Cars....well mine, anyway!
Booked a week's holiday this week to do all my Christmas shopping, etc.
Coming home from work on Monday morning ( my last shift ) my car went into 'limp mode' ( dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, clunky auto-box which won't change up past 4th, won't do more than 40MPH, etc. )
Took it into Toyota dealer, who diagnosed it as a dead diesel particulate filter ( DPF ) although they couldn't understand why as it's done less than 70k miles & my daily commute includes 25 miles of motorway each way.
Book price for replacement - £1500 !! ( 6-8 hours labour on average )
Luckily the manager persuaded Toyota to replace it free under the extended warranty ( usually they refuse to do so - they actually class it as a 'filter' and therefore a 'consumable part' )
Including waiting for the part, that took 2 days to do.
Got a phone call when it was ready, and was then told "we had to replace your windscreen as the fitter broke it taking the DPF off!" ... typical of modern cars, the DPF is actually in the engine bay between the engine & the bulkhead, hence why it takes so long to replace
Picked up car, got home, put ( electronic, EPB ) handbrake on....promptly followed by lots of fault lights on the dash, error messages for the handbrake, and the handbrake intermittently working & occasionally not releasing.
Back in to Toyota garage.....diagnosed as a fault with the handbrake mechanism on one of the calipers ( or to be more precise, the mechanism works but the electronic gubbins which tells the EPB it's working was faulty ) so a new caliper is needed.
Luckily, replacing it free under the extended warranty.
Going in tomorrow to get that changed, so that's effectively wasted most of my week's holiday.
Bloody cars!
