Tag: car

New Job

Well, we arrived back down from the caravan on Friday morning so that I could go to a job interview.  Funnily enough (from the title of this post) that interview must have went well, as I now have a new job.  I start on Monday 20th, and I’m counting myself lucky that I basically walked into a job straight out of uni…

I’ll be working with the Automated Stock Replenishment system which we are moving to, it all sounds pretty cool and interesting!

The rest of the time at the caravan was alright – we went to Donegal/Inishowen on Wednesday which was cool – I haven’t been over there in years, but it’s pretty awesome, with some stunning views.  I have a few pictures, but it was raining and I appear to have gotten rain on my lens a few times, so the pictures didn’t turn out that well lol.

So, now that I have a week free before I start ‘working’, I should really spend some time tidying my bedroom and stuff, I guess that would be a good idea.

Had a brake light blow on the car on Saturday, was quite good actually, the car has a bulb warning LED to let you know when there’s a bulb out, and the car can actually tell you what set of lights are affected – handy – and saves having to fully check the car every time you get into it lol.  Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy to try and replace the bulb – requiring a socket set, screwdrivers, and some brute force, to even get near the cluster…  But I guess you don’t need to do that very often, and I’ll know where to start next time…

New tyres

Interesting post title eh…

Got new tyres on Tuesday afternoon.  It’s the first time in a few years that I’ve chosen not to go with a ‘premium’ or well known brand of tyre.  I only have the car until around July, as the finance ends then, so I didn’t feel a need to spend a lot on tyres, especially when you consider that this brand ‘Sunny’ cost £55 a tyre…  I got Pirelli’s during the summer and they were an absolutely horrid price, about £170 for the two, which considering the car is only a Ford Ka, is a little bit crazy.

I also normally go to ATS Euromaster, but decided not to this time, for no reason other than wanting to try somewhere different, so I went to Lindsay Ford in Mallusk who have a small “Rapidfit” franchise type thing going.  I would go back again, and would even go as far as to say I would recommend them.  They fit to any brand (not limited to Ford), and they have a price match with Kwik Fit.  The only downsides were:

  • Really slow – took them two hours to fit two tyres, however the last time I went to ATS it took them about 4 days to source tyres, and I ended up with Pirellis, when I actually went in wanting Continentals, and had settled with Dunlops, arriving at the depot to be told “Oh we just got Pirellis instead.”
  • You have to book in advance, be it the day before or whatever,
  • Mallusk being Mallusk, there isn’t a terrible lot to do while you wait, but then again this seems to be a trend with tyre places, ATS on the Boucher Road, Magowan on the outskirts of Carrickfergus, or in Mallusk.

I don’t know what they’re like for punctures and stuff, don’t know if they can repair them or not.

So far the tyres seem to be fine, they (so far) have been giving a reasonable amount of grip, although I can notice the road noise more, which isn’t a big deal considering it’s a diesel and the engine makes a lot of noise.  But I’ll keep you all updated here on the lives of the tyres…