April 16, 2008

"Limp Home Mode"

Not me, but the car (it's an Automatic) was going into "limp home mode", during my wife's' numerous visits to the hospital, while I was there,

After getting home, and finding out that it was still going randomly into limp home mode, I decided that it was time to get it fixed.

So, without knowing what specifically was wrong, I rang the local agents. and broadly described that it would run smoothly for a while, and then after five minuutes, it would move into a lower gear, which meant it could only be driven at a slow rate.

This was a bit hairy in traffic. Then after a few minutes like that, it would revert to its normal gearing. However, after a few days like this, it was getting a lot worse. It was not until I got out of hospital, that I had first hand experience of the problem.

I rang the local agents, and they recognised the problem, and even gave me the name for it, and said they had a 3 week wait for service. However they said there was one other business in Canberra which had the computer that could identify the exact problem. It was Auto-Torque in Phillip.

Auto-Torque also had a lengthy waiting time for service, however they said if we could get it to them they would have a look when there was some free time. So I booked in for service on their first available day.
Now the problem was to get it to them on that day by 7:00 am in the morning.

Not wishing to have my wife drive in early morning traffic, and having to limp on the left hand side of the road, a suggestion was made to have the NRMA provide towing to Auto-Torque a couple of days previously. Having it there earlier meant also that if they had some earlier free time, they could diagnose our car if they found some earlier free time.

This was duly done, and on the day of the service, Auto-Torque rang us to say the problem had been fixed.

So, this is in praise of "Auto Torque" and their people who fixed our car, and were very professional in their dealings over the phone. My numerous phone calls to them had me wondering whether thay were getting stressed, but they were indeed very patient.

So, I have no hesitation in recommending this business to those who may wish to use their services.

Friar