Reading a previous thread about how a rattle from the back of the car was discovered by a garage mechanic to be the owners golf kit reminded me of a very amusing incident I once had at my local garage....

Many moons ago I had a Morris Minor. Come MOT time I was informed that a little welding was required. I left them to it and the next day all was sorted.

A couple of months later on an grimy Bradford morning I went for the windscreen washer (which on these cars was a push button manual pump - they had them on older minis too). Anyway nothing happened. So when I got home I thought I'd top it up. Opening the bonnet I found the bottle had gone. I was a little surprised but its only held in place by a weakish looking clip in these cars so I guessed it had fallen off and set about getting a replacement.

At the local scrap yard I was pleased but also saddened to see another Morris Minor the same colour as mine ready to be scrapped. The guy said I could have the bottle for 50p.

Come time for the next MOT I went back to the same garage. This time the car passed with no work. I was chuffed. Anyway the manager comes over to me and says. "I'm awfully sorry mate but when we were doing your welding last year we took out the wash bottle and forgot to put it back. Here it is" he says producing said bottle. I laughed and said what I thought had happened. I was rather surprised they had remembered.

"Perhaps you'd like your spare wheel back as well" he said looking somewhat sheepish. There was a long pause as I considered how I had been driving about without the wheel for 12 months and despite the spare being very obviously visible in the boot when fitted had never noticed. Then I burst out laughing and the guy looked very relieved. There was another brief pause but the guy did not produce any other missing components.

I'm not going to divulge the garage to avoid unnecessary embarrassment and they are actually very good mechanics, but for any locals - the manager made a replica of the batmobile from a triumph herald and it was in several news papers at the time.


Does anyone else have any similarly silly stories?

 

A mate in the trade says he once had someone drive to his garage complaining that some lights were on on the dash, the car seemed sluggish and was very noisy. Apparently he looked underneath and there was a hole in the sump you could put your hand in.

"How long has it been like that?" said my mate. Driver says "since yesterday morning ...."

 

Urban myth has it that an American woman, who'd never driven "stick shifts", had driven a British (manual) hire car for several hundred miles in second gear...

[This message has been edited by Jerome (edited 24 May 2001).]

 

My mother did a similar thing, we lived on a farm with a rough track 1/2 miles long to the house and she started the car one morning and the oil light came on so she drove it 2miles to the local garage and left it on the forcourt ticking over and said "There seems to be a light on, on the dash board".... at which point the engine stopped....... only to restart a few days later after a large bill had been paid...

Another...

A friend was messing around in his Fiesta and was moaning about cost of fuel so rolled all the way down this long hill, he switch off the engine and removed the key....
the hill was fairly striaght and no problems occurred until he tried to turn left into his drive at the bottom of the hill and the steering lock came on.... luckly we were rolling at about 10mph at this point and he was able to brake (with no servo) to a stop.

Another .... in Said Fiesta above with antoher mate following and the driver was braking with left foot so brake lights came on and accellerating with right foot so losing the following car... then we met a car coming the other way and he had to stop quick... mind went into overdrive and pushed left foot to floor and tried to change down to third... and brake with right foot which couldn't find the pedal as the left foot had planted it.. we screached sideways to a hult... very quickly..

Another .... driver got out of car to say good bye to his girlfriend and the front passenger (owner of car) proceeded to turn the car around... but rather than getting out and getting in drivers seat he sat half on each seat and used one foot for clutch, brake and accelerator.... as we backed around the door which the driver hadn't shut properly swung open and ran all the way along the side of a parked car, I was in the back trying to get to the hand brake but my mate was more or less sitting on it...
When we finally stopped and got out there was this guy in his drive opposite laughing....we said that is not very nice we have to go and tell someone what we just did to his car... he said no you don;t as it is my car... I only got in back from the bodyshop last week.

When I bought my latest Scooby...
at the dealers and it was outside so I got the keys and was looking around it...
went to start the engine and the battery was flat... been here for a while I thought..
so popped the bonnet to look at engine etc and got out and shut the door.... not realising that the keys were still in the ignition and the alarm had re-armed (and locked the doors) when the battery power went low....
So I lift bonnet to loud siren and run to door to find it locked with both sets of keys in the ignition.... whoops...
The sales guy had to break into it...
I still bought it anyway, and got a new battery for free...

 

My mate's brother's missus once took her Mazda MX5 to the garage, complaining that only the one speaker worked. After looking around for a while they discovered that the reason was because she had messed around with the balance/fade controls

Cheers,
Tom

 

At college we had use of a garage to carry out minor servicing on our cars . One student , a girl named Lara , decided to change the oil in her Renault 4 and being headstrong wanted to do it all herself . A while later she got her boyfriend to bring her into town for a gallon of oil . After an hour or so she got him to bring her for more oil . Him , not being mechanically minded , didn't question the fact that she had already poured a gallon of oil into the car . It was only when she sent him in for a third gallon of oil did he get suspicious and ask someone else to take a look at the car . It turned out she thought you filled the oil until it appeared at the filler hole - in the rocker cover ! This despite the fact that she had only drained a gallon of old oil out .

 

This is comical.

When I worked for my last firm, I had a customer who rented a car in Malaga (a chap from the middle of nowhere) and he was 75 years old. He had a driving licence for 30 years, but called to say he had only ever driven about 400 miles in his hole life as his lifestyle had no need for it. He was going to his sons wedding of his 3rd wife and he wanted to arrive in style. So he rented a Fiat Bravo 1.4 He arrives at the terminal at Malaga, collects his car and makes his way to Alicante. On his way the car shows an oil warning light. So he stops at a garage and asks an attendant what that means, he explains in poor english he thinks it needs some oil. Ok the driver thinks so he carries on driving. He arrives at the next petrol station to see that the light is still on. Calls us and one of our reservations agents says "No worries sir, purchase some oil and top it up. Get to alicante and call the supplier and they will get you a new car from Alicante"....

We here nothing from him for 3 weeks...

3 weeks later we get a complaint letter, dear customer services. I did as you advised and filled the car with oil in the oil filler hole at the back. I called the supplier after the car would not start and I had spent £300.00 on oil. I want my money back for that oil!....

Hmmm we thought reading it, called the supplier...sure as eggs is eggs the guy had filled the petrol tank up with £300.00 worth of oil. (It was £201.04 in total i think)

Bless him.

He said when we wrote back he felt daft, had sold his car and wondered why on earth petrol was mixed with oil....sadly not the same as his lawnmower and 2 stroke.

Ron

 

I had a guy come into work saying his radio came on but there was no sound, he was pleasantly surprised when I turned the volume up for him!

Had another guy complaing that it took him ages to get oil in the engine, he showed me how he poured it down the dipstick tube!

Bob

 

Her goes with the mother.

She had parked at a shop to get the papers.
She went into the shop, came back out, got into the car, started it up, put her foot down to accellerate away and nothing happened.
So, in a panic she started pumping away at the pedal.

Luckily my dad was there to inform her that she was pumping the brake pedal!

 

One of my friends bought an Uno Turbo and was told by the garage he bought it from that the previous lady owner had brought the car back after a week complaining of a strange ‘whooshing’ noise from under the bonnet. Upon further investigation, she admitted that the ‘whoosing’ noise appeared only under acceleration. Mechanic went out in the car with her and sure enough the car started making this noise when given the shoe.

Mechanic politely explained that this ‘whooshing’ noise was from the turbo and it was supposed to do this!

Lady then decided that the whooshing noise was not to her satisfaction and asked if they could stop it – upon being told that this wasn’t really possible she decided that she didn’t want the car any more

 

Jerome

Your story is not an urban Myth. My dad used to work at RAF Mildenhall (US airbase) in the 60's. An Officers wife came over to see him from the US and hired a car. She then preceed to drive it for a couple of days in first gear. Her quote was "Lovely car but it doesn't go very fast and it is very noisey!"

Mark

 

Was in Tunbridge Wells one day when a woman drove into the middle of the box junction (Markus you'll know the one). Stopped, go out of her car and locked it. Went to the Nat West bank, back to her car got in and drove off. 5 minutes of total pandemonium in the centre of TW. Sadly the police arrived just after she left.... they were stuck in the log jame she had created..!!!

Dave

 

Well,

My sister once locked her keys, and dog in the car on a multi storey car park. Before you say that's cruel, she did leave the window down to give the dog some air. Plenty of air. The window was all the way down. As she was trying in vain to pick the lock with a hairgrip, the dog was leaning on the window sill licking her face, and she STILL didn't figure it out!

You can imagine the AA man (very nice man) who showed up and leant inside to unlock the door.

That story went down well at her wedding

 

Mother Stories:


My parents were cleaning up the cars ; My mother asked for a sponge to clean hers ; My dad gave her a sponge with 2 faces ; one yellow soft ; the other face green very abrasive (for dishwashing only...) ; You should have seen the face of my father an hour after this; the Audi was covered by small scratches ... wedding

Another one from my mother who drove 40km with the handbrake...The rear brakes melted...The face of my dad was also quite "funny"

 

Playing with alarm on my WRX when I first got it.

The alarm is a Clifford Consept 600, with the auto locking of the doors.

This all took place on my drive way, My wife had gone out, my mobile was on the front seat, bonnett up, I started the car, shut the drivers door, fiddeling about under bonnett & reved the car up, CLUNK go the locks, shut bonnett and kin hell, car locked engine running front door closed, wife out, mobile on front seat, no money cos i was going to the bank etc etc etc, bloke next door lent me a phone to call the wife asking her to return, she did 45 mins later.

 

A few years ago some girls at work decided to drive into town during lunch time. A lad in the office asked for a lift so they set off. Just before they got the the carpark the car started to overheat and they had to pull over. The lad who went with them decided to give the 'helpless' girls the benafit of his technical knowlede and impress them at the same time. He determined that the fault was a lack of water in the cooling system, so got a big bottle of water and procedded to pour it into the crank case!!!

For some reason he never got offered a lift after that. The car somehow managed to survive after a flush and oil change...