Gear Sticks

We should, I suppose, be grateful that when the gear stick in the car decided to break, it didn't do it while we were travelling at speed, it didn't do it while we were on the motorway and it didn't do it while the car was in neutral or reverse. On the contrary, it decided to break just as we had come off a quiet roundabout on the way to the station and while we were, we think, in third gear.  Thus The Builder, in his guise of my chauffeur, was able to coax the car to the station so I could get to work, and then managed to coax it home again, ably assisted by all the traffic lights which turned green on his approach.

Now, most cars these days have gear stick in little boxes. If you should need to replace or repair any of the cokmponent bits, you dismantle the gear box, fix whatever it is that needs fixing, remantle the gear box and off you go. But no - not ours.  Our gear stick is encased in a hermetically sealed box which would take a nuclear blast to dismantle - and then you would never get it remantled again.

We had to buy a whole new unit at around £150.

As you will be aware, most gear sticks have a knob on the top of them which usefully tell you wehre the various gears are.  In my naive innocence, I had always assumed that these come as an integral part of the gear stick.  But no. They are a separate unit. In most cars, they screw on and off, or can be levered off.  In our car, they are a separate unit which is then sealed eternally to the gear stick itself with resin. Our mechanic gamely tried to get the old one off the old gear stick, but it retaliated by shattering into a zillion pieces.  We had to buy another one for a mere £60

:-S 

All up, it took almost £300 to get the car back on the road. The Builder's bank account has gone into hiding!!  Still, we are now mobile once again and I have given up my flirtation with the early morning bus drivers, and indeed the evening bus drivers. Was nice running across our next door neighbour Debby most mornings, mind you. She works in Chesterfield and most mornings was on the same bus as me