As I wrote already, the Hammersmith & City line had some service announcement for Saturday, so we had to take Jubilee to London Bridge, and the Northern line to Kings Cross / St Pancras. The guys at the hotel were nice enough to pack some breakfast for us, of which we had a bit while waiting at this place in the station:
In the Eurostar, we had the “Standard Premier” tickets this time, so we got another breakfast in the train as well – nice. Plus, while knowing that it went way over 200km/h over land (not in the tunnel), this time I could actually see the monitor – and indeed it displayed 298 and 299km/h when I looked. Two hours from London to Brussels (or back), which is very cool.
Then, “S-Bahn” from Brussels to Leuven – with what felt 1/10th of the speed. For these 18kilometers it took us almost another hour.
Finally, some stations with a bus, and at the Toyota dealer we could pick up our car with a new generator and battery (which was also damaged according to the service/sales guy there).
And yes, thankfully our car brought us back home. But the display is still strange – when I now turn on the front lights of the car, the display automatically dims to almost unreadable. And the (step-trough) section of undimming that display is gone – simply not there anymore. They must either also have changed the programming box, or cabled something differently, or simply put in something else than what the car had before that service… so that means I either have to live with that dark display now, or to have it checked (and repaired) again at a local dealer. Because, honestly, what were the options? To complain on a late Saturday, with no mechanics in anymore?
Sigh… reality has me back…
At least, London was nice. As long as I didn’t have to walk too far.
And as always, thanks for reading.
Tough luck with the car Wolfgang, but it seems you had a good time anyway. Regarding your car, it feels a little like there is grounding/earth problem, but who knows with modern cars with all the computers it could be a lot of things.
Thanks Tzur,
and “modern” isn’t perhaps the right term for our 17 year old Corolla E12 – but I agree, if they didn’t change any electronics, then this one might be hard to find… I mean how can a menu item disappear (it’s a step-through like: press once for daily km counter #1, press again for daily km counter #2, press another time for – and well here it was, and should still be: the display brightness setting, a 4th press (now 3rd) brings you back to the total km counter).
While the dimming of the light inside the speedometer could be a grounding problem indeed, this one is rather strange. Never saw anything like it, and I’m a computer guy.
Maybe they went and didn’t replace things with original parts? But I don’t want to assume things until an expert looked into it. Problem is that with 17+ years and over 183.000 km there’s a limit as to what kind of sum to invest, right? Can’t afford any replacement though, so it’s hard decisions all along…
Thanks again for your kind comment, friend 🙂