My Car Finally Gave Up On Me Last Week 😢😤

The Joy’s of Car Ownership.

So, my car finally packed in on me last week, it has been on the cards for a while now.

I have had this beat up 2005 Ford Focus for years now. In all fairness it hasn’t done me to much injustice. Well apart from breaking down on me on the way home from Glastonbury festival, the worse time it could have picked to break down.

I’ve been wanting a new car for a while now. Haven’t been able to justify it though. My Wife and I moved to a new house on Valentine’s day 2019. Doing the house up has been more important than splashing out on a new car. Plus, the old car was a great little van when you dropped the back seats down. Perfect to cart all my fishing equipment to the lake on a weekend.

It has been on the cards.

It all started a few months ago. We got in the car to go shopping. After a few minutes the car started playing up. Every time I pressed the break pedal the boot unlocked. Soon as I released the brake pedal, the boot locked again. I KID YOU NOT!

This happened once or twice, then seem to go away. “Must have been a one off” so I thought. It wasn’t. The next issue was just as weird. I picked my wife up from work one evening. As we sat stationary at the traffic lights. My fuel gage went the wrong way around back to empty. The rev counter shot round to 4000 rev’s and the speedo say we were doing 20 miles an hour. All while sat stationary.

This kept happening a few times over the course of the next 6 weeks or so. I was hoping that the car would last at least a few more months. I thought it was going to, as with before the issues seemed to disappear.

Last week it finally happened. I was heading out to pick my wife up from work again. Got into the car. This time is wouldn’t start; the engine wouldn’t even turn over. After a bit of Googling, it looks like it could be the key not disabling the immobiliser. I dashed inside and dug out the backup key.

THE ENGINE STARTED. However, things weren’t looking great. The dashboard electronics were going mental. All sorts of warning lights and messages telling me of “Engine System Faults” and “Reduced acceleration” flashed on front of me.

I got out of the car to lift the bonnet and it sounded like a scene from Jurassic Park under there. All sort of groans, screams and growls. Plus, there was a distinct smell of petrol.

“Yep, that’s done for”. Is it weird that I was glad that car finally gave up on me? It had had so many bumps and dinks, I’m not sure how it has lasted so long.

The hunt for a new ‘mean machine’

The day after, I got a list of scrappage companies and pulled together their email addresses. Using Outflash I fired off a quick email to all of them. Hoping to get a quote for someone to take away the heap of junk and perhaps pay me for the privilege. Amazingly one company quoted me £110 for the car and took it away for free. What a great service.

I also got a list of the second-hand car dealerships within a 5-mile radius of our house. This was a perfect opportunity to test the new tracking features I have been testing in an upcoming version of Outflash.

I have been working on being able to track how many times someone opens an email that has been sent using Outflash. As well as tracking the number of clicks that are made in an email address. These tracking stats should be available in Outflash soon along with other useful stats.

A few minutes later I had sent the email to all the local dealerships, enquiring if they had any cars in stock that met my budget and car type preference. My luck had changed, one of the dealerships emailed back an hour later with an ideal car. Replying to sort out a test drive, I just had to sort the loan out next. Possibly the worst part of the whole experience.

Thanks for reading

Phil