Nice people thread part 7 - a thread in its prime

GDB2222

michaels wrote: »

:mad: Car No 1 has been off the road for 10 days with gear/clutch problem whilst mechanic has had key (so we can't go elsewhere) but has not got round to looking at it. So of course today car no 2 has sufffered clutch failure leaving us with no car and lots of kid related activities requiring a car. DW is now walking in rain to nearest car hire place to get car to collect kids at 3.30 :mad:

You have my sympathies. I used to have a FIAT, too.

What you need is one of these. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctin21yrfcA

zagubov

GDB2222 wrote: »

You have my sympathies. I used to have a FIAT, too.

The same from me!;)

michaels

GDB2222 wrote: »

You have my sympathies. I used to have a FIAT, too.

What you need is one of these. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctin21yrfcA

It is my fault, car no 2 that is now 12 years old and has done less than 1k miles in the last 2 years and before last week had not been used in 10 months; I was saying to my parents last night how it just works despite not being used 'forever' so of course it had to fail the next day....

PasturesNew

I had the telly on this morning and it "froze" .... set top box was saying "no signal". I turned it off, 6 hours later turned it on again - still no joy. I've turned it on/off several times since - and done the whole "auto scan" thing, but there's no signal it says.

Can't be kaput... probably bought it in August last year, started using it in December last year, so it's only had 3.5 months' use.

Only way to find out if it's broken is to buy a new one..... which isn't very helpful and I could do without the £15 or so expense it'll cost me. Income today = £2.46.

Generali

lemonjelly wrote: »

Happy that after what seemed like ages, I managed to get tickets for David Tenant in Richard 2 at the RSC!:)

You're going to see the sequel then. Have you seen Richard I? The original is normally better.

michaels

PasturesNew wrote: »

I had the telly on this morning and it "froze" .... set top box was saying "no signal". I turned it off, 6 hours later turned it on again - still no joy. I've turned it on/off several times since - and done the whole "auto scan" thing, but there's no signal it says.

Can't be kaput... probably bought it in August last year, started using it in December last year, so it's only had 3.5 months' use.

Only way to find out if it's broken is to buy a new one..... which isn't very helpful and I could do without the £15 or so expense it'll cost me. Income today = £2.46.

We have 2 freeview boxes, both free from freecycle.

Which doesn't really make up for the car. Mechanic we don't trust (who has done nothing for 2 weeks) looked at it today and said 'definitely the clutch' but I decided to drive it down to the local garage for a second opinion, started it in gear (as no clutch), tried to move off and 'bang' sound of something no doubt extremely expensive breaking as I guess the mechanic had done disconnected something and not put it back. So now it is partly blocking the drive and much worse broken than before and we can't even get it to the local garage. MY budget is £900 for car servicing a year (which is already ridiculously high given the mileage we don't do) and it now looks like we will blow that and then some. Meanwhile it is very unclear whether it is even worth fixing car 2, fixed it is probably worth 5-800 quid but it is hard to know for sure and it would cost at least £250 to fix. I wonder what it is worth as 'scrap'?! Still at least it is already pretty much fully depreciated.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

I had the telly on this morning and it "froze" .... set top box was saying "no signal". I turned it off, 6 hours later turned it on again - still no joy. I've turned it on/off several times since - and done the whole "auto scan" thing, but there's no signal it says.

Can't be kaput... probably bought it in August last year, started using it in December last year, so it's only had 3.5 months' use.

Only way to find out if it's broken is to buy a new one..... which isn't very helpful and I could do without the £15 or so expense it'll cost me. Income today = £2.46.

So, the set top box is reporting no signal. Maybe there's a fault with the aerial?

misskool

michaels wrote: »

We have 2 freeview boxes, both free from freecycle.

Which doesn't really make up for the car. Mechanic we don't trust (who has done nothing for 2 weeks) looked at it today and said 'definitely the clutch' but I decided to drive it down to the local garage for a second opinion, started it in gear (as no clutch), tried to move off and 'bang' sound of something no doubt extremely expensive breaking as I guess the mechanic had done disconnected something and not put it back. So now it is partly blocking the drive and much worse broken than before and we can't even get it to the local garage. MY budget is £900 for car servicing a year (which is already ridiculously high given the mileage we don't do) and it now looks like we will blow that and then some. Meanwhile it is very unclear whether it is even worth fixing car 2, fixed it is probably worth 5-800 quid but it is hard to know for sure and it would cost at least £250 to fix. I wonder what it is worth as 'scrap'?! Still at least it is already pretty much fully depreciated.

stick some numbers in webuyanycar.com that gives you about 15% less than selling it on privately.

Can you not scrap both and consolidate cars into one reasonable one as you don't need both?

GDB2222

michaels wrote: »

We have 2 freeview boxes, both free from freecycle.

Which doesn't really make up for the car. Mechanic we don't trust (who has done nothing for 2 weeks) looked at it today and said 'definitely the clutch' but I decided to drive it down to the local garage for a second opinion, started it in gear (as no clutch), tried to move off and 'bang' sound of something no doubt extremely expensive breaking as I guess the mechanic had done disconnected something and not put it back. So now it is partly blocking the drive and much worse broken than before and we can't even get it to the local garage. MY budget is £900 for car servicing a year (which is already ridiculously high given the mileage we don't do) and it now looks like we will blow that and then some. Meanwhile it is very unclear whether it is even worth fixing car 2, fixed it is probably worth 5-800 quid but it is hard to know for sure and it would cost at least £250 to fix. I wonder what it is worth as 'scrap'?! Still at least it is already pretty much fully depreciated.

The whole scrap thing is quite interesting. I used a couple of the websites to get quotes and they were MUCH higher for the punto than anything I got offered when I rang round. Your car is bigger (so more steel in it), and so it should be worth more.

Is it car 1 that is now a broken wreck in the driveway? Or car 2?

I am afraid that I take a Stalinesque view about this:
2 fewer Fiats in the world means 2 fewer problems.

lostinrates

On, my set top box freezes quite often. Have you turned it off at the wall and turned it back on?