EDitorial ± 8-Feb-2006
Windows Annoyances
Phone call from the garage (rhymes with marriage) lunchtime-ish today: your car is ready, Mr Broom. That'll be £xxx pounds, if you'd be so kind, where xxx consists of £yyy for a new regulator unit and £zzz for labour. And there it was, parked flush with the kerb on my cycling return home, c/w fully operational windows: they go up, they go down.
See, sometime last year the driver's (is this near-side? port? aft?) 'leccy window decided to call attention to itself by failing to do the one simple task asked of it. I depress this button, you descend, or I lift this button and so should you. But this little piggy wouldn't go down more than about 5cm before stopping. Which caused some embarrassment when, say, entering a multi-storey car park or using the KFC drivethrough, being obliged to physically open the door to grab the ticket or take the Bargain Bucket. Really, you'd struggle to fit a side order of BBQ beans through such an opening.
And lo, an item appeared on my ToDo list saying "fix car window". At this point there should be a montage demonstrating the passing of the seasons, perhaps with falling leaves and driving rain, through which we see the gradual weathering of my handwriting. Yes, time passed and I did nowt about it.
Until last Saturday, when I took matters into my own Handy Andy hands. I'd had a chat with a passing Renault mechanic (wait long enough and one will appear) who'd asked if I'd tried to push the window down while holding the button. No, I said. Might be worth a go, said he, and give it plenty of WD40.
There I was with my can of miracle squirt. Cajoled one of my brood into pressing the button while I pushed down: sure enough, it moved jerkily down. So I kept up the pressure until it went all the way. Yay, I thought ... can you see what happens next? ... and of course, the darn thing wouldn't then come up, being now stuck in the down position. Bottoms.
Much spraying and prying was then called for. Heck, I even bought a new mini-can of the wonder lubricant. Final straw when the little red straw popped out of the sprayhead and lodged itself in the door frame, out of reach. Which was how I came to be sitting in the driver seat on Saturday evening equipped with a sheet of bubble wrap and various coloured poster pins creating some very makeshift glazing.
Ah, the joy of windows.
See, sometime last year the driver's (is this near-side? port? aft?) 'leccy window decided to call attention to itself by failing to do the one simple task asked of it. I depress this button, you descend, or I lift this button and so should you. But this little piggy wouldn't go down more than about 5cm before stopping. Which caused some embarrassment when, say, entering a multi-storey car park or using the KFC drivethrough, being obliged to physically open the door to grab the ticket or take the Bargain Bucket. Really, you'd struggle to fit a side order of BBQ beans through such an opening.
And lo, an item appeared on my ToDo list saying "fix car window". At this point there should be a montage demonstrating the passing of the seasons, perhaps with falling leaves and driving rain, through which we see the gradual weathering of my handwriting. Yes, time passed and I did nowt about it.
Until last Saturday, when I took matters into my own Handy Andy hands. I'd had a chat with a passing Renault mechanic (wait long enough and one will appear) who'd asked if I'd tried to push the window down while holding the button. No, I said. Might be worth a go, said he, and give it plenty of WD40.
There I was with my can of miracle squirt. Cajoled one of my brood into pressing the button while I pushed down: sure enough, it moved jerkily down. So I kept up the pressure until it went all the way. Yay, I thought ... can you see what happens next? ... and of course, the darn thing wouldn't then come up, being now stuck in the down position. Bottoms.
Much spraying and prying was then called for. Heck, I even bought a new mini-can of the wonder lubricant. Final straw when the little red straw popped out of the sprayhead and lodged itself in the door frame, out of reach. Which was how I came to be sitting in the driver seat on Saturday evening equipped with a sheet of bubble wrap and various coloured poster pins creating some very makeshift glazing.
Ah, the joy of windows.