Well, lawks a mercy, well I’ll be, knock me down, who’d have thought it, etc.
So, last Friday was designated vehicle registration day. The time off was duly booked and Tania volunteered to accompany me, mainly on the promise of a Full English afterwards at a little bar I happen to know.
Now, just to double check, I’d been on the Land Transport Office website just to confirm they were still doing walk-in and that I didn’t need an appointment. No mention, great.
07:30, up we roll. I’m greeted by my little mate who tells me that they can’t do emissions tests anymore and that I’d have to go to this other place (which I’d basically driven past on the way), get tested and then return.
Off we pop and finally find the place but, hold up, this isn’t an emissions test, it’s a full blown “MOT”! Ah well, in we go and park up. I’ve no idea how it all works and, it seems, neither do many of the staff.
Seems to go like this. Pull in and directed to a slot by a little chap who gives you a number (of course). You then go and pay and are told to go to the waiting room. Now, I’d espied some brake rollers and, keen to not have my gearbox climb into the passenger seat, went and spoke to someone about how they tested permanent four-wheel drive vehicles. He didn’t know, but he thought he may know someone who did.
Eventually another chap arrives and asks me what the problem was. I repeated that I was only curious about their brake testing methods for full-time 4x4 vehicles. He smiled and led me over to the roller area and pointed to a set of dummy rollers that went under the non-tested wheels. He said he’d make sure they were used on mine. We also chatted about testing prop acting handbrakes and I went away reasonably happy.
Anyway, instead of sitting in the waiting room, I left Tania in there Netflixing away and went to stand outside to watch. Good job too. After 15 minutes or so, the manager of the place, Mike, came over and asked me if I could open the tailgate for them. Every day’s a school day!
Got chatting with him and said that whilst I applauded the move towards more stringent testing, I was a bit peed off that there was no mention of it on the LTO website and, had I known, I’d have given her a quick pre-test check and come here first,
before going for registration. He replied that it only opened last Monday and he’d been getting grief ever since then from motorists who, like me, were told just to nip there for emissions, no mention of a full test. Anyway, we chatted for a bit whilst his minions crawled all over, round and under the P38 until eventually we had a verdict.
It failed! First thing was a gearbox oil leak. This isn’t, it’s from where I was refilling the box via the dipstick hole, with inevitable overspill, but never mind. Second was the lack of an early warning triangle, easy fix and third was a bit bizarre. Brakes. They told me they worked and stopped within parameters, but they thought the pedal went a “bit too far down.” Hmm, no point arguing, I’ll give ‘em a quick bleed.
So there we are, not bad for it’s first, and unexpected, test in who knows how many years. More fluid on the way, as I haven’t quite got enough in stock to be sure, warning triangle, ditto, and “gearbox oil leak” already wiped away. I’ll give it a wash off when I bleed the brakes, so it’s nice and clean under there for them.
Oh and emissions? CO = 0.02 and HC = 43.8, an easy pass.
I’ll aim to return this Friday morning and, probably because I didn’t curse word and moan, Mike said they’d do the retest for gratis, rather than the normal 50%. Nice guy. I’ll get some pics of the place as well. I'm also guessing that it’ll probably involve another breakfast too!
In other news, this Sunday morning, I drove the new Skyway extension. Up until now, Skyway, all elevated, came from Alabang in the south, above the South Luzon Expressway, and terminated about a kilometre from the house. All very well, but our project office is about 25km north of me, so not a damn bit of use. So, just after I moved here full-time, they started building its extension which would take it from just around the corner, all the way up to the North Luzon Expressway, cutting out Manila and linking the two highways directly. Much more useful.
Seven years later and a week ago, whilst it’s still unfinished, they did a soft opening, reduced speeds and no tolls, so I thought I’d give it a go. The normal Sunday morning run-time for the 12kms from my house to the bottom of NLEX is around 30 minutes. It was just over 10 on Skyway. Given that same run using the surface roads can often take over two hours (three’s the record) coming home during the week, Skyway has some serious potential to shave a chunk of time off any future commute (should there be one!) and, even better, has an off-ramp which drops me about three or four minutes from home.
Of course, we’ll be moving this year, almost certainly further south and out of Manila, so any advantage I’ve briefly gained, will promptly disappear again!
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