Christine
My skills at car maintenance are second only to my ability to juggle cathedrals. My first car was a very basic Mk4 Ford Escort in doom-maroon. One night, some enterprising young chavs had bent the driver's door down to gain access, but I suspect were disturbed as nothing was taken.

I took the car to a mate's house as he was a good bit stronger than me and would do a better job of bending the door back into place. He said the engine sounds a bit jittery so he had a look. The air pipes were thick with gunge which looked like earwax. He then checked the oil.

"When did you last check the oil?" he asked me
"Erm, a couple of weeks back" I lied. The truth was that it was more like 9months ago and there was hardly any oil at all and I needed to go buy some more to top it up, but then realised I was skint and would get some the following Monday and then promptly forgot.

It seems the car had been running with no oil for a very long time. The channels that carried the oil to the top of the engine were lined with what felt like Teflon.

Sadly, some chavs had another go at nicking the car, bent the door again, broke the ignition apart, and other such stuff. Amateurs really.

The door wouldn't shut properly, they'd tried to slice through the steering wheel to get the lock off and finally decided to pierce the tank and nick the petrol so I decided to get shut of it.

Firstly though, my mate came round and we put a bit of gob on the tank to block the hole, drained the oil and the water, jacked the front wheels up, started the engine and stuck a block on the accelerator.

We left it running and went inside for a coffee. Twenty minutes later it was still running at high revs. The fucker wouldn't die, so in the end we drove it to the scrapyard and I got £30 for it.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 13:18, Reply)