Saturday, September 13, 2008

"engine malfunction"

~

I've had my lovely new car now for 3 months. It's done just over 14,000km's and last Friday as I was leaving the office my dashboard suddenly lit up with those very scary words...

!ENGINE MALFUNCTION!

I sat in my car and rang the service department to find out what to do. They were closing, but the car manual was telling me that I needed to stop immediately.

The wise man at the other end of the phone told me that if the car didn't cut the engine, then it wasn't too serious. Hmmmmm.

I stoped at the garage and topped up the brake fluid, which was showing it was low for some strange reason. No light had ever come up for that. More strange, after doing that, the engine malfunction light turned off. Yipeeeee!

The weekend was going to be filled with fun tasks. I was wanting to really get into the outside room - plasting, gap filling, painting. It was going to be all go.... but as I was driving into town

!Engine Malfuntion!

appeared once more.

Good thing I didn't need to go anywhere, and could just get busy around the house.

The car went straight into the garage where they plugged in the computer and were completely overwhelmed with faults.

Cue me driving off in something else.... which is fine for the day. I get a call in the afternoon asking me to come and pick up my car. When I get there I'm handed the keys and told in the most reassuring way:
"We don't think we've fixed it, but you need to keep driving it to see what happens next. The part we think we need to replace is over $3,000 and Ford needs us to make sure that's the right part."

grrrrrrrr.

It was ok for 2 days, but on Thursday I had meetings in Rotorua and Tauranga, which meant some driving around the country side - probably about 450km. The whole day the car felt like a tractor. At one stage I thought I needed a wheel alignment, and then it would have moments where it would only get to 40k's, and if I was lucky enough to get over that it would only go to 80. More "ENGINE MALFUNCTION!"

FUN TIMES!!!

I was on the phone with the guys back in Hamilton and they wanted to know if I could get there immediately. No chance... I was miles away.... hmmmmm.... so I had to take it to another garage over in Tauranga to make sure it was ok for me to drive. Great! The guys there didn't seem to have a clue.
I got home in my car after 7 that night, and once again the car went straight to the garage in the morning.

And there it will sit until it is ALL FIXED.

I got very grumpy with them. Who would want to spend that kind of money and land a car that spends so much time having people looking at it, which is fine - but they can't figure out what the problem is!

I was supposed to be down in New Plymouth this weekend to watch a friend play in a big final football match today, and was going to catch up with Darling Danica and Neil who I haven't seen in a while.

Thankfully, I took next Friday off for a snow trip I had been organising with the radion station - a concert and night down at the mountains... but the band we'd organised had alot of their gear stollen - so that's been cancelled. Most gutted, but means I can have a lazy trip down to New Plymouth on Friday. Kieran has already decided it will be a lazy Saturday around the bbq, and then we'll cause some chaos playing cranium all night.

Everytime I'm down there all we seem to do is laugh... and about now.... nothing sounds better!

The garage knows.... they have till Thursday to fix the car, or get me a new one.
Demanding, huh!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

TC


I've been working on the farm website..... albeit an incredibly slow process. Poor mum keeps asking me if I'm done yet - and I have to humbly admit that no, I haven't had time.

It's frustrating.

In case you want to check it out - Tui Morgans

Thought I would just post this photo of our beautiful boy, Theme Song..... who's paddock name is TC. I had to stop and question why we called him TC - shouldn't it logically be TS?
Turns out it stands for Theme Song Cameron. hehehehe.

Since when did we give our horses our last name? Most of them have the farm prefix Tui in front of their names - not TC, he's been given our last name. Had to laugh about that one.

He's now standing at a stud in Australia, and being shown over there. While Mum and Dad were over there they had to check in on all the horses there. Unfortunately while they were staying with the people who have TC he got colic, and had to be 'rushed' off to the vet clinic, a mere 4 hour drive. He had an operation, and has finally made it back to the farm now. Recovery has been kind of slow, but he's doing much better now.

The joys of horses.... meanwhile, back on the ranch Jessie is home from his weeks away being beautified for the Stallion Parade. I'll have to upload some photos of him next, and Misha.

Show season is nearly here - so the madness begins!