Things we take for granted

Couple of months ago my car went in for its regularly service which also included new front brake pads and discs (done some 60K mile in 18 months). Earlier this week I noticed a large nail in the rear passenger side tyre. This afternoon I managed to get the car to the local tyre depot to have it looked at.

I thought the nail was actually in the safest place in the tyre, the shoulder (where the side wall meets the flat of the thread) but according to the technician it was the worst place as it is the one place they can not repair the tyre. The technician squirted the nail with a soapy liquid and then start to pull the nail out of the tyre, soon the tail tail sign on small bubbles around the stem of the nail was visible, this meant a new tyre (good job its a company car). I was instructed to back into one of the repair bays and give the tyre fitter the special wheel nut key (swnk) for the locking wheel nuts. Apparently these swnk is unique to the locking wheel bolt on my car so there no chance of getting another one of the shelf.

I open the gloves box which is the normal place for the swnk but it was not there, so I checked the passenger door pocket, drivers door pocket, rear storage lockers, under front seat draws, in fact I stripped the dam car down and it was not any where in the car. Casting my mind back and the last people to use it was the local garage who done the front brakes a couple of months ago. So I phoned the garage and explained the situation to the service desk guy, who asked if I had checked in the.................yes I have checked everywhere (I said before he could finish). He dug out the service records and there was no note on the record about the swnk (why would there be??) so he went of to speak to the fitter (can you remember what you did at work 2 months ago??) and no he did not have it.

By now I had been at the tyre depot an hour, this was supposed to be a 20 minute job and I needed it done as I was off on an early morning trip up country tomorrow. So I explained to the service reception guy it needed to be sorted and sorted now. He agreed to send the technician out to the tyre depot. When the technician arrived he went through the car checking every where, he could not find the swnk anywhere. He returned to his car and comes back with a handful of swnk, "I picked these up off the benches in the workshop" he said, he then proceed to check each one on my locking wheel bolts. Thankfully the third one he tried fitted my wheel bolt and we could now remove the wheel. As the swnk and locking wheel bolts are unique set then that must have been the one from my car.

I never gave it a thought to check that the swnk was in the car after the service, I just assumed that it had been put back in the glove box. It is little things like that that we take for granted. But when things like the swnk go missing it can really mess your day up. Fortunately I only lost 2 hours in the end, can you imagine the problems I would of had, had my tyre gone flat on the motorway up country, it would have been a nightmare involving having the car recovered and hire vehicle to get home.