Feckin Cars

I always own older cars, because it's far cheaper and I have a fair bit of mechanical knowledge for keeping them in good condition

Mostly it works out well for me, but sometimes I end up with a car that hates me

 

I'm currently driving an 07 Mitsubishi Lancer. Not the fast boy racer version, the 1.6 family saloon version

 

Five months back, the ABS light started coming on on the motorway if I went over 60mph. It's the kind of thing I'd normally ignore until MOT time, if it's not causing an actual problem, but I also discovered that if you accellerate to overtake between 60 and 70mph, the ABS actually kicked in and using the breaks caused the car to skew to the left and the brakes to totally fail until you came off them and pressed the pedal again

 

Wierd problem and not something I've encountered before, so I took it to the garage

ABS Rings, he said. I've never heard of them before, but apparently all four wheels have little cog things fitted behind the wheel that the ABS sensors read. Mine were all rusted and the sensors were not reading them properly

I bought the front two off ebay for about seven quid and recieved them in a week. I eventually had to get the back two from Germany and it was about two months before I booked the car in the garege with both sets

Niether fit. I'd ordered them from actual  parts suppliers, gave them my reg number and got confirmation they were correct, but no, on both counts

 

The guy at the garage stripped and cleaed the rear ones while he had the car in bits and told me they would now be ok, but we still needed the front ones, so this time I left it up to him

He did manage to find some after a lot of trouble, a little more expensive, and I booked the car in again

Did they fit? Did they fuck

He then suggested buying the whole CV joint assembly, that comes with them attached. With a lack of an alternative, I agreed and booked the car in again for Monday

He rang me Monday night to say they had only just arrived and he would have to fit them tuesday

He then rang me Tuesday night and said they also don't fit (The internal connections were wrong) and he had broken one of the old ones taking it off, as they were siezed. I couldn't borrow the wifes car for work on Wednesday, as she was working, so he lent me his works van

Eventually he had to buy the entire drive shaft assembly for both sides at £94 per shaft. All for a seven quid ring of metal

I finally got the car back last night at 9pm

He originally estimated £200 for the job. £50 per corner for fitting the parts I supplied. After all that fannying about, his all in price came to £260

His original estimate was a bit high because he knows my car is a piece of shit and all the parts are siezed on, but the final bill was a lot lower than I expected. It's a good job I've known him for so long. Any regular garage would have spanked me for that, plus VAT

And I fail to see why the drive shaft assemblies on my model should be different from all the other Lancers on the market. Which reminds me of a story about an old Cavalier...