Muggles and a 'hideous lack of maintenance...'

Muggles and a 'hideous lack of maintenance...'

Author
Discussion

V8Ford

2,675 posts

165 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
LimaDelta said:
Zoobeef said:
It's a made up term used for nothing else yet has now been used or mentioned in many tv shows, papers, news and you have never heard it? Do you not leave the house?
Just pointing out the way people pretend to know absolutely nothing about something so they can go round saying it's crap and they've never seen it. It's probably been used on the front page at some point of all newspapers but you never thought then, I wonder what that means?

Or you do know, yes you may not have read the books, but saw this thread and thought, I know, I'll ask what muggles are. That'll make them all impressed that I've avoided everything for the last 17 years.
No, but I don't spend much time in the UK. Maybe that's it. Or maybe I just wanted to impress some men on the internet with my lack of knowledge of a children's book.

Are you J K Rowling? You seem to be taking this very personally?
I love Pistonheads hehe

I had no desire to read the books either so I watched one of the films instead, my girlfriend is obsessed with it but to be honest I thought it was total dross, much to her annoyance. biggrin

It's surprising what can happen between MOT tests - so does this mean the MOT needs to be stricter or more frequent?



TheEnd

15,370 posts

187 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
I forget what car it came from, but this is at a local garage-




Mr2Mike

20,143 posts

254 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
Zoobeef said:
You keep asking questions. I'm not sure how you normally end things :/
rofl

ging84 said:
it's not really that big a deal to a lot of people who just potter about in a car.
I very much doubt even the most extreme example of lack of maintenance you could come up with on a modern car, would result in a car still being as safe or more likely far safer than something like a morris minor from the 50s
That sounds very much like the sort of answer the OP's "muggles" would give. Someone who is so ignorant of the way in which a car works that they can't imagine it becoming dangerous due to failure of a component.

SuperHangOn

3,486 posts

152 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
Mr2Mike said:
Zoobeef said:
You keep asking questions. I'm not sure how you normally end things :/
rofl

ging84 said:
it's not really that big a deal to a lot of people who just potter about in a car.
I very much doubt even the most extreme example of lack of maintenance you could come up with on a modern car, would result in a car still being as safe or more likely far safer than something like a morris minor from the 50s
That sounds very much like the sort of answer the OP's "muggles" would give. Someone who is so ignorant of the way in which a car works that they can't imagine it becoming dangerous due to failure of a component.
That was an amazingly ignorant post but probably trolling a bit (I hope).

Wasn't there a coach crash which killed a few people caused by a knackered tyre a few weeks ago? Something like that is just as liable to cause a huge crash on a modern car, your're just more likely to survive the resulting carnage.

danjama

5,728 posts

141 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
A girl friend of mine destroyed an engine in her Kia Picanto - didn't check the oil or service in 3 years.

She came to visit and asked me to check her oil before she left but i was feeling lazy so left it - her engine lunched itself on the journey home. No oil.

Lesson learned i hope.

mcford

819 posts

173 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
We had a girl who booked her car in for MOT, which was urgent as it had expired the week before, however she was very confident that it would pass.

On dropping the car off it was mentioned that a warning light was coming on when the engine revs dropped, after some comprehensive questioning we ascertained that it was the oil pressure light and upon being told the consequences of running the car with low oil pressure, the reply was along the lines of 'I bought the car from you two and abit years ago and I would be extremely unhappy if you sold cars that were only capable of lasting just over a couple of years'.

We checked our records which did not show that we had carried out any service or maintenance work on the car and she had not had the car serviced as 'It only needs a MOT and it's the same as a service'. We found that the oil filter was breaking up but at least the fluids had been checked and topped up during the preceding two years, so an oil and filter change sorted the warning light and we were able to get it MOTd.

Confident that it would pass, she was not best pleased when it failed on the the front brake pads being less than 1.5mm, so she had a bill for discs and pads as the discs would not have lasted for another set of pads.

mygoldfishbowl

3,691 posts

142 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
LimaDelta said:
Zoobeef said:
It's a made up term used for nothing else yet has now been used or mentioned in many tv shows, papers, news and you have never heard it? Do you not leave the house?
Just pointing out the way people pretend to know absolutely nothing about something so they can go round saying it's crap and they've never seen it. It's probably been used on the front page at some point of all newspapers but you never thought then, I wonder what that means?

Or you do know, yes you may not have read the books, but saw this thread and thought, I know, I'll ask what muggles are. That'll make them all impressed that I've avoided everything for the last 17 years.
No, but I don't spend much time in the UK. Maybe that's it. Or maybe I just wanted to impress some men on the internet with my lack of knowledge of a children's book.

Are you J K Rowling? You seem to be taking this very personally?
I'd never heard the term either.

Cliftonite

8,406 posts

137 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
danjama said:
A girl friend of mine destroyed an engine in her Kia Picanto - didn't check the oil or service in 3 years.

She came to visit and asked me to check her oil before she left but i was feeling lazy so left it - her engine lunched itself on the journey home. No oil.

Lesson learned i hope.
I imagine she didn't feel that this was in any way your fault?

smile


sixpistons

188 posts

122 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
A friend of mine asked if I could check her car after the oil light came on. I asked how long it had been on for, she answered 'not long, only about 2 weeks'. My response was one of horror, and it took several litres of oil before it even registered on the dipstick. I continued 'when did you last get it serviced?', to which the reply was 'I've never had it serviced (in over 4 years) because it doesn't need serviced until 70000 miles', clearly confusing the cam belt change for a normal service. Some people just don't have a clue and I suspect this lack of knowledge is widespread, particularly amongst people who have only ever driven modern cars.

BigBo

212 posts

121 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
sixpistons said:
A friend of mine asked if I could check her car after the oil light came on. I asked how long it had been on for, she answered 'not long, only about 2 weeks'. My response was one of horror, and it took several litres of oil before it even registered on the dipstick. I continued 'when did you last get it serviced?', to which the reply was 'I've never had it serviced (in over 4 years) because it doesn't need serviced until 70000 miles', clearly confusing the cam belt change for a normal service. Some people just don't have a clue and I suspect this lack of knowledge is widespread, particularly amongst people who have only ever driven modern cars.
once there is no warning lights on a lot of the general public think a cars perfect

Europa1

10,923 posts

187 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
mph1977 said:
as above

also it;s better than the use of 'civvies' to refer to those not in a.n.other random set of knowledge , unless of course you are Military and are genuinely referring to civilians.
This. I remember watching some quiz show on TV a while back in which Liz Hurley referred to the general public as "civilians". I could not believe her arrogance.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all

havoc

29,917 posts

234 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
steveo3002 said:
g/f has a "friend" on that facebook always gloating about her grubby kids and what a great mummy she is , posted one day that the brake pad had fell out and everyone was saying ffs dont drive it , off she went and drove it like it

Edited by steveo3002 on Saturday 20th December 09:25
I used to work with a woman like this...except hubby was loaded and she was tooling around in a near-new Murano.

One day at work she told me the brakes were making a funny noise...I went out to check, saw almost zero pad material left through the caliper (on the outside, which suggested inside was long gone), and told her to get them changed immediately, and that if I were her I wouldn't put her (then toddler-age) son in the car. She shrugged it off and said she'd ask her hubby to get it sorted at the weekend...

Blakewater

4,303 posts

156 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
I know a girl who had a Nissan Micra, inevitably with its own name, for years and never had it serviced once. It was caved in down one side where she'd caught it on a petrol station wall and just kept driving until what could have just been a small dent became a huge gauge from the front to the back of the car. She drove it for nearly a year even though it kept cutting out as she was driving along and she had to restart it on the move.

Part of the problem is being lazy and clueless as to what maintenance cars need and thinking an MOT is a service which fixes everything that's wrong. If the car goes and stops it must be fine and they can't be bothered or don't know how to deal with issues. Everything can be left to the guy at the garage come MOT time. I was following a woman the other day who had a completely flat tyre at the front but had decided to drive to work anyway rather than change the wheel or catch the bus that morning and deal with it later.

Part of it is people thinking that a mechanic telling them work needs doing is just trying to rip them off. Sometimes it's true but often it isn't. The woman with the BMW 3 Series probably went and told all her female friends how she didn't let the nasty man at the garage push her into buying new tyres she didn't need because she's too canny and strong minded not to let someone put one over on her like that.

Pesty

42,655 posts

255 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
charltjr said:
Christ the disk on page three looks like a final record lol.

And what sort of idiot puts a pad in the wrong way around.

Anyway my other half bless her. The day before we were driving to Italy I was going to move her car into the drive to clean it.

Went to start it amongst other immediately obvious faults was a loud banging in start up. Sounded like a big end.
Turned it off wen in and asked how long it had been making that noise. What noise? She asked

Turned out the radiator brackets had snapped and the only thing holding it in the car were the pipes.

Then asked her how long the exhaust had been blowing and how long the oil light had been on.

Her ????

Took several litres just to appear on the dipstick, got exhaust fitted, there were several other things like lights not working and I needed to fit a fuse but can't remember what it was for..

aww999

2,068 posts

260 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
Went to drop the kid off at a party a year or two back. One of our other friends arrived just before us, attempted to turn right at a T-junction at modest speed and understeered straight into a parked car. Casual inspection revealed absolutely no tread on the inside half of the front tyres. Driver unconcerned about safety aspect and still completely mystified about loss of control.

daveofedinburgh

556 posts

118 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
Nowhere near as scandalous as some of the travesties seen so far, but some general observations on acquaintances/ colleagues/ ex-gfs:

-Windscreen washer fluid runs out. People carry a 1.5 litre bottle in the car and reach out to pour over windscreen rather than lift the bonnet and fill the reservoir. Even if you have zero mechanical knowledge and are embarrassed to ask someone- surely as a functioning human being you are obliged to take some kind of action? I've seen this more than once. One beautiful, smart, successful colleague of mine did this for months on end. Her reasoning: she bought a bottle of washer fluid, but after reading the instructions couldn't work out the proper ratio of washer fluid to water. Hence the bottle was stuck in the boot and the Volvic bottle became a permanent resident in the passenger footwell. I dated her for about 6 months, and filled the reservoir for her, amongst other things ;-) .

-People who buy a car no more than afew years old and literally never have it serviced over several years of ownership.

-People who literally never check oil, even when they regularly embark on journeys afew hundred miles long.

-People who will drive with a bulb (headlamp, brake, doesn't matter) out until they are stopped by Plod/ present for MOT.

-People who will happily ignore every grind, clunk, squeal, rattle, graunch, judder, whine, loss of power, clutch slip, dodgy idle or sinister mechanical noise rather than invest any effort in investigation/ repair.

-People who will drive for months/ years on end with a slow/ not-so-slow puncture, topping it up every few days rather than spending afew quid on a 14 inch budget tyre. Even when the tyre has been driven on completely flat with a mashed sidewall, Ive seen people just keep ploughing on...

I've encountered all of the above personally, every one does my f*cking head in. Every one occurs not through being tight/ mean, but through laziness or ignorance imho.

Maybe there's a gap in the market for a website/ social-media-type platform where the mechanically clueless can post pics/ vids of their faults for help from normal people? Or is that Facebook Im thinking of?

ging84

8,824 posts

145 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
SuperHangOn said:
That was an amazingly ignorant post but probably trolling a bit (I hope).

Wasn't there a coach crash which killed a few people caused by a knackered tyre a few weeks ago? Something like that is just as liable to cause a huge crash on a modern car, your're just more likely to survive the resulting carnage.
There was a fatal crash 2 years ago due to a defective tyre on the a3, is that what you are talking about?
I am not saying that no accidents are ever causes by lack of maintenance, but there is a bit of a difference between 14 odd ton coach driving at dual carriage way speeds with a 20 year old tyre, and a middle aged woman who drives less than 2 miles to work every day and the occasional trip to neto or a dogging spot rarely getting up to 30mph let alone 40.
These sorts of people, the condition of there vehicle is the least of the things you should be worried about, it's their sausage fingered hands on the wheel, or their squinty eyes looking out the window that you should be far far more worried about.

littlebasher

3,767 posts

170 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
Much like my Daughters cars

Seems it's my responsibility to make sure that there's air and tread on the tyres, water in the screenwash and oil in the engine.

Daughter 1 car is a Scenic, which had been warning her about low oil for weeks before she let me know. Took 2 litres of oil just to get the level to appear on the bottom of the dipstick. Probably not the best way to ensure the longevity of a Turbo Diesel.

The younger one is worse, by the time she told me that her brakes were making a noise, one half of the brake disc had completely disintegrated. Weeks later, she complained that the car felt a bit wobbly. Turns out she's hit the kerb and buckled the wheel. It was that bad, it was physically impossible to hold the steering wheel at speeds above 30mph. She'd been driving it for a week like that before she told me.


Pints

18,444 posts

193 months

Sunday 21st December 2014
quotequote all
What's the answer to having these rolling death traps on our roads?
Government education? Enforced minimum servicing alongside the MOT? More regular spot checks for the more obvious issues (e.g. tyres, discs and shocks)?