Car scares

We had a scare last Monday. My wife came back from University and informed me that there was a strange sound coming from below the car. It's always scary when I hear stuff like that because of the extremely high cost of spare parts and service charges here in the UK.

There had been quite heavy rains and on the way back my wife found a stretch of the road flooded. She drove through it and came through safely even though she noticed several cars had stalled on the road. However, right after that a strange sound started emanating from the car. I took the torch and checked under the car - there was something hanging underneath. At first I thought it might be some box that had got stuck there but on closer inspection realised that it was some part of the car.

Next day, I drove down to Taxi & car repairs on Stony Stanton road. Found that it was closed. I then tried two more workshops but none had their ramps free. I suddenly remembered TPS Autos Ltd in Foleshill. According to the old timers here, the Punjabi owner charges a bit higher than the rest but as I had no choice, I drove there. Fortunately, he has a ramp empty and we quickly found the problem.

The heat shield over the exhaust had come out, probably by the force of water, and was scrapping the road. Pritpal Singh did some temporary repairs (just pushing it back into place) and informed me that I could just take it out and won't do any harm. I was reluctant but he informed me that a new one would cost me around £100. So I just told him to leave it as it was.