3 jan

Four men are gathered around our Renault Berlingo, which is high up on a lifting machine at a garage in Sully-sur-Loire. One of them is talking. He is the oldest with greying hair and a lot of experience with cars. He tells the younger mechanics around him that when a wheel is hardly turning it is not necessarily true that the transmission is broken. That is a possibility of course, but also the most complicated and most costly problem. It could also be true that the problem is caused by, for example, some problems with the ball bearings. That is a simple and inexpensive fix. When attacking a problem in a car, always try to make sure that the simplest solutions are sufficient before trying out something more complicated.
We had heard a funny sound in our car. It might have been there for a half year, but in the past week it had gotten worse. Julie went to ask if our camping boss knew a garage in our area and he recommended this one. He even drove there with Julie after having found out we had a (serious) problem with a brake pad.
At the garage the mechanics agreed. We had to change the pads and also the brakes itself and the two front tires. Ouch. We could pick up the car at the end of the next day, which meant that we could not leave and see some churches we wanted to see around Clermont Ferrand. Not a real problem, missing those churches, Julie and I have a mild form of church fatigue.
At the end of this friday, after 6 o’clock – these french mechanics work late – we could pick up our car. Arriving there we saw our camping boss there with a solemn face. He had just been called by the mechanics. There was a real serious problem with our car. The transmission was broken. The head mechanic – the one with the greyish hair – came over and explained what was wrong. In french of course, our camping boss translated it into broken english, Julie then explained it to me. Changing the transmission – even with a second hand transmission from one of the thousand corpses of Citroen Berlingo’s that fill up the car graveyards of France – was going to cost another €1000. We would get a new clutch for this money too. But the car isn’t worth that much, Julie and I decided.
Our camping boss was dubious though. When we drove the car into the garage there was no transmission problem and suddenly the car became worthless. He called his brother in law on his mobile, a former garage owner, and let the head mechanic explain to him what the problem was.
After that conversation the head mechanic – who hadn’t worked on the car himself – started to unscrew some bolts, hammer and wiggle at the wheel construction. After a while he had the turning wheel loose from the transmission pole, tried to move the tire base again, without any luck.
Sheepishly he looked up from under the car. ‘Ce n’est pas le transmission’, he said. ‘It probably is a problem with the ball bearings. Car saved, and suddenly the mechanics got a small lesson in problem solving right under our Berlingo.
Our camping boss was not amused. He apologized to us and said: ‘I thought they were good mechanics, but now I am not so sure anymore.’ He went to talk to the owner of the garage and made sure we didn’t have to pay for all these extra problems.
We had bought him a bottle of wine for his help, but in hindsight should hae bought him a case of bottles from Ray Walker. I am pretty sure we would not have gotten the Berlingo back without his help. He was most gracious though for the bottle we gave him and made clear that he thought it was not necessary to give anything at all. He even give us a lower rate at the campground because we had had to stay one night longer.
definitely a place were we’ll come back, one day, St. Pere sur Loire. Probably in the summer, though. Five days of hard wind blowing across an icy Loire has been enough for this trip.