Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Ford Cortina's were never this much trouble


We were planning on driving back to the UK on Tuesday morning for Lynette's Mum's funeral next week. Having spent the last couple of days loading the car with everything from the parrot to the kitchen sink all was ready for the off the following morning.
Unfortunately, come the departing hour, I turned the ignition key in the car and there was no response, the car was totally dead.
Thinking that it would just be a quick jump from another car, I quickly phoned a friend who came around within 5 minutes. We soon coupled up, the car turned over but would not fire, so garage assistance was needed.
What happened next would take me hours to tell, but the upshot of it was, I had to get the car on a tow truck and into the local BMW garage 30 miles away. However, as the car had gone into total shutdown, the electronic ignition key had lost its settings, probably as a security measure, because it wouldn't tell the car to fire up.

The tow truck arrived 4 hours later but we couldn't load the car because, in total shutdown, the car was locked in Park and no matter what you do you cannot unlock it unless you are a BMW dealer with the special laptop. Despite any number of phone calls to BMW emergency services in both Portugal and the UK, no offer of roadside assistance was forthcoming. In fact, part of the total shutdown on this particular BMW involves a gearbox lock that only a particular part of your ignition key (mine is in 2 parts) the 2nd part is the part that unlocks the gearbox, except mine didn't.
So the BMW technician suggested I get a locksmith out and get him to drill the lock out as he didn't not know what else to do as the Portuguese BMW's don't have this particular "feature".
To cut an even longer story short, it is now 7:30 in the evening (having been at it since 9am earlier in the day) and after further expensive phone calls to the UK and got nowhere, I telephoned a Portuguese friend who also has a friend who works for a different BMW dealership in the Algarve, who promised to help the following morning.
The following morning, I received a telephone call from the idiot technician who had previously told me to drill out the lock and said that he had been instructed to assist in my problem.
Within 50 minutes the said technician had driven to my house some from his depot and a further 30 minutes later my car was started and purring away like a good 'un.
How come this same technician has suddenly become helpful and sorted the problem quickly and efficiently when yesterday because I was a Brit he had no idea or didn't want to know how to help out. It took a Portuguese person to tell this particular Portuguese waserk to stop being a total idiot and sort the problem, which he knew how to do all along.
So, we missed our ferry from St.Malo in France and have rescheduled it for a couple of month’s time.
We have arranged a house and parrot sitter while we are away and have decided to fly to the UK on Sunday so that we can say goodbye to Mum on Tuesday.
Ford Cortina’s were never this much trouble and when things went wrong, I repaired and sorted it myself, apparently that’s called progress (my arse).

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