The Shed.
Finally, after a year of nothing happening to my car I tried to get it back.  I went to see the garage man and told him I would take the car back even if I couldn't do anything with it.  The idea being that if they couldn't do anything - i.e. couldn't obtain a steering column anywhere for love nor money and couldn't get the steering column they'd already got to go in properly and do its job- then how could I possibly do better?   Still in my  "leaning over backwards to be understanding and patient" mode I was going along with this.  Though of course I privately thought they weren't even trying and anyone could do a better job. But I didn't say that.

I said I could at least keep it under cover and turn the engine over once in a while and keep it lubricated and watch over it and keep the battery good, etc., etc.

Any normal person would blush with shame just at that but of course that didn't happen.  Instead he insisted he'd rather I left it there and he said he'd now got the shed at the back of his property and he'd keep it in there. What was the intimation there in lets-be-friendly-people type talk?  Well, that he recognised the shortcomings and the mistakes and the deceptions and the delay and he wanted to keep it there so's the phantom pieces that were always about to turn up would suddenly turn up and he and his men would suddenly get onto the job and make everything good.

That's what I thought. Flashed through my mind.  So:

I went along with it.

Nothing (of course) happened for the next few weeks and I rang one day only to be told the boss had gone on a lengthy holiday. Was gone.  It was Xmas time. The world was on holiday. That was the end of anything going to happen to my car until the New Year.

I went out to see it.  Where was it?  Outside the shed exactly where it is in the picture.  

When I saw the boss after Xmas and broached the shed subject he quickly jumped in and claimed it had been in the shed and he'd just had to get it out very recently so's he could put his boat in there.  I said nothing. You can imagine what I thought.  

These are pictures of the car "inside the shed".


Lovely Bit of Work.

The panel beater's work coming apart after a few months of sitting untouched in the garageman's yard.

Steering Column

This steering column is not mine. Mine was good and complete.  They claimed that the 'coffee pot' - the black housing you can see there and which holds the gearstick - had broken.  

This is very interesting. This is, in fact, probably the hub and fount of all my ire.  Because they claimed this happened - the coffee pot breaking - as the car was coming back from a visit to the auto electrician to get the windscreen wipers working - as the final thing before roadworthyness for registration!

They claimed it was all ready to go!  They claimed the paper was written out.  And, incidentally, they claimed a great deal of work done on the way there:  sticking back brake fixed, windscreen wipers fixed, petrol feed problem fixed by taking the tank out, seized handbrake cable fixed - but, in fact, none of this work AT ALL was done. NONE.  And, of course, much more work was in fact created  by them for me to do...

At great difficulty they claimed to have gotten at various times a coffee pot that didn't fit (from an automatic, they said, instead of manual shift) and a coffee pot that did fit and a steering column that didn't fit.   This took an immense amount of time. Considering the difference in colours it rather looks as though, in fact, the column was mine and the coffee pot was a ring-in, doesn't it?

The greatest difficulty was apparently the struggle to get the steering column to fit. Whether mine or not mine the fact is they never conquered this and the column we see here that came back with the car was not fastened in and wouldn't successfully fasten in. I had to get another column.

I did get another column and it is in the car now. But it didn't come with a turn indicator lever and it didn't come with a working turn indicator mechanism.  Why not put mine in?  Because they weren't there.  They were missing. Lost. Couldn't be found.

So I had to find and buy another unit which was also broken and do the best I could to make up a working unit by cannabilising and cutting and soldering.  And I got a lever from an old XW in a junkyard.


Footwell
Now we are into some of the damage they did to the car.  They did two kinds of damage, we can say:  1. Active and 2. Passive.
The active damage was such as breaking the coffee pot, reefing the steering column out and either breaking it or losing it, losing the indicator lever, breaking indicator lens, losing nuts and bolts, blowing up the petrol tank etc...
The passive damage was that caused by simple atrocious neglect. The car was parked for more than a year out in the open in the full NT sun, through the full dry season and the full wet season - with the back window open!!
The heat cooked all the door rubbers on the sun side to a hard, brittle consistency, so that they crumble at a touch.
The wind blew in gum leaves so's it looked like a garden's pile of raked leaves inside.
The rain came in and filled the spare wheel well above the petrol tank.  The water had nowhere to go.  It just stayed there slowly evaporating away and rusting the petrol tank and the well.
The rain also got into the front footwells and under the rubber mats and rusted out the metal. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of that but both footwells were rusted clean through in strips a foot long just on the bend.
That's the condition of a car that was said to be 'all fixed for rego' !