My lady and I got our first car on Saturday, and it broke down on me yesterday. Woo. I think the gearbox went because I could only seem to get gears higher than third. I got it parked in a cul-de-sac out of the way of a dual carriageway and was going to get it towed today when the snow hit us. It's fairly heavy so the roads are a mess, and I think towing it in this weather would be asking for trouble. What I'm worried about is someone thinking it's been abandoned and having it lifted by the council. Do I need to inform the police or should I just leave a note on the windscreen explaining the situation?
Car advice
(14 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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leave a note, join the AA or the RAC and they will take it where ever you need it to go...
Posted 4 years ago # -
If your gearbox went in such a short space of time get your money back too... I got a sold a car with a dodgy differential last year - it went within 2 weeks. The guy had no choice but to give me my moolah back.
Leave a note and it might be an idea to contact the council directly to explain the situation.
shame because I'd grown really fond of it by then.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Getting money back would be a problem because we didn't pay for it. ;) My girlfriends dad got a new car and we got the old one as a hand me down, which was very generous of him. It's not worth much, but it was taxed and through the MOT and we were just starting to get used to having it around. I'll leave a note and see about the RAC, didn't realise they would help if the thing broke down before you joined. Cheers folks.
Posted 4 years ago # -
If you can't find the gears it might yet be a minor fault, rather than the whole gearbox going kaputt. It might be the (eep!) bracket that the gear stick sits in is broken. That'll cost about £20 to replace, rather than multiple £100's. Fwiw.
Posted 4 years ago # -
That would be nice. The clutch seemed fine (it's supposed to be new), but the gearstick was loose and didn't stay in position for the lower gears. The RAC man can have a look at it and at the very least he should know a decent garage. If it goes into the multiple £100's we'd need to have a long think about fixing it, the car probably isn't worth much more than £600 anyway, but we'll see what happens.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I think cabbage is the winner. Car got picked up by the garage today (RAC wanted £60 on top of joining to tow it, so I joined online and went elsewhere) and just got a phone call saying it was the gear linkage and it's fixed and waiting for me for £60 all sorted. Woo! Hopefully this time it'll run for a bit longer before breaking.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Woo hoo!
Posted 4 years ago # -
That's great news spiral :)
Ironically, my car wouldn't start this morning ... tried charging the battery but I don't think that's the problem tbh. There's a sinister beeping noise when I stick the key in the ignition. Horrible sinking feeling that it's the immobiliser.
/cries
Posted 4 years ago # -
Oh nasty - I gave my last car to my bruv and it decided to not start the day I was taking it to him. That was the immobiliser in the alarm - not the main immobiliser. It cost £400 to diagnose and remove the offending alarm and patch it back up :(. Stoopid car.
Posted 4 years ago # -
£400? Oof. It must be gutting for the anti-theft device to be thing that leaves you without a car.
Posted 4 years ago # -
It's actually looking like a starter motor failure now. A pretty non-standard one that left the recovery dude utterly bamboozled though. He was about to phone in to his company for a tow to the garage when he tried one last time and it started. He reckons the starter motor is taking a huge whack off the battery and draining it so much that it doesn't get replenished enough over a long drive.
Should pick it up with a new starter from the garage on monday. Fingers crossed.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Good luck. It's always nice when things go less horribly wrong than you were expecting.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Well it's back and it works - not really any wiser though - it's just starting every time now and no-one knows why. The garage cleaned all the earthing straps and sundry battery cables ( one of which was slightly corroded ) but still looked a bit puzzled. They've started it several tens of times with no failure now.
So... it's fixed, cost me nothing in the end but no-one knows quite why :S
/clutches recovery service card close to chest
Posted 4 years ago #
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