Ok, so the whole regular-blog thing was
a completely unrealistic expectation for you to have had of me. I knew it and
now we all do. No hard feelings. I have other stories I want to inflict upon the world and to do
so I kinda feel the need to sanitise the air with regard the van first, so here’s what
happened next.
I had had the van for a couple of
months and things had been ticking over fairly well. My monthly fuel bill had
tripled but the van was comfortable to motor in, held everything I could find
to stuff into it and was still relatively clean. Then it happened. The phantom
‘problem’ began to appear. Not very often at first but latter on with annoying
frequency.
I made contact with the dealer (still friendly if somewhat less enthusiastic to hear from me) who asked
numerous questions about the how, where and why. Everything seemed to mystify.
Eventually they asked me to bring the van over (6 hours drive) for the first of
what was to stretch out to 4 or 5 visits over the next few months.
Each visit was its own small disaster.
One time after it had been ‘fixed’, I drove off only to find that the window
wipers no longer functioned. I mean not at all, not just slow or missing the
‘intermittent’ feature, no, not a bean. (Fortunately it was raining and I needed the wipers else I might have
been a long way off before I noticed). As I hadn’t Evan left the dealers yard I simply popped it in reverse and backed back into the workshop.
The ‘mechanic’ then admitted that he had had some difficulty with various
things throughout the afternoon. At one point after changing some settings on
the van’s computer he had turned the engine off, removed the keys and the
wipers had continued wiping irregardless. Computers huh.
Another time I visited, the
nearly-mechanic had decided to disappear for the weekend (despite my having specifically arranged to meet him then) leaving the ‘plongeur’
to spend all afternoon sitting in the van fiddling with everything to see if
problem could be induced to show itself to anyone other than me. Unsurprising
to no avail. On the subject of which, the problem did seem such an odd thing
that I actually videoed it happening just to prove that it was happening.
Eventually it was decided that the
problem was really big (and consequently irritating and expensive) and that I should take the van to another dealer and
have the computer’s brain fried and re-installed (properly I think it's called a
BMC Re-flash). Arriving at the new dealers workshop (a mere 3 hours drive) the young
whipper-snapper mechanic looked at me sideways for an awkwardly long time as if
my request might in reality be a hoax. He then flipped open his laptop,
promptly announced that it had just crashed and for me to come back several
hours hence.
Duly I did so – not having a great many
options open to me, although I did get a nice wee bike round the town in. On my return, he eyed me glassily and said ‘The van’s fine’.
‘Oh’
said I.
‘Yep’
without flinching.
‘Any
suggestions on what it might be then?’ I demurred.
‘Has
the problem ever occurred with the trailer disconnected?’ he calmly accused
me.
‘Oh.
Umm. Yeah, dunno, never thought about that’, I foundered. ‘Now that you mention
it, the problem has never happened on a long trip (during which I never have
the trailer attached) and only when I’m driving round town (when I do almost always
have the trailer on)’, I limped to a finish.
‘There’s
the source of the trouble then’, smiles he, ‘and here’s your keys’.
Well, I got a bollocking from my dealer (now fresh out of joie de vivre),
but I think he was just embarrassed to not have asked better questions in the
first place.
Needless
to say, I found a fault in the trailer’s wiring and no more problemo.
Now at 16,000km, it’s still holding all
my gear, still comfortable, slurping the juice at the same climate-destroying rate, only now it
could probably do with a wash…
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