pounds (which I’ve now regained).

Discovered that it is possible to travel back to Reading from Milton Keynes via Oxford rather than London, if you take the handy Stagecoach X5 service to Oxford and then the train to Reading. It takes quite a bit longer than the drive would but is much more relaxing. To do the journey entirely by train means going into London from MK and then out again to Reading, and also costs about twice as much as the bus/train combo via Oxford. The X5 bus service is reasonably priced, air-conditioned and enables one to variously read a magazine/look out of the window, as opposed to festering behind the wheel in Friday evening traffic.

To return to the MOT: after I related the story to Ray he went into organizer mode and very kindly offered to sort out the work for me, though he found sourcing a used alloy more complicated than expected and eventually bought a new one from Foray Parts via Amazon.

Eventually had the wheel and tyre work done on 11 June at Wolverton FastFit Station on Old Wolverton Road – seemed like a good place. Elected to have all four tyres replaced despite one of the four only being under ‘advisory’ at this stage.

Presented the car at Anglos a couple of days later for its re-test, and was a bit despairing when they phoned mid-morning to say it had failed again, on two different things this time (!!). One was a fairly minor issue with one of the wipers, which they were able to sort; the other was an apparent issue with the revs which had led to its failing the CO test. On learning that the car had been off road for about a month, the mechanic suggested that that could have contributed, so offered to give it a drive around and then test it again. Very much to my relief, taking it for a spin up the A5 did appear to solve the problem and they were able to pass it later that day.

MOT: failure 2

Having forked out around £400 on the wheel and tyre repair, I took it back to Anglos the following week for them to fix a problem with the driver’s door window, as I’d managed somehow to get this stuck a while back. I was expecting this to be a minor repair, but Shelly rang to say that actually it was a reasonably sized job involving replacing the motor and something called a ‘regulator’, and was going to cost in the region of £200. FFS. Gave them the go ahead as I needed it fixed; when I later went to collect it the mechanic regaled me with how he’d “almost had to take the whole bleedin’ door off”, or some such. I made some sort of acknowledging noise which I hope sounded both incredulous and grateful, paid up and drove the car off somewhat gingerly. Have instructed it not to run up any more bills for the next few months.