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Saturday 20 July 2013

Abingdon adventure

Yesterday, I went to Abingdon. I did one circuit of "Snow white and the seven dwarves", which was rather good, and then I relocated the car to do a series of several which got me the numbers to unlock the lock on the bonus cache, and then relocated again to do the RRR series. I got 39 caches, and a few DNFs on the RRR series.

Then I went back to the car in the car park, and it wouldn't start. Nothing. The ignition lights came on, but the starter didn't turn.

I tried recharging the battery from my portable starter battery, but the problem wasn't a flat battery, so that did nothing. I tried disconnecting the battery, waiting a few minutes and then reconnecting (which has the effect of rebooting the car's computer), and that didn't work. So at about 7pm, I called the AA.

They said they'd be with me at 8:15, so I told ladysolly about the situation, and waited. At about 8pm, I got a call from the breakdown vehicle, and I told them where I was (I'd already given my latitude and longitude to the controller). And at 8:15, the breakdown vehicle turned up. The problem he'd had, was that his satnav wasn't working, and he'd had to ask directions at the police station. Oh, and his big flashing orange lights weren't working either.

He had a look at the car, and he thought that the problem was the immobiliser. That's a thing that is supposed to immobilise the car, if it thinks the circumstances justify it. Such as, the car is being stolen. Or the owner wants to go home, having left the car for a couple of hours. And, he said, the whole point of an immobiliser is that you can't over-ride it. So the car needs to go to a Landrover Dealer to be dealt with.

But them we had another problem. He'd come with a big car transporter, and that wasn't going to be able to get into the car park, there was a two meter height bar. So how to transport the car? We tried calling the number given by the car park notice, but, as expected, no-one was there. So I suggested, if we had another car and a tow rope, we could tow my car to outside the car park, and then put it on the transporter. But we didn't have another car, and when he called his base, they seemed to think that getting someone to come out with their Discovery, wasn't going to be easy. But they'd look into it.

While they were doing that, I pointed out that the car park was very flat and level, and we could push the car to the entrance, at which point we'd be able to load it onto the transporter. He said that this would block the car park entrance for several minutes, but I said that I thought people would accept that.

So we pushed the car; it went fairly easily with two of us pushing. And got the car loaded onto the transporter, and I got transported home.

At which point another problem emerged - something had gone wrong with the transporter, and it wouldn't go into reverse gear. Which meant that he wouldn't be able to drive in to my front area and turn round. Or reverse into my drive and drop off the car.

So he unloaded the car into the road outside the house, we pushed it to just outside the gates, and then I used the Volvo to tow it inside. Home at last!

Now I have to get it transported to a Landrover dealer, who will then charge me an arm and a leg for what is probably five minutes work, but they'll pretend I need several new and expensive parts and labour and vat and they must have big windows because they can certainly see me coming.


1 comment:

  1. We're you parked in the multi storey car park in abingdon as I've heard about a few people who have had problems with immobilisers in there just wondering if there is something interfering with them?

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