What did you do to your van today?

Looked at it,looked at the adblue emulator waiting to be fitted, thought not much of a job,looked at the new cambelt kit and water pump waiting to be fitted,thought at 66 Im too old to be rolling around the drive doing that in the middle of winter maybe next month.
5yr old van 30k progress?
At 66 I would have been up for it. Now I've turned 78 I've just been 'persuaded' by the family to leave things like that to a garage. 😢

I still do things I shouldn't, but I wait until herself has gone out. "Up there for thinking.....down there for dancing". 😜
 
At 66 I would have been up for it. Now I've turned 78 I've just been 'persuaded' by the family to leave things like that to a garage. 😢
I'm soon going to be 75 and wish I could leave everything to a garage. Some things I accept I can't do. BUT today, considering that we are taking Hardly to Norway in the Summer, I want to renew the entire (most of it) braking system when it gets warm so I priced everything up. New discs, pads, calipers, brake shoes and drums, wheel cylinders and rubber hoses, and master cylinder. Cost from the usual GSF and Euro is about £753 for the parts.
NOW: the question is, can I do the job?
My friendly 'No VAT here, matey" garage chap would I suppose do it in a day. He charges £60 / hour. This is less than 'er indoors's hairdresser who doesn't have to rent a garage, buy compressors, car lifts, welding gear and five thousand pounds of miscellaneous tools, and a £4,500 CAN Bus diagnostic computer. These hairdressers really annoy me, what they charge for poncing around with a pair of £10 scissors and some shampoo charging £60 an hour. This isn't some posh lah-dee-dah hair coiffeur either, just a small shop in a row of news/conf/tob/betting/chip shops in a small town in the middle of the country.
Anyway so my garage chappie would charge £480 for an 8 hour day's work, and I reckon it wouldn't take him that long. I'll ask him for a quote. Hardly did pass the MOT perfectly OK but he is 25 years old and has done 68,000 miles. So I think it might be prudent to spend £1100 to make sure he doesn't go in the ditch. That's a lot cheaper than changing a wet belt . . . . . . or fixing a mis-diagnosed fault on a modern tin box.
 
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