23rd April 2008

It's impossible to do routine maintenance on modern cars. You need a £10,000 diagnostics machine and a double first in automotive engineering just to be able to change the brake pads nowadays. You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Only last month, I tried to help some guy whose BMW X5’s battery was flat. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible, as I’m neither a black belt in origami, nor a clairvoyant. The first skill is necessary to remove the super-fiddly battery cover on our long-term Volvo C30, while I’m sure only God knows where the 12-volt pack is on the Beemer. I read the car’s manual twice and was still clueless.

What I did figure out, though, was that as you can’t get at the battery, you have to go through a weird procedure to jump-start the 4x4. As far as I can remember, you connect the positive lead to the third bolt on the left in the engine bay and the negative one to a unicorn’s horn. Sadly, there were no mythical characters in the Sainsbury’s car park on that particular day. So, after an hour scratching our heads, the BMW owner got so fed-up he left to buy another car, and I headed straight off to the hospital to get new skin grafted on to my grazed and bloody knuckles.

I had planned to write this column calling on manufacturers to make cars easier for owners to work on. But I’ve recently changed my mind. Now I’d actually go as far as to say that all bonnets should be padlocked, with only dealers and breakdown firms allowed the keys. Yes, this would prevent owners carrying out even basic routine maintenance. That might not be a bad thing, though.

You see, I’ve heard many stories of people ruining their engines by filling them right to the brim with oil, or trying to put the lube in through the hole for the dipstick. Okay, so I’ll admit that I heard this from an AA patrol... after doing something equally daft myself!

It all happened when I tried to top up the windscreen washer fluid on my C30. In my defence, it was the first time I had done this. Oh, and it was dark. And a Sunday. I’m not good on Sundays. For some strange reason, when I opened the bonnet, I simply located the radiator reservoir then poured the water into the next tank I spotted, assuming by some highly inaccurate process of elimination that it must be for the windscreen washer. It wasn’t. I’d forgotten cars have brake fluid reservoirs, too. And now the C30’s was full of H2O. Not ideal when you’re about to set off from Birmingham for London.

When I called the AA, I could tell the telephonist was dying to laugh. And when the patrol turned up, there was further humiliation when he spotted a petrol siphon lying on the ground next to the car and a sheepish grin on my face. By trying to get the water out, rather than waiting for the expert to arrive, ‘Sir’ had apparently made the problem worse. Now I was going to need towing 120 miles home. This was particularly annoying as low loaders can only do a maximum of 50mph. That’s why even though all this happened last week, I’ve only just got back.

At least the long journey gave me plenty of time to work out how I’m going to earn some extra cash to cover the cost of getting the C30 fixed. It’s also made me realise that I should never ever even entertain the idea of fiddling about under a bonnet again.

If the oil or water light comes on, I’ll just head straight to my local garage. And I won’t blame the manufacturers for it. The reason cars are more complex than the human brain is because we all demand more reliability, performance and functionality from them. Let’s face it, no one expects to be able to repair their computer, TV or boiler themselves.

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