Car maintenance

A hangover from the tyre event noticed at reference 1 was a missing front near side hub cap. Pressure was applied and I gradually got used to the idea of doing something about it.

One solution was to dump the problem on Epsom Autos, but that seemed a little lazy. So off the YouTube to find out what was involved in fitting hub caps. The first issue was, did the hub caps in question clip in, or did you have to get the wheel nuts off and fit the hub cap under them? An operation which involved jack and wheel brace, both of which I would have had to borrow. Eventually I decided that we had clip ins. The second issue was getting the old hub caps off. Best done with a special tool if you want to get them off in one piece. Eventually I realise that since the hub cap in question was missing, getting hub caps off did not arise. The third issue did not last long at all. Should one paint the real wheel, the steel wheel, before putting on the fake alloy - actually plastic - hub caps on top, to improve the appearance of the whole? Seemingly something which hub cap fashion conscious young men went in for. Case dismissed.

So down to Halfords. Where hub caps were cheap enough, but there was not much choice, one seemed to have to buy them in fours and there was a queue. 

So off to the Ford Centre in Blenheim Road, not far from the council tip. Flashy new building, largely empty, although there was a hi-end Mustang left in the snap above and a hi-end yellow transit right, nearly hidden by advertising panels. Plus some curiosities; the motorists' version of bibelots. After waiting for a while, it turned out the flashy new Ford Centre didn't do spare parts; for that sort of thing you went to a shed down a passage on the other side of the road. And it was raining.

Where a cheerful young man assured us that he could get us a hub cap that matched the three we had by noon the next day and that I would be able to push the thing in all by myself, without needing any tools at all.

He turned out to be quite right and we now, once again, have four hub caps. The arrangement had the additional attraction of BH flashing her plastic while I was otherwise engaged.

PS: lots of pavement works meant lots of traffic lights and these seemingly trivial journeys actually took quite a while. But it was not as if we had anything else to do and we managed to keep our cool.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-tale-of-tyre.html.