Saturday At The Workshop

My mechanic is a funny guy when I'm around. Last Saturday I had to spend three and a half hours at his workshop with his class of rugged looking men in oily suits.

The usual session of servicing my old boy Sunny is under two hours, with the routine check and change of engine oil, water level, etc. But on Saturday they found leaking brake oil plug and that, coupled with other works, took three and a half hours.

The first hour I buried myself in my trashy The Devil Wears Prada, and probably dozed off for a good ten minutes. Then I woke up to make a few calls...took a walk outside the comfy air-conditioned waiting room and found Sunny has been de-tyred, I asked my mechanic if that is the usual routine and he said only at every fourth round session of regular car service.

The rest of the afternoon saw me walking from one end of the workshop to another, sometimes I sat in front of the other only part of the workshop that is air-conditioned -- the office, and talked to anyone who cared to give me educational small talks on car maintenance. Closer to the third hour, I met a friendly one, Yvonne whose car was overheated. We both agree that most female drivers in the city are in need of a proper workshop on car maintenance.

I pestered the two mechanics (my mechanic and his brother, also a mechanic in that workshop, duh) the whole afternoon and learned many things. Some of the topics covered were:

Continental cars vs Japanese cars - the design of a Continental car heating system is the cause of many overheated European cars in a hot hellish place like KL. Of course, many still favour Mat Salleh cars for their great performance for long distance travel, road-gripping and noise proof feature.

Exhaust pipe, I saw one lying around so I asked what exhaust pipes are for and got my answer explained using the methodology of our anatomy.

"So how come some cars got black or white smokes?"

"That's when the car has problem in the combustion process, the explosion process is not completed, you know like when you eat something bad and then you have diarrhea...like the black smokes la."

I got a free second hand spare tyre to replace my old one, lying in the boot since the day I got Sunny. I learned that a `tube' is something you put inside of a normal tyre when there are cracks in the tyre; if you have a `tube-tyre', you need to pump air every two weeks. A normal tyre can survive a nail on the road for about ten days whereas a tyre with tube will see a flat tyre within five minutes.

Also seeing that I didn't have a cross bar (he called it the Ultra Man thingy) in the car, my mechanic ordered one for me and had me try out using it. I managed to loosen two bolts and tightened them back, I didn't even have to stand on the bar to turn and tighten the nuts.

He showed me how to use the car jack, while he assumed my father probably doesn't know how to change a tyre. Honestly I don't know whether my dad could change a tyre on his own but I sure know I can drive better than him...can't wait to show my old man what I've learned in the big bad city of KL when I go home.