MOT

Car mechanics are buggers, aren’t they? I had to put my Volvo in for its MOT on Friday. I knew it would fail because the nearside front wheel nut sheared off last year when I had a tyre replaced. (A few years back, when I was living in Bedford, I arrived at the station car park after work on a very dark and very wet Friday night, replete with three children in tow, only to discover that I had a flat tyre. I changed the wheel but, on screwing one of the wheel bolts, I mis-threaded it).

As I knew this was a problem (and a potential danger too) I pointed it out to the mechanic. He duly noted it and, once the test was completed, advised me that the nearside rear wheel had brake shoe problems and that too would need dealing with.

So, £400 lighter, I collected the car this evening. Guess what he told me? When they had worked on the rear brake shoes they discovered that there was wheel nut missing on each of my rear tyres. So I’ve actually been driving around with three of my four wheels only having three nuts in for the past year, not just one of them. ‘That must be dangerous’, I said, to which he replied ‘not really. Some cars only have three nuts anyway’. ‘But should you pass my car with the rear wheels missing a nut each even though the front is now repaired?’ I inquired. ‘Well', he replied, 'if it had come up when I did the MOT I would have had to mention it. You see, we don’t take the hubcaps off’. I thought for a second. ‘So what you are saying is if I hadn’t told you about the missing bolt on the front wheel you would never have noticed it, and what’s more it isn’t actually dangerous driving around without it?’. He nodded. Great! I looked at the £400 bill, £207.97 of which was for the replacement of the front hub, wheel bearing and labour (including VAT). So that’s £200 I just paid him completely un-necessarily. Fan-bloody-tastic! I must remember to keep my big gob shut in future.