Well today’s been hectic trying to get Tilt sorted and I’m not even through half the day. This morning I got up early - rediculously early. Then I drove Tilt down to Kwik Fit, as I figured that seeing as you can’t get quicker than a Kwik Fit fitter, that they might be able to get my clutch done for 4pm if I’m lucky. I should probably mention at this point that I don’t know much about clutches. Other than that mine’s rubbish.

So I arrived at Kwik Fit at 7:40am with the hope of walking from there to work to start at 8:15am. Except according to the opening times on the door, Kwik Fit doesn’t actually open until 8:30am. Considering the lack of people inside and the fact that there were no lights on, I think it’s safe to say that the sign wasn’t lying to me. If it was then it wouldn’t be the first sign to lie to me - I’ve been to McDonalds and they’ve closed half an hour earlier than they should do. Granted, they kept the Drive-Thru open, but at the time I was riding a motorcycle - and it’s hard to go through the Drive-Thru on a motorcycle because you tend to need both hands. Or three hands. That would be handy. Heh, “handy”… seriously, no pun intended! Anyways, long story short, McDonalds allowed me to walk through the Drive-Thru.

It was all worth it for the priceless look on the faces of the people in the car behind me. Especially when I pretended to ride an imaginary motorcycle from one window to the next. Remember, at this point I’m still in my full protective bike-gear - including my helmet!

Anyway, I got a txt from a friend of mine who works at Kwik Fit;

We dont do clutches mate. Ur garage should do that. But they r expensive cos u pay a lot 4 labour.

Suddenly a word popped into my head. One tiny little word. “Poop”.

I tried to get back onto the main road, but the traffic was awful. I was sat for 10 minutes until there was a gap big enough for a car that can’t accelerate to drive into. I dropped it off at the garage I normally use and left a note asking if they could check if it was the clutch and if possible if they could try fixing it.

And to my surprise, my old college bus suddenly showed up outside to pick someone up! The bus was running late, and so was I. My old driver was still driving on it and he very kindly gave me a lift and dropped me off just outside work. I arrived at 8:14am. I start at 8:15am. And ooooooooh was that lucky.

Flash forward a couple of hours and I call up the garage. It was the clutch. Apparently the clutch has always been rubbish. “I thought you knew it was on its way out?” my mechanic said. I only know it’s rubbish NOW because last night it smelt like something burning that shouldn’t be burning. Like old people’s feet laced in rubber. And when you smell old people’s feet laced in rubber burning inside your engine, you know that either the previous owner was a homicidle maniac or Tilt’s very very poorly. Either way, something is terribly wrong!

I don’t like Tilt being poorly.

My mechanic is too busy to be able to fix Tilt’s poorly clutch. Fortunately he recommended someone who can. When I asked this guy about it I could over-hear him talking to another mechanic;

“You know those Rover Metros? There’s an L-Reg, from ‘94 - needs a new clutch…. Those are the ones that are a bastard to do, right?”

When my mate said clutch repairs are expensive for the labour - he wasn’t kidding. Apparently they’re a pain in the butt to replace the clutch because it’s hard to get at. He gave me a ball-park figure as to how much it’s going to cost to repair Tilt.

It’s going to be somewhere in the region of £200 +VAT, which is about 9,997.20 Russian Rubles. I don’t need to know the price in Rubles, and you don’t need to know the price in Rubles, but as you can see - 9,997.20 is a large number. Which means it’s both bloody expensive and a difficult number to divide by 3.7 (should you ever feel the urge to). But if it comes down to a choice between giving up on Tilt and getting a new car or paying out loads to repair him… Tilt will win.

I don’t want Tilt to die…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 at 11:55 am and is filed under Tilt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.