Pretty much as soon as I bought the car I took it to Kwikfit. They offer all kinds of free assessments and they did so. They were surprised there were no 'advisories' on the MOT (there weren't, they show up on the certificate) but they said -
- Rear tyres coming to the end of their life
- Rear shock absorbers 'weeping' (sounds so sad)...who knows when they will need replacing?
I guess I may be able to use this as a negotiating point?
So I drove the car a bit. Took my two young sons camping (fun, since you ask) which was a squeeze even for the three of us with a tent, food and necessary equipment.
But I encountered a problem. The car which has no name won't rev over 3000rpm.
For non technical people like me, this feels terminal.
It's a relatively big engine (57bhp I'm told) for a body the size of a dishwasher. So, naturally, you expect it to be a bit nippy. When you put the pedal to the cord carpet though, it whizzes up to 3000 revs (obviously by this time I've changed up from 1st to 2nd) and then does an impression of a souffle when the door is opened.
It doesn't feel like 57 horses (broken or not) but more like an asthmatic pit pony giving up on life.
The result is that, at about 40mph, you get the feeling the chain has fallen off your bike. As you can imagine this can be disconcerting when much larger (ie all) vehicles are around you and charging up your hatchback.
To be fair I called the garage and they were very willing to "have a look".
Beforehand though I sought online help from the Fiat Owners Forum (yes there is one) and from www.justanswer.com which I found by searching with a very literal description of what was wrong with my Fiat.
This enabled me to ask intelligent questions like - "Could you hook it up to your diagnostics machine?" - of the mechanic (who I will call Moira, just because I can).
Moira said, yes, no problem. So I left the car with them for the weekend.
Now, what do you think will happen...
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