May 2021

I have a regular customer whose secondary transport is a Kia Picanto from 2009. It is the kind of little car that sold really well around the time of the government-sponsored scrappage scheme put in place after the 2008 financial crash. It’s one of those vehicles that gets used a lot for short journeys by various members of the family, accruing a pretty high mileage, but because none of these miles take the driver anywhere significant, it’s as if it’s not being driven at all. Hence, it probably could do with more servicing than it receives, not for want of prodding from us I might add. Anyroad, so my regular customer called in and said his son, who doesn’t drive it much, had told him the little vehicle seemed to have developed somewhat vague steering, also, there seemed to be a bit of what our customer optimistically described as “dampness” underneath. When it arrived, the steering wasn’t so bad it couldn’t get through the doors, but we did find that the suspension on the offside front was completely gone. While we were test- driving it, we noticed a vibration at 50mph that they had not picked up on. The owner and his wife never drove it that fast, and the son, upon realising how much compensation was being applied with regards to the steering, was sensible enough to turn around and go home as soon as possible. Not us though, we had that little weezer doing, er, 70mph on the local bypass. The shaking turned out to be a combination of the driveshaft and two of the tyres having basically gone off, like sour milk. The tread was still legal funnily enough. So, we’d worked some of that out then, so we thought to now look at the oil leak. I must confess that I wish I had looked at this first, as I found to my extreme surprise that the reason there was a leak was that the sump had essentially disintegrated. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I think the rust was holding what oil was left inside the engine, I’m not kidding. I was always opposed to scrappage. Apart from thousands of perfectly serviceable cars of a certain age, a few classic cars, worth far more than the £2,000 price floor, ended up getting crushed just so some silly people could buy a here-today-gone- tomorrow box at a knockdown price. Looking at classics, I’ve never seen a A-Series engine in a state like that I might add. As for more modern equivalents such as Rover’s K-Series engine, well, er, I liked the K-Series. They had their own special requirements and quirks, but for all their flaws, they didn’t actually melt. In the end, the cost of repair was far more than the value of the car. The customer’s main transport is a Land Rover Discover from 1998, so he’s used to bad news that empties his wallet. I mentioned that scrappage was probably how that car came to be on the road, and I asked him if he would ever use such a scheme, and scrap his Disco. “That’ll be the day,” he replied. THAT’LL BE THE DAY 58 AFTERMARKET MAY 2021 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net Weezer High mileage Melted sump Buddy Holly? Disco @?!