Adventures in Van Repairs in Mexico

Ok, so maybe it’s not the most encouraging part of life right now, but we’re in the middle of several hundred dollars of repairs on our van. We have one more big repair to go – and then I hope we’ll be all right for a while.

Some of the repairs we’ve done at a local garage, with several bays, which may look like what you have in your town in many places in the world. There was some trouble at one point, I think with getting some bolts out. So this specialist was called in.

He drove up in a nice car, but came with an old hand drill, bare arms and no goggles. So as he drilled and drilled, sparks flew everywhere and he kept getting burned on his arms and getting sparks in his eyes. A little equipment would have helped – maybe with the money I paid him he can buy five or ten pairs of safety glasses.

Today the van was under the care of my friend Mardonio, who has a shop at his house. I had planned to have the van in today because I can’t drive it anyway on Thursdays, due to the current restrictions here in Mexico City.

Around 2:30pm, I went over to see how he was doing. Well, he hadn’t started yet. “You can’t drive anyway!” he pointed out.

Well, you’re right.

“Besides”, he said,”I have to work on this taxi.”

Take a look – the taxi is there in front, with our van behind. All he had to do is replace the interior, put the tires on, replace all the electrical work, fix the engine and then put the engine back in it.

If I have to wait in line behind that, I thought, this could take a little longer than I was expecting…

Thankfully, I just stopped by a few minutes ago and found he was done. Well, done “part 1”.

So I’ll be able to drive the van again, but carefully, because the van’s rear end (pardon the expression) is having some significant problems still.

Lord willing next week we’ll be able to get that repair done, although I’ll have to drive around in the city somewhere to find the part, apparently.

I wonder if he’ll be done the taxi by then?