Things had been going pretty well here for once. It couldn't last.
On Friday evening, after finishing my work for the day, I attempted to turn sharp right into a sideroad. The road was covered in compacted snow, and I was going too fast for the conditions. The wheels turned. The car didn't. I tried to brake but there was nothing I could do, and I slid across the road, and banged into the kerb.
It was quickly obvious that the car wasn't driving properly. They're robust when the forces acting on them come from the expected directions, but apply any significant force from a direction it shouldn't come from, and you'll quickly find they're also delicate things, dependent upon the balance of many complex components. I thought I might have punctured the tyre or even fractured the alloy wheel, but the car was drivable with care, and I got it home and took a look with a torch. The tyre and wheel were both fine, but the energy of the impact had to go somewhere. I took it to a garage first thing next morning, and they put it up on a ramp and found the wishbone for the near front assembly had become deformed. I asked them to order a replacement part, and we established that this part would arrive today, Tuesday.
So I had an unexpected holiday, and had to cancel a whole load of lessons. I'd expected it to be sorted for this afternoon. I took the car in this morning, and went home to await a phone call.
That call came, at about 2pm this afternoon. The news wasn't good. The replacement part would not now arrive until early February.
What????!?!!?!
I have driving tests. I have to earn a living. So there is absolutely no way I can just let things lie. I'd originally intended to just pay for the repair myself, but I now urgently need a replacement vehicle, and so I contacted my insurance company and made a claim.
So now I've cancelled the lessons I'd still got booked for this afternoon, and I'm waiting for the phone to ring from a company who will collect the car and take it to an approved repairers. I'm also waiting for someone to call to say they will get a car to me as soon as possible.
And so this will now drag on into Wednesday, and possibly for weeks. All this from a moment's error.
It's also caused a rethink about how to deal with bad weather with my pupils. I've tended to use bad weather in the past as an opportunity for my pupils to learn how to drive in bad weather. This now seems foolhardy. In future, if they want to learn about skid control, they can go and book a session on a skid pan.
2 comments:
Shit man, sorry to hear that. We had a similar experience a couple of years ago. We were driving back to Dublin from Cork and failed to turn sharply enough, banging into the kerb and clearly doing damage (based on the handling of the car, even though the tyre and wheel looked OK to my untrained eye).
We managed to get almost all the way back home (probably went about 200km with the car getting increasingly more difficult to control - real dumb, but it was a Sunday and it was important we got back home) before the tyre in question just exploded. Really dramatic.
Anyway, called the insurance company who sent out a tow-truck and called my sister who came to collect us (only possible because we were so close to Dublin).
Just as with you, the wishbone had been deformed. But our mechanic knocked it back into shape and charged us 300 quid (which included a new tyre). We picked it up the next day.
That was two years ago and we've passed the NCT (Irish equivalent of MOT) twice since then and the car is running well - VW Polo.
I can only assume the damage is much worse in your case? Because surely if the wishbone is deformed, it can be repaired. At least I would have thought so based on our experience.
It's not really my car Jim. I lease it. Plus it's pretty much brand new. So the dealership would expect it to be done by an approved garage, using official, Citroen sourced parts.
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