My Car Is Broke!
After nine and a half years of relatively trouble free motoring, my little Fiat Punto had it’s first proper breakdown today resulting in two AA men and a lowloader being called out to get us home.
Driving up to meet my sister for her 40th birthday dinner with the wife, my mum and her boyfriend and already running late and causing major stress with everyone we got about 2 miles away from our destination when things started to go wrong.
I managed to stall the car at a set of traffic lights, something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. When I went to restart the engine it clunked a bit, made a whirring sound and eventually fired up. But I didn’t need telling that the noises it made didn’t sound right!
About 200 metres later there’s a strange “flap-flap-flap” noise coming from the front of the car. Initially I thought that we’d got a flat tyre but as we slowed down the noise continued. I pulled over to take a look and popped the bonnet to find that the alternator belt, although still connected had split and a part of it was hanging off and was the reason for the flapping noise.
We weren’t far from our destination and as we were running late, I figured we had to press on but about half a mile later the belt came off. This meant that not only was the battery not going to get charged but it also cut out my power steering, making it difficult to steer at low speeds, which while in a traffic jam, was annoying!
We eventually made it to the restaurant, just about managing to parallel park the car, and half way through dinner I called the AA out. Despite telling them that it was the alternator belt that had gone and needed replacing, they didn’t send out a patrolman who had one on his van. So when he couldn’t fix it he told me that he’d have to tow me home.
Unfortunately there were 4 of us who would be travelling and he only had room in his van or one passenger. So he got onto his system, booked a lowloader to come and get us, and left.
A couple of hours later the second patrolman and his lowloader turns up and the Punto is loaded onto the back of it for the journey home. I had to upgrade my membership so that he’ll tow me home, although I thought I had this already on my membership. The four of us jump up into the cab and the driver takes us home, although he has to go the long way around the M25 as he wouldn’t be able to get the truck through London.
Usually you get towed to a local garage so that the car can be fixed, but as today was a Sunday nowhere was open and so I had to get the car taken back home and will have to arrange for them to come out again in a day or two when I have managed to get the car booked into the local garage. Which means having to take more time out of the office to get it fixed.
