8486/21405
Back to Hitchin today and a relatively uneventful trip in our now MOT worthy Sharan. It's MOT time for our electric car soon and it suddenly struck me that that might have a failable fault too.
A few months ago someone had dented out back bumper whilst we were parked in the street. More than dented it. Knocked a big hole in it. The only way I can imagine it happened, given the height and shape of the hole is that they had a tow bar on the back of their vehicle and reversed into us. I suppose we were lucky that the offending vehicle didn't then tow our car away. But the driver fucked off without leaving a note. Of course. It's possible that they didn't notice what they'd done.
Having had a merry dance trying to get the Sharan MOTed, I didn't want to take this car in to Kwik fit only to find the sharp edged hole meant I had to take it somewhere else. I fancied I could maybe fix it with tape, but when I tried to pull the crushed bit out of the hole I just hurt my hands and couldn't force it out. I decided it wasn't worth breaking the bumper further - someone else with some skills and maybe a heat gun or a clever device might be able to fix it.
I tried social media to see if the bumper was too bumped to pass an MOT. The general feeling was probably (though maybe not) and I got advice about drilling holes or sewing the pieces together or buying a second hand part on ebay. I correctly ascertained that I wasn't capable of any of this. The headlight I bought on ebay for the other car might have been cheaper than the official one, but it was also a European one and pointing in the wrong direction and in itself an MOT fail. I had to pay twice.
Maybe I will pay VW to replace the piece, maybe I will pay a proper man to mend the damage, maybe I will track down the person who did this and find a way to get maybe £400 worth of value out of them. Maybe I'll just chance it and hope the guy doing the MOT doesn't notice.
Maybe I won't do it in time and will have another car I can't drive because it hasn't passed its MOT. Lucky for me, I guess that it's a two car household. So maybe I should shut up complaining.
Though all I am lamenting is my own ineptitude and the fact that life is full of damage and decay and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Especially cos I didn't pay attention in woodwork.
