9am Wonder off to Tescos to get supplies for the relatives who've invited themselves tonight.
9.10am On the way there, starting noticing that the clutch pedal travel's getting less and less.
9.12am The clutch obviously isn't disengaging fully as it's really hard to pull it out of gear and even harder to push it back in.
9.15am The truck in front desides to stop to turn right. I'm fubar'd at this point as I've lost all momentum and had to resort to dumping the car up the grass verge on the left. At least I got it off the road, was quite pleased with that. So, I'm left with a car with clutch pedal firmly welded to the floor and the clutch fully engaged. It does a little bunny hop and stall when I tried to start it just to prove this.
9.20am Discover I've forgotten my mobile. Start walking to work (about 3 miles away).
9.25am Find a phone box. Phone local dealer (I know their number off by heart). They refuse to come out, asking me do I not have breakdown cover?!!?
10am Get to work. Phone VW Assistance. VW Assistance refuse to come because I'm not with the car (even though I could get back to it before their patrol) and - this shocked me - because I can't give them a mobile number. They also refused to send the patrol to my work so I could lead them to the car. Unbelievable.
10.10am Start walking home (another 1.5miles).
10.20ish Get home, get mobile. Start walking back to car (did I mention it's freezing today??)
11.00am Get back to car. Phone VW Assistance again. Promised they'll be there by 12.15.
11.30am A text arrives on the mobile (all this just so they could send me a text??) confirming 12.15.
12.25am Patrol turns up.
Now this is where it gets interesting for other people.
The patrol is sure he knows what's wrong. It says that these Polos have a plastic cover to the top of the pedal box (above and behind the lower dash shelf), this has slots cut in it through which the pedal arms travel and they can get trapped here. He says he's seen this a few times. However, my car's missing this bit of plastic.
So the guy thinks the piston behind the pedal must have buckled and frozen. So he lubes it and fair enough, the pedal comes back up, but you can still feel a "notch" in the travel.
So he offers to follow me to my local dealer - I actually thought this was a good suggestion.
Around 1pm we both get to the dealer. And start queing. Dealer's service receptionist not happy as she was supposed to go home at 12.30 and will "never get home at this rate". Eh? Customer service and all that.
So I get the patrol guy to explain what he's done and explain that I've lost confidence in the car and am dumping it there. I ask the people that I've been dealing with to get in touch (some of you will know what this is about and I'll go public in due course
). I ask for a courtesy car. The dealler gets really upset at this sensible request (I'm without car now). Goes through the motions of phoning their hire company and states "no more cars left". That's it I have to either take my car back (with the temporary (lubing) fix from the patrol) or take nothing.
I took nothing, leaving my car there. Patrol guy at least gave me a lift to work - and I got there around 2pm -- five hours in total!!!
To say I'm fuming is putting it mildly. Come Monday, the dealer will be getting an earful.
Deek.
