So, 6 days since the purchase of my marea, and everything is fine, a few niggles here and there (i will post a list of curiosities for you to ponder over soon)but all of which i can cope with for now. the worst thing so far is that the door handle mechanism was so stiff, that i managed to break the plastic pivot that pulls the metal rod. so the inside of the drivers door came off, 15euros at the scrappy for a new pivot thingy, and a tin of WD40 all round the moving parts of all the doors and boot, and that's fixed, for now.
Another thing i noticed is that the fuel consumption is rather low, too low. when i got the car, she had just had the cluster changed, and the fuel gauge showed half full, 200Km later and it had only dropped an 8th. now, i knew that something was a miss, by my guess-timations, that meant that i could do 1600Km on a full tank.:worship:
so ignoring my instincts about the fuel and not buying a jerry can full of diesel, this morning i went to take my mother in law to the airport after a week of visiting and babysitting, and i get to the Nantes ring road and start to get the tell-tale signs of an empty tank, sporadic loss of power, increasingly often, and then nothing. my foot's down and i'm slowing, so into neutral to coast as far as possible, as i know there are a lot of exits and maybe i can get off the motorway before coming to a stop, i'm getting worried as the mother in in law has a plane to catch and i have my boy in the back, i don't want to stop on the hard shoulder and be in danger of lots of saturday traffic flying past, and also get lumbered with a rescue bill. so i look to the side at the shopping centre and hope that it has an exit just up ahead, and as luck would have it, over the crest of a small hill, there is one!! having slowed to about 40mph at this point and holding up traffic behind me, i coast with my indicator on to exit, only to see that the slip road leads not to the shopping centre, but, to a, wait for it....


A PETROL STATION!!!! :slayer::slayer::slayer:

i roll to a stop just behind the pump and use the starter with the car in gear to get the last 4 meters to fill up!! :worship:
after using the same technique to get the car out of the way of the pump after filling up, and a couple of minutes switching on and off the ignition and turning over the motor, she decides to feebly fire up, coughing and spluttering.
i left her running for a few minutes to reassure myself that i had power, and we were off again. mother in law caught her flight, and i carried on home without incident.

i will now be carrying a 10L jerry can in the back, and adding *fuel gauge* to my list of things to investigate.

Sounds like a close shave. But you got rid of the mother in law and that's the main thing.

despite all the clichées, and despite half of them being true, having the mother in law here was great, she cooked, cleaned, paid for the shopping (a lot of it), and most of all, got up in the middle of the night when the baby cried, so our sleep deprivation subsided a little. the extra pair of hands around the house was great, no matter how bat **** crazy her opinions might be.