Weblog Quotes

Soooo..

I crashed my car on Tuesday evening.

Nothing serious, just a little bit of paint transfer on the rear wing of the other vehicle; a busted indicator cover for me; a sizeable dent in my front bumper where I likely impacted against the rear wheel; and a bit of dog slaver over my shoes.

I somehow never managed to see the other vehicle as it travelled around the roundabout, so when I pulled out to turn right; he was directly in front of me. As I was moving slowly myself, there wasn’t a bad impact; and no injuries. My car is just built to crumple; and seems to do it really easy.

The other driver was using a courtesy car, due to his own already being in the garage for being in a previous accident; which seems a little suspicious.

Contacted my insurance company, and they are going to sort everything out; and I have no excess to pay since I’m not putting in a claim for repairs, which is nice. I just need to wait for letters, and other pieces, to confirm what is happening.

I also found out the other week that my brother managed to total his car on the way to work, in which the driver in front braked hard; and he hit her whilst swerving. I’m the more fortunate I guess.

For, I think, the past two months; I have been driving around with another dead head-light bulb. Not web-log worthy, but I’m here to semi-rant at the annoying clips used to lock and hold the bulbs into place.

Firstly, a new bulb cost me £4. I need an e-bay account.

Having opened the hood of my car, I set to work un-screwing the cap and removing the rubber seal around the bulb and the socket it was connected to. Easy. The first bulb I replaced had blew, but this one simply rattled.

I can only guess the rattle was due to the forcefulness of my step-dad fitting it. One of the pins had snapped, which I had to pull out of the socket with pliers. With everything out; un-screwed; hanging; e.t.c. I re-positioned the rubber seal, which had been put back wrong the previous time.

After plugging in the new bulb, the issues with the clip began. The theory behind it is to let it hang loose; place the bulb into the light case; push the clip into the case, tightening around the bulb; and locking the clip into holes either side. The theory is nice. The practical is not. After a lot of time and swearing and moaning and prodding and pulling and finger pain, I took everything apart to try and figure it out. This is the moment I under-stood the theory.

Round two. I managed to half lock the left side of the clip into the hole. However, the right side wasn’t playing fairly. The bulb still jiggled about, and I managed to remove it. Not good. Sighing heavily for a moment, I tried again. After many more moments, and pulling and prodding and finger pain, I had finally managed to position the clip relevant to the bulb. With one big push, I locked the left side of the clip into position. Success!

Partially. I still had the right side to lock. Pushing against the clip yielded little results. So after several attempts I have left it as is. The left side locked, the right side un-locked.

Damage it your-self job complete, I topped up my washer fluid. Two litres. The reservoir took two litres of fluid. I know I wash the wind-screen on occasion, but that is ridiculous.

As some of you may know, I have been scouring the on-line world for better car insurance quotes now that my policy is drawing to a close.

During this time, I used the three main comparison websites to narrow down my search. Now, for many people, these websites can be useful; as there renewal price is a couple of hundred pounds, or even less.

But for those of us (un-?)fortunate to be freshies, quotes are hitting above £700 or even over £1000. Some people are smart when it comes to saving a bit of money; but some people aren’t.

Whether you know or not, what you need to realise about these comparison sites, is they use something of a ‘best guess system‘ for some of the details in the forms they are retrieving quotes from. Take, for example, the number of years a named driver has held a licence. On the comparison site, you have a limit of 12+; but on a companies site that limit may be higher. Whether or not that higher limit saves a few pounds is open to experiment; but there are other instances where not every field is set to the correct value.

For those people who click the buy button and input their card details, take a look through the companies form for your next re-newel, either by amending the quote; or go directly to the site and start fresh.

Performing this my-self, the quote I received from the comparison sites was over £994. Using the companies site directly, the quote was under £799. Amending the quote from the comparison gave me a quote under £793, saving £4..ish ¹.

So as you can see, I saved £200 just checking details. And this includes an incident; zero no-claims; licence for less than a year; on comprehensive cover, with a named driver and £150 voluntary excess.

It’s a shame I only have less than £5 in my account.

So now you know, if you didn’t already. Amend your quotes!

If you have anything to add to this entry, leave a comment below.

¹ Maybe this is because I went back to the quote after a few days. It would need experimentation.

Having received the renewal notice from my current insurance provider, I have been looking around for cheaper deals; pretty much the same as everyone does.

My current renewal price is, I think, £827.68. I can’t be bothered to re-dig out the letter and check.

I have used the typical moneh-fulled-super-meerkats sites and Admiral comes back with the cheapest and most reasonable quote, of £798.something-or-other-pence. That quote was after checking the Admiral site directly. I think I shall phone them some time and see if I can actually get cheaper.

My main worry is, I don’t actually have enough money to cover the insurance. Eeek. That means I’m having to find money from places; or plan a bank robbery. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be able to find the money.

I shall comment about the phoning; and status of Operation Bank Robbery soon, if I remember.

Having failed my MOT two weeks ago I finally had my car fixed yesterday; needing to repair a ball joint and the rear parking brake.

First I took her to my uncles for him to have a look, and after some time prodding; un-bolting; wheel turning; brake pressing; and looking confused, it was decided he couldn’t do anything with the ball joint, and was un-sure about the rear brake.

A few days past, and I went to see a friend of the person who I bought the car from (I know the previous owners wife, since my mam and her used to work together). This guy couldn’t get the ball joint off either, but managed to solve the parking brake issue for me; free of charge too.

Knowing my free re-test was close to running out, I had the car booked into a garage to be looked at by my step-dads mate (It’s great when you know people). Not being able to get the ball joint free, the mechanic had to burn the bolts off. During this, he caught his finger and it swelled up.

Needless to say, he replaced the ball joint for me, and at a nice price too.

These past few weeks driving has felt different every time, and it now requires more effort to put the hand-brake on.

The clutch has changed as well, and that was before all of these repairs where started. .. Cars, I should have studied mechanics at college instead of electrical engineering.

Monday early afternoon is the day of my re-test. I have no idea if I’ll be charged the full price; but the way I see it, Monday is the fourteenth day; which entitles me to a free re-test. Guess I’ll just have to see what they say.

I got around to fitting my alloys last weekend, and I must say the car looks a lot better with them on.

A picture:

Alloy Wheel

.. this is with them off, and taken in the basement in bad light.

The car needs to be lowered a bit now, as it looks too high. There are a few other small bits I would like to do aswell, mainly some of the following:

• colour coding;
• bulb replacement;
• clear side repeaters;
• new radio antenna;
• remove the ambition “badges” from the sides? ..unique left on?;
• full exhaust system;
• pedal covers;
• electric rear windows (currently handles, only front are electric);
• painted brake calipers;
• clean engine bay;
• sill guards;
• re-wire alarm to lights and horn, and lower sensitivity slightly;
• clean underneath, from any prospective rust etc etc;
• swap the wipers;
• bodge rear wiper motor to sit horizontal, not vertical, at end of cycle (or replace, or remove);
• change interior bulb colours;
• gear knob and handbrake cover;
• window tinting;
• de-locking;
• .. and more! (Performance upgrades and such, eventually).

I have ambition (get it?) but no idea where to start and what to do. I may not even start this year due to work and college commitments! Just imagine if I had a girlfriend, there would be no time for a cup of tea.

If anyone’s out there that does know how to ‘mod’ a car, or has an Almera themselves, shout in the comments and I’ll bug you for days about it.

Well, had my new car for three nights, which is all good in its own right, but . . .

. . . Thursday night, some idiots decided to smash the window!

Yea, you read it right. They smashed the driver side window!!!

No idea as to why, nothing was missing (nothing was actually in the car though). I guess they thought they could have it due to the key locks on the outside, but there are no buttons inside to unlock the doors as it has central locking.

Only way to get in is climb through the window or jimmy the door.

Cost me £40 for a replacement, although Autoglass wanted £240. Shocking. Scrapyards are now swexi!

Yay!

I’ve bought myself a Nissan Almera Ambition 1.4

Finally, I have my own set of wheels. Only four weeks after passing my test, so it’s not a bad time frame.

The car, red in colour, came from my mams friends husband, who’s a mechanic, so that’s great stuff and the asking price was only £800.

Considering the condition of the vehicle, pretty damn good; the new brake calipers; the new exhaust; the general look of the car; the smooth running; the central locking and alarm; the cd player; and a set of (four, five’s a proper set though) alloys thrown in after a little inquiry it was a bargain.

It’s a nice car to run me about places I need to be. I doubt I’ll be doing any work to it, or adding anything on as I haven’t got a clue what to do, so for now it’s looking good.

I’ll have to decide when to put the alloys on. I was going to let it sit for a while without them and see what attention it gets, as alloys may attract un-wanted idiots.

I shall see about getting some photo’s up some time, most likely won’t be for a while as I only have my phone camera. I also don’t want to look an idiot taking pictures.

Trying to set up the insurance on Monday was extremely stressful, and I was on the verge of not buying the car due to the trim (Ambition) bumping the premium up another £200. A standard model would have only set me back £745, I payed £942 for .. well, I don’t know really. Most likely it’s a boy-racer car. Tits!

All taxed and tested until March/April next year, irrespectively (swap the months for t&t).

I’ll need to get a petrol points card now, save up to get money off shopping.

Was planing on taking her out tonight, but I’m tired.

She needs a name too. I need my furry die!!!