Car maintenance

But not the full 12,000 mile service kind of maintenance - just the sort of tweaks to our children's cars which always seem to need doing during their visits - and this Christmas, happily, all 4 and partners have been here.

Odd one out this time was younger daughter's car - she almost always cadges some screenwash, but must have forgotten this time.  Biggest job was on younger son's Golf, as he relieved me of a set of steel wheels and winter tyres which had fitted our Mk5 hatchback last year but resolutely refused to go on our Mk6 estate this year (bigger front brake calipers). This means his summer wheels are stacked in our workshop now.

Easiest job was a new headlamp bulb on older son's Fiat Idea - a car I never much like the idea of working on - starkly contrasting with the grief of fitting similar item to older daughter's Ford Focus.  Her husband and I seriously considered taking the battery out to get access to the holding clip after the best part of an hour's fiddling and knuckle-skinning, but then he somehow managed to get the thing back in place.  Odd how some car manufacturers make it so difficult to do these basic jobs - we heard from a friend of the same kind of problem on a Toyota Avensis.

Is it that the car manufacturers are trying to protect their dealers' workshops and are against us keeping such items in stock ourselves?