No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

No good deed goes unpunished - that’s what a bloke I know taught me - maybe he's a little cynical? Turns out he isn't. He's bang on.

A friend recommended me to do some work on a Peugeot 206 CC - front disks and pads - piece of cake. The owner had been quoted silly money by the garage so I quoted high meaning high profits for me and a huge saving for the owner - win, win! I ordered the parts and on a day off from my day job, settled down to work thinking I’d be done in an hour with cash in my pocket and a day to waste – all good, until I touched the first bolt that is!

Locking wheel nuts are the spawn of Satan. End of. Particularly when you’re running stock alloys that you couldn’t give away let alone worry about being stolen – I mean, people don’t nick wheels any more; they aren’t worth anything unless they are something out of the ordinary.

So, an hours work and a quick buck turns into a day and a half of messing around and merely breaking even. Great. Few more jobs like that I’d be piss poor and want to top myself. After several wasted hours and 20 quid’s worth of drill bits, I called in a pro – it took him 10 mins but cost me £50 – whatever; at this stage I was just pleased to get the flaming wheel off. The next bolt came off, calipers removed, pads out – progress. Then I had to go get another tool – more money gone. Then when I finally got to swap the disks I realize I got given the wrong ones. Call GSF, they have them in stock, struggle through rush hour traffic to get there, no they don’t. Cocks.

Finally took the car back last night. Glad to see the back of it. It was a horrible car anyway, a French convertible? Please, that’s asking for trouble. My 190e, which is 14 years older with twice the mileage, drives nicer. Anyway. Anyone need help with anything? Tough.

FFS - doesnt rain, but it pours....

I had an E55 amg for the past couple of years - lovely car. But, I always hankered after another 190e 16v (see http://www.mercedes-cosworth.co.uk/ for an explanation of my obsession), anyway, long boring story short, I recently managed to swap the E55 for a 16v.

Great I hear you say, a win win for all. No. Far from it. The 16v ended up being in far worse condition than I thought and, to cut another story short, ended up needing £700 in parts and several weeks of evenings and weekends work to get it all up together. I completed this work a couple weeks ago and for the last 10 days or so have finally managed to enjoyed driving the car.

Until today. I realised the tax expired at the end of Aug. I checked the file to see the MOT followed suit so booked it in for an MOT - it failed. Nice. So, in the past 8 weeks, I've gone from a perfectly operational, albeit prohibitively expensive V8 AMG, to my other half’s Seat Arosa - now, an Arosa is to driving experiences what Osma Bin Laden is to the peace process and whilst I appreciate the other half letting me use her car, at the end of the day its awful; its small, noisy, slow and it smells funky as the previous owner had a dog that clearly spent a lot of time in the car. Overtaking is something that has to be planned at least 3 miles in advance and most journeys irritate the hell out of me!

The whole no tax, mot, car thing reared its head this morning (when I’m rarely at my best) and resulted in my getting the raging hump and arguing with the other half. Nice. Over the next few weeks I'll neglect her some more while I mess around with the car trying to get it up and running, again! Anyone got a subframe for a 190e? :)