Zen and Fun With Mechanical Engineering
I would like you to use your imagination about now if that is all right?
Imagine this scene, it is bright and early one Saturday morning (well early for me means before midday). The early November sun is sending shafts of golden light twixt the spaces left by departing leaves of golden brown as they flutter to the ground in a farewell to the summer. So far so good.
Slumbering peacefully, in the morning sun, is a huge incongruous smoke belching behemoth. It is not a welcome visitor to these parts. In it's short life it has consumed vast quantities of it's incumbents wealth and sanity. It has demanded sacrifice, toil and feeding. Lots of feeding. However for the last 3 days it has had metaphorical toothache. A subtraction from it's whole that has been felt as keenly by it's protectors as if a knife had been placed carelessly into the sternum. For the beast does not care one way or another but it's effects on those around it are such that it will mean one whole heap of trouble to get right.
Lo! the beast stirs; see it's gaping jaws!
No! Not the cat! The monster next to it!
Noooo! Feeding Time!
Don't panic the cat lived to tell the tale. Just.
Enter a gallant Knight bent only on goodly deeds and damsels in distress (that would be me). It was time for a new headlight bulb.
I may have mentioned this before but there is precious little room inside the bonnet/hood of this irksome beast. I am determined to find the office in Paris, or where ever the hell Renault call home, where they keep the trophy for the engineer that can fit the most shit inside a hood. When I find it I am going to take a 5lb mallet to it and everything else inside that office save for the occupants (who must learn the error of their ways or they will continue to repeat their folly)
I noticed the bulb had blown on Wednesday night. I bought a bulb immediately of course but being conversant with the interior space of the hood as I am I decided to risk leaving it until I had daylight and could see what I was doing. The only difference in the end was that I did it basked in the morning sun, such is the difficulty level involved it has to be done by touch and expletives. There is no room for anything other than a small hand and I have big ones. As it was the passenger side of the car I had to do it all left handed too.
In the latest HALO 4, just as a heads up the final killer level, is to replace a headlight bulb on a 1995 Renault Laguna whilst the evil invaders eat your children and run off laughing maniacally into the distance.
Why did I buy the damn thing you ask? Renault shift a lot of cars in the UK. Which just goes to show that animal lovers we may be but we know or care less for our automotive transport. I told myself that they could not surely be as bad as I feared because so many people own them. I had not reckoned on the fact that my countrymen are all idiots behind the wheel.
Which brings me to the Zen part of this tragedy, The questions are as important as the answers! I took my newly acquired but misfiring car to our local Renault dealer (subsequently burnt to the ground in actual fact - an event I had no hand in I might add) and said that I thought there was a problem with the turbo on my diesel turbo engine. After £120 and a whole day later they in formed me that yes indeed my turbo was cutting out. I realised my error at that point what I should have asked is "WHAT is wrong with my turbo?"
Fecking mouse had crept into the engine bay nibbled some hose that prevented the turbo adding pressure. that was discovered at the second visit as they prepared to expensively strip the turbo to it's component pieces.
For the record this was the fastest light bulb change ever performed in under 40 minutes and only just in time before the swear words got really Anglo Saxon.
I share Basil Fawlty's sentiments on reliability: beware bad language
Noooo! Feeding Time!
Don't panic the cat lived to tell the tale. Just.
Enter a gallant Knight bent only on goodly deeds and damsels in distress (that would be me). It was time for a new headlight bulb.
I may have mentioned this before but there is precious little room inside the bonnet/hood of this irksome beast. I am determined to find the office in Paris, or where ever the hell Renault call home, where they keep the trophy for the engineer that can fit the most shit inside a hood. When I find it I am going to take a 5lb mallet to it and everything else inside that office save for the occupants (who must learn the error of their ways or they will continue to repeat their folly)
I noticed the bulb had blown on Wednesday night. I bought a bulb immediately of course but being conversant with the interior space of the hood as I am I decided to risk leaving it until I had daylight and could see what I was doing. The only difference in the end was that I did it basked in the morning sun, such is the difficulty level involved it has to be done by touch and expletives. There is no room for anything other than a small hand and I have big ones. As it was the passenger side of the car I had to do it all left handed too.
In the latest HALO 4, just as a heads up the final killer level, is to replace a headlight bulb on a 1995 Renault Laguna whilst the evil invaders eat your children and run off laughing maniacally into the distance.
Why did I buy the damn thing you ask? Renault shift a lot of cars in the UK. Which just goes to show that animal lovers we may be but we know or care less for our automotive transport. I told myself that they could not surely be as bad as I feared because so many people own them. I had not reckoned on the fact that my countrymen are all idiots behind the wheel.
Which brings me to the Zen part of this tragedy, The questions are as important as the answers! I took my newly acquired but misfiring car to our local Renault dealer (subsequently burnt to the ground in actual fact - an event I had no hand in I might add) and said that I thought there was a problem with the turbo on my diesel turbo engine. After £120 and a whole day later they in formed me that yes indeed my turbo was cutting out. I realised my error at that point what I should have asked is "WHAT is wrong with my turbo?"
Fecking mouse had crept into the engine bay nibbled some hose that prevented the turbo adding pressure. that was discovered at the second visit as they prepared to expensively strip the turbo to it's component pieces.
For the record this was the fastest light bulb change ever performed in under 40 minutes and only just in time before the swear words got really Anglo Saxon.
I share Basil Fawlty's sentiments on reliability: beware bad language
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