We got back from a much needed vacation in Margate. Had been a yukky week on the basis that it was miserable, raining, overcast, windy most of the time.
Me and GMan went down to the Wild Coast casino almost every night, and made an average of ZAR1000 every night on the poker table. Not Texas Hold'em, but 3 card poker. LIU! Paid for most of the costs for the vacation!Got back the Friday, and GMan asks if he can use my car to go see his girlfriend.
On his way back the car broke down. I went to tow him in. After much trying, I realised this thing was dead, and needed a mechanic. Monday I towed it in to a shop near Westgate (LIU). The next day they called to inform me that the motor was stuffed, and would need a rebuild. By Thursday they confirmed that the motor was irreparable and they would have to source a second hand motor from a scrap yard. They found one from a similar car, with 75000km on the clock (so they say). Mine was just touching on 200k km.
Anyway, it seems the doos (LIU) who has been servicing my car for the last 6 years has not been a good boy. Either he never changed the oil, or just topped it up, or he has been using some suspect form of additive. Check the pics. Anyway the black stuff could not even be removed after 4 days in an acid bath. Not sure what it is, but it did block up the oil pump causing this to fail, which then caused all the knock on damage to the motor. Oh well, from now on I take the car to the official dealers for it's services. Lesson well learned. The down side for the "mechanic" is he has lost 3 clients, me, GMan, and Queenie (mom-in-law). Luckily he has only serviced GMan's car once, and Queenies a couple of times. I will be doing an oil change on Queenies car this coming weekend, and will mind to flush the motor first.Anyway, after 2.5 weeks, I get the car back. On the way home it felt, well, kind of funny. But I thought it was due to me not having driven an auto box for a while. That night, DMDad gives me a call, says he's up here in bobejaansberg with Brutherofanothermother, and we should meet for drinks. No problem. I'm on my way. Yea right.
I made about 25km, and the gearbox died! What?!? No gears. WTF!!!
So, next day I get it in to the gearbox specialist, who took 4 days to get around to working on the car. Confirms that there is much dead stuff in the box. Not sure what the cause was, but can repair. Go ahead, get it done.
Monday this week, 2 weeks later, I get it back. Drive 6 km, and realise that whenever I stop, and pull away again, it's in 2nd gear. Not selecting 1st. So, back to the shop. It's now 2 days later, something about dirt in the selector thingy, who knows, but I should get it back today.
So, ZAR 8250 for the motor, and ZAR 6750 for the gearbox. Done.
In the meantime, LuckyL's Aprilia RS125, 2004, decided to die on him. (This was just before we went on vacation) I took it to the shop, and left it with them. it needed piston, rings, barrel redone, crank machining, the usual shit you get with High revving 2 stroke race bikes! Quote was ZAR10k.
It's still not ready! Can you believe this shit. Yea, I know they not sitting there waiting for me to bring a bike in so they can work on it, but if they planned better..... Whilst i was there they stripped down the head. We saw the barrel needed to be done, so we got that in to the relevant shop. Then they did nothing till the barrel came back. Then, once the finished what the were working on, the stripped down the rest of the motor, and found the crank needed to be done. Now another wait for 5 - 8 days. FFS!
Anyway, I'm hoping that we will get this by the end of this week, early next week. In the meantime, LuckyL is going to school on one of the Honda XR200's. No lights, no flickers, no hooter.... Eish.
As reported earlier, LuckyL has bought the 2009 RS 125, to rebuild and sell. Ordered parts from the Aprilia dealer, and has a 4-5 week wait for delivery. No problem.
The parts arrived, and one was wrong, matt black finish instead of gloss black. I took it back to be replaced, and after 3 days, the clown in the spares dept. says that this has been discontinued, and I must take 2 x matt black so that they will match. Match what? Doos! I get onto the email to Aprilia SA, and after much discussion, they confirm they have the correct part in stock, locally, and will swop it out. Seems that there was an error with the stock numbers. I don't frigging care! Why must I get pissed off, and piss everyone off to get what I paid for!?!?! Anyway, at the same time as I ordered the parts, I gave the tank dummy, and tail piece to a guy to repair. the tank thingy needed a small repair on a bolt hole, and a scratch needed to be touched up. The tail piece also has a small scratch he said he could mask / hide / touch up. I didn't want a complete respray, cause it costs more, and would then mean having to get new stickers made. Anyway, he just stuffed around, didn't return my calls, never made one deadline. Eventually, he gave me the name of the guy who had them, and I went to see him. Man, was I pissed off. The guy I gave them to had fucked both pieces up completely! Anyway, this guy has a way to repair / salvage what has been done. So, should get this back in a day or two, and probably a grand or so later, and then we can finish the bike. Looks like we can sell it for about ZAR40k, but I'm not sure LuckyL will want to. It's a beaut. (That reminds me, I need to get the bike's papers....)On the home front, GMan is now in his final stage of high school. Prelims are done, matric finals started yesterday, although he only writes his first paper in Nov sometime. He has applied at Wits, Pretoria, and Stellenbosch universities. All have given him conditional acceptance, subject to his final results. Let's hold thumbs. I think this is the first time I have seen him make some effort to study, if that is what he's doing. He wants to be a CA.
LuckyL seems to be coming to his peak about now. His marks have, for the past 3 terms been steadily improving. It's great. If he keeps going like this, he should do very well next year, and then in matric as well. Not sure what he wants to do, but might follow GMan into the world of money......
The Princess is really enjoying her new (not so new) job. She hasn't had this much fun in years. Lots to do, on days, but she's upto it. They just moved to new offices, which she helped refurbish. Nice to be able to do something like that, with someone else's check book. And no limit!!!
Will go check them out sometime.
Witness - my gardner, is not well. In fact, I dont think he's coming back to work. Discussed it with the Princess, and we going to pension him off. I'll pay him but he can stay at home. We never going to get his ID book replaced, the corrupt Home Affairs will never come through for him, so he will never get his state pension. And at 73 years, he shouldn't be working anymore. So, I'm getting a garden service in to do the lawns once a week, and will get casual labour once every 3 weeks to weed the garden, turn over the flower beds and stuff. And, I'll have to put in a sprinkler system as well. But Witness probably wont be back. It's a pity, cause he;s a great old man. Reliable, gets on with his work. Knows what needs to be done. But then, he's now got some chest problem, he's old, and cant do this anymore. No matter, I told him I would pension him off, and will. Last week I went down to his home, and took a couple of packets of groceries for him. And paid him for the day. No smokes though. I told him, if his chest hurts, he shouldn't be smoking. he agreed.
We haven't replaced Kaiser yet (the family dog we had to have put down). The family are still keen to get 2 x Boer Bull pups. We probably will, but I just want to get all this other crap sorted. Cars, bikes, gardners..... eish.
Nuff for now. More later
Salagatle!
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