Lost gears
John Greystrong • 4 October 2020
Breakdown on test drive

Test driving a customer's car after a full service, all of a sudden I was stuck in 1st gear, never a good sign. Managed to limp it back to the customer's house to find the clip holding one of the gear cables had come off. I was imagining a slow walk back along my route to see if I could find the missing clip when I spotted it lurking on the gearbox.

Customer parked the car in his under apartment parking area on Friday evening and everything was fine, came to start it Sunday morning and was greeted with lots of vibration and the engine management light. Rats had decided to make a meal of his injector wiring loom. A new loom would have been the best repair but was both very expensive and very unavailable as Vauxhall are currently shut. I had to solder in lengths of loom as the creatures had taken some of it away and had also managed to chew down right to one connector which made things awkward. I covered my repair with conduit although there is still plenty of other vulnerable areas if they come back.