Has anybody else noticed that their car seems to have a "preferred" number of problems? With mine, it's three. Try as I might, I can't seem to get the number of things wrong below that - if I fix something,something else pops up within a week or two. It's getting to the point where I'm semi-seriously considering leaving some minor niggles unfixed as an offering to the ghost in the machine, in the hope that it doesn't bring me major ones!

Well for the last few months I've had other things on my mind, and the number of faults has crept up: dodgy instrument lights, brakes are juddering again, still haven't got to the bottom of the front end vibration, need new tyres, door solenoid's failed, etc, etc.

And now the ghost has stepped in and started fixing things. One of the things I liked about the car when I bought it was the silky smooth transmission. I hate autos, and the best thing an auto can do is not come to my attention. The Merc box managed that - I practically never noticed it shifting. Then not long after I got the car, I had a bunch of things done, including changing the transmission fluid. Ever since then it's never been as smooth. Not bad, just not good; and it's irritated me. Tried hard resets, done the Merc calibration process several times, checked the fluid level - all no good. I'd more or less concluded that changing the fluid was a mistake and I was just going to have to live with it.

Then last weekend I had the battery disconnected while fitting a RealGauge (another job that has been waiting for a while), and when I fired it back up and went for a drive to test the temp gauge, it was back to shifting perfectly! And it still is.

I'm hoping that the ghost has decided to help me get back to the magic number 3, and that sometime soon my tyres are going to magically grow new tread and my front discs warp back into line. But unfortunately I suspect it was just giving me a polite nudge before taking more drastic (and expensive) action to force me to fix some stuff.

 

Thank you for sharing. I naively used to think I could fix all the problems. It gives the car character.