I successfully drove to Oxford from Luton airport on Friday night (I say successful, because anytime the combination of my driving skills + my state of the art [ ] BMW results in me getting from A to B without something going wrong or someone getting hurt - I consider this a major success).
Yes there has been some more things going wrong with it. Just to tilt me up pre sundays, I'll give you a very quick log of events so far since I drove over a small curb at 25 mph...
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So F1 fixed the impact damage, but since that took so long, and I had left my sat nav plugged in over all this time, the car battery totally drained meaning all the electronics needed to be reset - a simple task on most cars, but with BMWs it fucks everything up, you need to go to a specialist to sort all that out. I took it to a place called "series 9" in Nottingham, who describe themselves as "East Midlands Leading Independent German Auto Specialist". They needed to get a part from BMW (CAS? - we went direct through BMW, got it for best price - about £260 I think) then series 9 fixed it all and charged me £180 labour costs (seems fair enough).
Only irk being, they didn't fix it all. The windows don't work anymore. The guy was like "yeh I can't get hold of the guy who fixes this particularly electronic problem". I needed the car urgently to get to Birmingham last weekend, so I just told him I'll take it for now and he can fix the window problem later.
So I drive to Birmingham reasonably happy to have the car back. Then a nasty red warning light comes on half way down the motorway. Uh oh. It's the punctured tyre warning light. It'll have to wait. After bham, go to see F1 about it (thinking it may be related to the initial problem and they know history etc) they show me the tyre is GG (back right, same area that hit the curb). They don't have a replacement in stock, I ring round a few places to get a good quote. A different F1 branch 20 minutes away actually does have one for £275. Guess I have to flick it in.
Then I drive to Luton airport the very next morning. Down the M1 I feel I've driven over something. Nothing big, just a standard motorway mini pothole. I fear the worst, despite it not sounding anything serious. 25 minutes later the same warning light comes on. FML!
I obviously can't do anything about it at 5am before my flight. So on returning from Luton I check it out. All the tyre pressures are fine (35-36) and I can't see any problem. Now I'm thinking that it's something wrong with the actual electronics of the warning light system (since all the electronics got fked up) and the tyre is OK. But then maybe it's because the tyres are runflats, so theyre designed to work fine for a while. Though I've probably driven 300 miles since then (Luton- Oxford - London - Nottingham yesterday) up to 80 mph (perhaps not wise). And the tyres still look fine. Will get it looked tomorrow though.
Oh to add to this, yesterday whilst parked somebody reversed into the back of me and scratched loads of paintwork off. They left they're details though so that was nice of them. Still, another thing to fix.
Cost so far: £2284 + 260 + 180 + 275 = £2999
With more to come I'm sure.
Insurance, MOT and Road Tax coming up in next few weeks too, joy! Insurance has gone down from £1800 to £1200 after a year of no claims which I was vhappy with.
To add to these problems, I made a terrible decision to go to the Vic after the car experience day (more on that later), I was tossing up between just going home and getting an early night, perhaps stopping off at DTD, and going to the Vic to play cash. I drove around the roundabout twice at the point of no return whilst I decided lol. Decided to man-up and do London.
Again, had the life and soul sucked out of me by the Vic, made a couple of poor decisions on the 2/5 (perhaps, not sure yet), and left at midnight £1500 poorer, and a lot more miserable. Morale went from about 95% to 10% in 24 hours, a good example of the sick emotional swings involved in this life.
Morale doubled by a night of sleep in my own bed, and now I'm raring to go for a good long sunday grind
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