I totalled a lady's car as she decided to abruptly make a left hand turn while I was trying to overtake her. Her car, Skoda citigo or something small like that was totalled as I hit it hard on the B pillar. Well to be fair, any car would probably have gotten quite damaged in a side collision.
I took my car to my trusted indy garage and they made it look like new. Trying to be clever and hoping to save a bit of cash, I asked them to fix my rear brakes, believing it would be a quick job since they had it up on the lift anyway. Not so, the hand/emergency brake cable was rusted solid and they charged me 4.5 hours for splitting my car and putting it back together again. My brakes work, very well indeed!
However, the list of things no longer working is long:
Right hand side headlight wiper motor (To which I was asked, why do you have those darn things anyway?). It was working prior to taking it into the garage, it just didn't know where to stop. Owner of the garage broke the wiper arm when he tried to coax the motor into working. But, of course it's old aluminum.
The hose to the windshield wiper fluid had mysterically ended up being squeezed to death as he had put the hood lock on top of it.
Wiper fluid reservoir has unfortunately gotten quite incontinent. I used to be able to fill it to the brim, no longer so. I think about a liter of fluid managed to flow out onto the ground after I filled it the last time. (state unknown as I haven't had time to look at it yet.)
But by far the worse, is the fuel tank. I now have a fairly large hole or something where the filler pipe joins the tank itself. I only noticed it tonight when I filled it up completely and I wondered about the smell of fuel and saw fuel gushing out. Not drip, no, it quite literally gushed. My thinking is the mechanic who fixed my brakes used a crowbar or something and it slipped and hit the fuel filler pipe. Might also just be a coincidence but I'm not a firm believer in those.
I'm going to wait until tomorrow to inspect the damage and try to find out what is going on with the fuel tank, but quite frankly not too happy about working on it. I hate the smell of fuel and even more I hate the risk of breaking brittle plastic with no spare parts on hand. Could it be something easy like a broken rubber gasket or would that be too much to hope for?
Another thing, my windshield sprayers have gotten extremely weak, I guess a 21 years old car equals a man in his 80s
, but the spray hardly reaches the windshield. The pump seems to be working well as both head light sprayers function properly. Could I disconnect the nozzles and blow some pressurized air into the hose without risking it disintegrating on me?A few before and after pics:
PS: Oil spill under the 850 isn't solely from this car. I had a brief and not very happy relationship with a VW Vento that used oil as quickly as I could pour it.