Thursday 1st December, 2011
As I was changing the calendar this morning it suddenly hit me.....it's December!!! Where has the last few months gone? It is officially the first day of Summer. Spring came and went, I know it was only a few months ago I couldn't wait for Spring and here it is, it's come and gone and I somehow missed it.
I had better get my butt into gear and do some Christmas shopping. I have made a start but need to do a lot more.
This last week has been hard. I know Tony has had a few sleepless nights thinking about this job offer in Brisbane. He said he would love to take the job but it's all the other things that goes along with it, like accomodation, packing up our house, organising to get it rented and so the list goes on.
Then yesterday we had another decision to make, whether to buy a new car or not. On Monday I had arranged to meet Tony at the Plaza. On the way, I called into the Village to go to the ATM, came back to the car and it wouldn't start. I knew it wasn't the battery as the radio still worked and all the lights worked.
I rang Tony to tell him about the car and to come straight to the Village. I rang the RAA and waited. They showed up after about half an hour, and after trying to start the car he got out his hammer, gave the starter motor a couple of hits and walla....it started.
We decided to take the car back home and walk back to the shops so that we could do some shopping. On Tuesday morning Tony left for work later than he normally does as he was hoping to get the car booked in to be seen to. Unfortunately they were booked out and so it was booked in for Wednesday.
I dropped the car off at the mechanics and Tony picked it up after work. When he collected the car he said that he got no further than just around the corner when suddenly he heard ping, ping, ping. Not knowing what it was he walked back to the mechanic and got him to come and have a look. He saw that the fan belt was perished.
They got the car back to the workshop, and luckily Repco were still open to get another fan belt, and so they replaced the old one at no cost to us. Norm, the mechanic, said that the fan belt should have been picked up during the service.
Now, this is where it gets technical and I have no idea what Tony was trying to explain to me. He mentioned something about a fly wheel and when we had the gearbox overhauled, the problem with that should have been picked up. It also must interact with the starter motor somehow.
Anyway further investigation is required and so Tony booked the car in again for Monday morning for them to have a look at it. If this needs fixing it will cost us well over $1000. There are also other bits and pieces that need doing like CV joints and the like.
I know that about 12 months ago we spent quite a bit of money on the car but we have had another 12 months use out of it. The car, a Nissan Pulsar, is 17 years old, done around 330,000 kms and I don't think Tony is prepared to spend any more money on it. It has been a great car and over the years we have had to spend minimal money on it, it's just been the last 12-18 months that major problems have started to arise.
Tony is hoping to be able to take Friday off so that we can go and look for another car. At the moment we are looking at buying either a Toyota Corolla, Mazda 3, Nissan Tiida or Hyundai I30. He spent all of last night on the web looking at and comparing cars. He also looked at the Puegot, Honda and Subaru.
No comments:
Post a Comment