I think it's interesting to look at the topic of fixing my car in some detail. I expect it'll be the only time my car needs fixing for the trip, and fixing your vehicle is very much part of the traveller's lot, I'm afraid. When we were going around Africa, there would be all kinds of mechanical problems: the vehicle suspension frequently broke because it couldn't cope with the rough roads. Then the electrics would fail and so on and so forth. It was all a bit of a nightmare. I guess I am lucky in that my problems appeared before I took to the road. It would have been so much more inconvenient if I'd had to fix her en route, and I could have been stuck in a miserable campsite without transport for a week.

I noticed that there's a man in our neighbourhood who had recently started operating as a mobile mechanic: he drives around in his white van and fixes cars. That's a really smart idea for a business because it's always a nuisance to have to leave your car at the garage. Most people drive their cars into the office for the day, which is miles from any garage, so having him come to visit the car is a super-smart idea. Being the kind person I am, I thought I'd give him a chance, so I arranged for him to view my car, and he said he could come over Monday morning to fix it. So I stayed in on Monday morning and did he arrive? no. Did he phone me to say he wasn't coming or anything? no. I was so annoyed I deleted him from my email and I'm never going to see him again. It really amazes me how people run their businesses these days. Let me give him some free advice: if you don't arrive on time then I'm not going to pay you, and your business needs people like me to see it thrive. I really don't understand what people are like these days. They seem to have completely forgotten good manners and common sense. It is the height of rudeness just to ignore someone: I don't mind people saying things to me like "no" and "I can't make it" or something. He probably decided he can't be bothered with me, that he's only interested in big contracts and he can't even be bothered to tell me this, so he just doesn't arrive.

I've decided to make it a theme of this book: all the conmen and fraudsters that I come across on my travels. It's probably not politically correct, and it's probably against health-and-safety, but I think it's something everyone needs to make an effort to expose. I reckon that far too many people in my country are cheats and liars, and it's high time someone took a lead in dealing with them.

But going back to fixing my car, it seemed to me that it was firing on three cylinders. It wasn't developing its usual power and it didn't produce its usual sound. So I took it into a garage, left it there, and told them I wanted it fixed quickly. After three days they managed to examine it. They phoned me and told me that they wanted to replace the spark plugs and associated electrics.

I take an interest in how my car works, and I'm afraid I'm going to inflict this upon you, the reader. Let me explain how the sparking system operates in a car. The car battery produces 12V which is not enough to produce a spark, as sparking through air requires a high voltage (25,000V) to force the ionisation of air molecules. So you can't connect the battery directly to the spark-plug. You have this thing called an ignition coil which is two coils of wire wound around the same axis. You connect your battery to one coil, and the high-voltage output to the other coil. It's schoolboy electricity and magnetism. Electricity from the battery flows into the coil creating a magnetic field around both coils. Then the electricity stops, and the magnetic field collapses, and this induces a high-voltage surge in the second coil, and this provides a high voltage pulse which is directed down a wire towards the distributor. The distributor is an old-fashioned piece of engineering which I expect has been replaced in modern cars with some modern electronics: it's a rotating arm which makes an electrical contact with one of four electrodes as it rotates. These electrodes connect via special high-voltage wires to the four spark plugs.

The garage, then, realized that there was a problem with the sparking mechanism and decided the right thing to do was to replace the spark plugs, the high-voltage wires and the distributor, ie all of it. It's overkill, I thought, which is a common trick of garages. They could have run a few tests to discover which piece was faulty, but they just decided to replace all of it and bill me for the cost. They described the spark-plugs as "looking a bit black" and I know those plugs are nearly new, so that was highly dubious. I told them they could replace the distributor and the wires but not the plugs. I was probably being ripped off, and a better garage would discover more about the problem, but I don't know of a better garage, unfortunately. They were in a hurry, I suspect, so it was quicker to replace everything than locate the fault. Arguably, it's cost-effective as the cost of the parts may be less than the time it takes to find the fault, but I have this thing about my Fig: I don't like changing parts in it. I like to stay with the old parts. Is that a crazy notion? well it reduces waste and is environmentally friendly. Somewhere I think that my Fig has character because it is old. I don't want a brand new gleaming vehicle, and I like to make the best of her the way she is.

So the people at the garage think I'm nuts now anyway. I tried explaining my policy on keeping old parts, and they think I'm paranoid about my car now. They have thousands of cars pass through every year, and they don't have time to be careful. Thus whenever my car visits the garage, I worry, and I phone them daily to see how she is. They hate that, and they think I'm pestering them. If I could rely on them to do the job correctly, I would leave them be. However I can't, and I think it's reasonable for me to be very deliberate about it.

I read an article in a magazine about how they tested some computer-repair shops and discovered they were mostly fraudulent. The research staff at the magazine got a computer, opened it, levered out a memory chip so that it was visibly malplaced, and closed the casing again. They took this computer in to be repaired at ten different places in London. Nine of them charged for a new motherboard, or various other parts that were totally unnecessary. Only one shop put the chip back into place and didn't present an inflated bill. Garages are much the same, and I know that both me and my pals have been charged for things that didn't need replacing and / or weren't replaced. However what can a man do? Go somewhere else? where? The police should be involved, but we all know what the police are like in Britain.

There was another problem with my car however: I have noticed that I could add more water to the radiator which suggested a leak in the water system. I think everyone knows that the water system flushes water around the car to keep it cool. I told the garage about the suspected leak, and they found it quickly: the seal around the water pump was leaking.

They took a week to fix the car, which is not quick. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have it fixed, and I think I can safely say that they did a better job than Mr Mobile Mechanic would have done. Let's have a look at the parts they replaced:

I examined the old distributor, which was probably original 1991, and the contacts were looking a bit corroded. That doesn't surprise me: there is going to be quite a lot of sparking around those contacts because the rotor arm doesn't actually touch the contact as it passes. All that sparking has the effect of chipping away at the metal. So I was happy enough to replace the distributor, and the arm too.

They put new spark plugs in, although the ones that were there were a year old and should have been fine. Nevertheless, the mechanics claimed that one of the plugs was misfiring, and that they proved this by moving it around. So I have to accept that and, if one of them is dodgy we may as well replace them all.

The water pump didn't need replacing, as it was still fully functional. The only thing that was problematic was the seal around it. Unfortunately, to get a new gasket to replenish the seal, you need to get a new water pump. Heck, I have heard from the Figaro club that the water pump often fails, so perhaps it is wise to have a new one. It could be very bad if the pump failed because the engine would overheat and that could cause significant damage to the engine. So a new water pump it is then.

The remaining items on the bill I do object to: £4.60 for some antifreeze seems far too much to me, and I don't think the HT leads needed replacing at all. So I went out and I swapped the HT leads around, putting the old ones back onto the engine. Surprise, surprise, the car operated fine! So I put the new ones in their box and left them in the boot.

There is a market for new car parts on the 'net. I remember when I replaced the turbo the Nissan Garage "strongly advised" me to buy a gaskets set as well. The guy who fitted the turbo decided that the old gaskets were fine, and so I didn't need the new set. I phoned the garage and asked to return the gaskets set (which cost approx £30), and they refused. So I sold them on the 'net to a guy in Ireland, and I even made a small profit on them.

One of the great things about the Figaro is that all these parts were immediately available, and relatively cheaply. This is because the Figaro's engine is the same as the 1991 Nissan Micra (except for the turbo), and so they are standard parts. I dread to think how difficult and expensive it would be to obtain parts for other fancy cars, like eg an MG.

The rotor arm, and distributor

The rotor arm inside the distributor

This zoom on two distributor contacts shows small metalic particles collecting around them. This cloud are little bits of the electrode that are blasted off (possibly molten) by the sparks

The water pump (back)

The water pump (front)

Some people may say I'm being intensely mean scrutinising my bill like this, but I actually think it's instructive and, given that the large proportion of garage bills that are fraudulent, I think it's necessary. I gave the garage a bottle of wine for their troubles. This is a simple trick that I advise everyone to follow. A bottle of wine cost me £7, and I know it's a decent wine because I bought it in my favourite wine retailers. So that adds 2.5% to the bill, which is pretty insignificant. What I gain from that is goodwill, and I know that when I return (and I probably will), they will remember me, and they will probably do a better job and faster. There's no harm in being liked by your garage, even if they do buy too many new parts. If you give them a bottle of wine, they are willing to spend time talking to you. They probably don't get paid for talking to you, and I like it when they spend ten minutes telling me what was wrong, and showing me the parts that were broken.

I'm a computer engineer myself, and I have to say that I usually explain computer engineering to men. I don't know why that is, but it is a fair generalization that women don't do cars. If I was a girl, I think I could be pretty sure that they wouldn't explain things to me at the garage. I wonder what it would be like to be a girl. I might be able to save myself the cost of a bottle of wine, and get them to remember me just by flirting with them instead. I should try being a girl in my next lifetime. I know the girls in my old office used to complain about being treated like fools when they went to the garage. Mind, they did drive big expensive modern cars which do somehow state "I am a fool". You can't ignore it.

Talking of girls brings me onto cosmetics: I found an oily handprint on the back of my car which I really didn't like, and in wiping it off I found a little rust spot on the paintwork. Rust is the chronic enemy of cars in the UK, as the climate is damp. When I was in Syria I was amazed at all the old cars, dating from the fifties, that had immaculate chrome. My chrome bumpers show rust in a few years, which is so bad.