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Chin up lad! these things happen - I remember 2012's MOT well, 2x the value of the van by the time everything had finished falling off the vehicle!, Thing was, they had already done £550's of work before the stearing column broke when they moved the van!
Sorry to hear your woes Ben...I bet it seems like the world's against you?
It certainly does sometimes. Thankfully the exhaust valve didn't need replacing, so that's £125 +VAT that won't be charged to me, but there's enough to make sure I stay in debt to the garage for some time.
Spoke with the garage owner and he's very generously told me that I can pay when I can, by instalments is fine, providing I don't skip the country. Even a debt of a few hundred to my local garage is going to hang over me for a while now but, as they say, these things are sent to try us.
i love a good rant. you just manage to save a bit of cash up for winter and something goes wrong and costs a fortune to get repaired back to square one. just had my comby long reach cutter in 2 weeks running first the head seized up then a phormea leaf went into the shaft housing on the motor side resulting to having to have a new shaft (do not know what it costs yet but it will not be as big as your bill i hope)
Ouch, that's not going to be cheap, although as you say I hope it won't cost too much. Life seems to be like a game of Snakes and Ladders- sometimes you hit a ladder and get a great lift, but then you step on a snake and go back several spaces....
Darren
Ben, if you have a good relationship with garage owner, why not speak to him about setting up a monthly payment service arrangement ?. I do this with my garage, a set monthly amount to cover mot servicing and any repairs, trust me its a godsend. I am also setting this up with my horty service shop starting next month. I have a lot of kit and 3 vehicles so by paying a set monthly amount I dont get hit with horrific bills in times like this, well worth a thought.
BensBotanics said:
What van is it.....I have to say putting a van in that needs tires for an MOT is asking to loose money..plus shouldn't you have been looking at them for your own and others safety point of view anyway and therefore been aware that they were dodgy...you were risking a lot more than an MOT failure if you had been stopped ! it doesn't take a lot to look at tires and check pressures etc you could have anticipated their renewal and shopped for a better price and put the money aside in time too ? If you can change a spark plug on your mower you could have fitted those glow plugs yourself ;-)
I have sympathy for a large garage bill but this part lies squarely at your feet..do you check your oil and water etc ? It's a tool like any other look after it ;-)
I hope you have better luck in the future
I do check from time to time, although like most people I intend to check more often than I actually do. I check oil and water fairly frequently, but the heater plugs were news to me- I knew the van was sometimes reluctant to start, but not being all that mechanically minded didn't make the connection.
My van is a Vauxhall Combo, and one of the things that annoys me about it is that it has lots of warning lights that never light up, but then one warning light that seems to cover a multitude of faults. It's weighted in favour of a garage with a computer to plug into the onboard computed system and tell them where the fault is. I think though that I should probably get a Haynes Manual for this vehicle, and hopefully having something more definitive to work to than the internet will give me more confidence to take on at least more minor jobs myself.
with the prices that garages/mechanics charge these days I think it pays everyone to be able to do a basic service or carry out small repairs on their vans, there are plenty of places online that sell the parts cheaply or even do service kits, all you have to do is type your number plate in and your vehicle comes up. I always go to the breakers to buy my tyres and usually pay around £25 for a wheel and tyre. Glow plugs can be a problem on certain vehicles, glow plugs made of steel in an alloy head soon seize, I'm driving around in an Isuzu with only two glow plugs working the other two have seized in the head with one sheared off, starts fine at the moment.
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