Warhead (I suck at the internet)

My ancient car

My 16 year old Nissan needed its MOT (Ministry of Transport road-worthiness) test before the end of the month. I usually take it to a Nissan dealership and have them service it, then test it, but main dealers always piss me off. I always feel that they're ripping me off and telling me I need stuff doing that's not really necessary, just to bump up the bill.

This year I tried something different. My daughter's ex-boyfriend is manager at a local National Tyres branch, and they also do MOT tests, so I booked it in with him, on the assumption that he'd test it and tell me if there was anything essential that was needed to pass the test. I did nothing other than check that all my lights were working, because as far as I could tell, everything else was likely to be OK.

But I had this nagging feeling that it was going to fail, which would have been a pain, as I'm now using it to go to work for the first time in years. And fail it did, but only because there was a cut in one of the tyre walls, and only a little one at that. Probably not dangerous, but a definite test failure. So, he put the spare tyre on instead, which is in good condition, and gave it a pass.

I ordered a new tyre which was fitted on Monday and only cost about 29 pounds, and the test was only 22 pounds, so it's been a relatively cheap episode.

What a thoroughly good chap he is.

posted by Warhead @ 12:37 pm