(In the picture, I love the expression on the fishes face)
Anyway, This morning Mr Fink and I (no Little Fink, she is at Cub camp and we are missing her terribly!) went to a beautiful local village to have a look at a sideboard we are thinking of buying. As we came back through country lanes and emerged from a passing place, a terrible screeching/scraping noise issued from the front nearside wheel. It sounded like fingernails being dragged down a black-board. Mr Fink reversed a little to dislodge whatever it was, to no avail. We looked at taking the wheel off to check if we could sort the problem. When Mr Fink looked at buying the car, he insisted it must have alloy wheels. Now we faced the problem that the wheel nuts on the car appeared to need a speacial star shaped screwdriver to get them off. We searched the car and found the spare wheel, a spanner, a screwdriver (Posidrive, not star shaped) a bent wire thing and a star shaped socket. I know what you're thinking - the socket was the wrong size!
Mr Fink phoned the VW roadside assistance and within the hour, a lovely chap arrived. We surmised that as breakdowns go, ours was one of the more agreeable ones - we had picked a beautiful village and the first crisp clean spring like day - blue skies and birdsong (apart from the raucous 'car alarm sparrow' which was a real bird but, it had such a repetative call, it sounded terrible).
The wonderful Vdub man showed us how to use the wire thing, the screwdriver and the socket to get the wheel off. He checked the disk and caliper and eventually found the brake pad sensor (tells you when your brake pads need replacing) had broken off and become wedged in the disk and was rubbing when the wheel was turning, luckily it had not damaged the brakes or disk.
The man taped it up with some insulating tape, put the whole lot back together, Mr Fink test drove the car and all was hunky dory. We said goodbye and headed home. The car goes in to VW on Monday to have the sensor replaced - no doubt they will wash it AGAIN. I swear Mr Fink arranges for these thing to happen so that he gets a free car wash?
My thoughts are....we know we can make these sensors and gadgets, do we ever question if these things are really needed? If there had been no brake pad sensor, there would not have been anything to snap and get lodged in the wheel. How was the problem fixed? With a high tech solution? No. A piece of black sticky tape. The wonders of modern technology? I wonder.
