"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!