Of Seats and MOT's

I've always been a fan of Vauxhalls since my MkII Cavalier some, err, a lot, years ago. And, indeed we have an Astra as the sensible car.

Since the demise of the daughter's Peugeot a year ago when we got her a Corsa everything was fine; until last week.

"Hello Vauxhall Dealer. Please can you do a service and MOT on the Corsa?"
"Yes, of course and we'll do a reasonable price too!"

*ring* *ring*

"Hello, the Corsa has failed on so many things that we ran out of red failure sheets, we've put the car in a cardboard box for you to collect. BTW, the airbag light is on but it's not a failure.". (I knew that, it's been on since we bought the car).

Actually, it wasn't that bad TBH. Although it *was* a long list, it was mainly front suspension stuff & broken coil springs1 that are easy to do - but really irritating thing was it failed on "Drivers' seat not secure".

Part 1: Find a seat

Corsa seats are all in one piece, not bolted to a £20 sub-frame like the good old days, ooh no, you have to buy the entire seat. "more than £200" from Vauxhall. So a quick trip to eBay reveals the nearest one is Hemel Hempstead (about 100 miles), and it's not the right colour. Another Google reveals that pretty much each colour of Corsa had a million different seat designs and colours. Chance of finding "blue fleck"? Zero.

Go to local spares place to buy the other bits and pieces. "Have you tried Mark at the breakers over the road?", "Err, breakers? Didn't know he existed." Oh look, an-exact-match blue fleck seat, including seat belt pre-tensioner - £30. Result!







Spot the difference?2




Part 2: Replace handbrake cable

Another innocuous entry on the red sheet was "handbrake cable frayed". I eventually found the offending strand hidden in the guide - a two minute job.

I returned the car to Vauxhalls for a re-test.

*ring* *ring*

"Hello, your Corsa has failed the MOT on a frayed handbrake cable"
"WTF? I replaced that"
"Oh, it's the other side that you never spotted and we couldn't be *rsed to put it in twice on the sheet, we really don't give stuff if we've wasted your time"

Part 3: Replace other handbrake cable and rear wheel bearing.

I removed the offending cable and decided to replace the really short one3 that goes into the brake drum just in case they decided to have a laugh and fail that too. I removed the brake drum and the wheel bearing fell to bits.

Replace handbrake cable: 3 minutes
Replace wheel bearing: 3 hours.
Annoying the neighbours because you're pounding the crap out of the drum with a sledge hammer: Timeless.

On the plus side, the airbag light went out.

1Note to self: Slap daughter for hitting speed humps too fast.
2Yes, they're the same.
3Corsa handbrake has five, count them, five bits...



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The delivery extension for this subscription could not be loaded" when using SSRS

Image
OK, so we upgraded our server farm and put on the latest "stuff" (SSRS, SQL Server etc.) and the engineers gave me two servers to play with - SQL01 & SQL02. The idea being that we used high availability to help keep the factory running. We employed a contractor to load up and configure everything. At this point I wasn't involved. My involvement was to move all the reports and subscriptions from the old servers to the new ones once the servers had been configured. All went swimmingly, until I actually started to fire off the subscriptions to test them. Randomly (like 5 out of 10) I got the error in the title. I would edit the failing subscription and/or change the schedule time and it would work. I finally got around to moving 81 subscriptions for the same report (all slightly different parameters going to about 6 different engineers). I press the "go" button and every single one failed. Let's cut out the long story about how I went through about...
Read more

Oooh, look, an Eagle...

Image
The Scottish Holiday . After the trauma of the Astra-breakdown episode and the gutless hirecar, we'd recovered sufficiently to begin to enjoy the rest of our holiday with our friends at the Castle... Chapter Seven: One of the things my wife really wanted to see was a seal, or seals if she was really lucky. So we decided to take a day out and around the Mull Of Kintyre. We stopped at "St Columba's Footprints" and carefully studied the jumbled collection of rocks and seaweed. "No seals there dear, let's carry on" "Oh, alright then, never mind. But that's where we were told they are most likely to be." We drove on and took a gated road signposted " To The Lighthouse ". This took us right up into the hills. As we were driving slowly along admiring the view, my wife whispered quietly... " Ooh, look an Eagle! " "Stop that, that's not funny." "No, really. Stop the car." ...
Read more

What else could possibly go wrong?

So. I got the new radiator hoses from Vauxhall at a stupid £45 for the two and fitted them the weekend before we were due to go away on our Touring-Trip-Of-Scotland. I used this as an excuse to get out of helping with my sister-in-law's 50th birthday party. "But, I need to make sure the car is OK for next week dear!" "OK, I'll take the smart, and woe betide you if you're late for the party!" The Astra is now in bits and has no water in it. It is 6 minutes to 12 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I know this. For some bizarre reason, I decided to test the tightness of the -ve battery terminal by gently shaking the clamp. It was loose. "Ah, I wonder if this is the cause of it cutting out last week?" I took a 10mm spanner and gently tweaked up the bolt. The lead post (as in led, not leed) offered no resistance and gracefully detached itself in its entirety from the battery, the terminal now firmly bolted to the -ve lead (as in le...
Read more