Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Power to the Vectra

A few weeks ago I became aware of a strange noise my car was making as it went round corners. Just a loud whir that you couldn't hear over the music. In very short order, the whir came a grinding drone and the drone became a constant background noise from the moment you turned the engine on.

It was swiftly diagnosed by the fine folk of Bellingers as air in the power steering mechanism. A new pipe, a refill, a couple of hundred quid on the Mastercard and that was that.

Except that it's started again, and the car's return trip to Bellingers is now booked in for tomorrow.

Power steering is all very well but I've driven estate cars before that didn't have it, and suffered no grievous harm. They still went round corners. Twentieth century society got by for decades without it. Okay, their cars knocked a whopping great hole in the ozone layer, but they could still steer. And in the good old days of horse drawn carts, if a horse made a funny grinding noise as it went round corners then that was the next season's dog meat bill taken care of.

Why exactly do we have power steering?

(And thinks: if I can get the garage to certify the likely cause of this leak was transporting four teenage males to Banbury and back for paintballing, can I bill the church?)

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