We took the car in for its pink slip last week at some point, and we failed the pink slip for the fact the rear left window doesn’t go down (its electric).
What I found amazing then is that the car was just given a pink slip by another mechanic back in August 2007, when it was given a check over at another mechanic, and passed happily.
Which leads me to point in this post, what faith can there be in road safety, if the RTA can’t even get its inspection stations on the same page, and aware of what is, and isn’t allowed.
K-Mart Tyre and Auto could be just too picky, or on the other hand, the other mob, might have just done a rush job and decided it all seemed fine (and might not even challenge them on the window).
The point I’m making here is clearly, there is some clear unknown area as to whether the windows should be going up and down for the purposes of obtaining a pink slip or not.
I don’t really care, I had planned to fix that window soon anyway, it was rather annoying not letting the little one be able to say hello and bye to others when he is sitting in the car (and it can provide a source of air too).
Anyway, it turns out that not even the auto electrician believed it needed to be fixed, but someone else present believed it was needed, something perhaps the RTA themselves should make sure everyone is clear on.
Because, if it doesn’t matter, then K-Mart owe me a pink slip, on the other hand, if it does, then the mechanic who checked the car a few months back needs to be told so, because we bought the car knowing the window wasn’t working, but, it was road worthy.
Clearly, that isn’t the case!
Anyway, we got him to do a few other things while he had the car for a good section of today (he really is a great auto electrician, he did the immobiliser for us, and is well known to someone else we know).
The car stereo we installed months ago, the speakers in the back on the right didn’t want to work, it turns out that the wiring supplied to that is earthed or something, and so I need to go take the time and wire them up to the head deck directly – bugger, so I have to get fiddly feeding wire – or pay him to. Hmm.. I think I might.
We now have a rear brake light (you know the one above the seat), and the spoiler lights, which are LED based are stuffed, so we can either replace that, or go without, not critical.
And the other issue was a front headlight, now we can see pedestrians, woo hoo (for them).
It’s still going to be a little high cost to get the window fixed though, we have to go buy the internal electrics, because the car didn’t come with them left in place (the previous owner removed them).
So, it’s a trip to the auto wreckers to pick up some electric window components, then book the car back in with the trusty auto electrician, and get that window enjoying it’s up and down activity.
Another issue that popped up in the SEVERE (no exaggeration) rain we had today is one of visibility, one of which I don’t like driving blind, it’s like playing marco / polo, except with cars, and on a busy road. And, naturally, you don’t want to get caught (ie. in an accident).
What happened was the windows in the front seem to have some artificial rubbish tint or something on them, I got out some newspaper to clean a lot of the fog off the inside of the car, and noticed that the window was actually removing some substance from it, on closer examination, it appeared to be a glue like substance, and it was all ‘showerscreen’ like (snowy), and we couldn’t see through it, so, the fix to that was to scrub it right off with newspaper, and viola, I can see the car in the right hand lane without trying to touch it first.
We had buckets of rain, it was flooding in areas.. No kidding, Wyong Road, drivers in the right hand lane travelling at around 60KM an hour were able to spray our car in the left hand lane of the opposite direction (this road has two lanes in each direction), there was enough water on the road itself to splash us.
Off to the wreckers tomorrow, then to someones house to stop a porn dialler (she didn’t like describing it :D), and then to book the car in to get the electric window fitted.
Then, to go ponder (assuming it is dry) how I’m going to feed the cables to the MP3 player!
Enjoy!