wiper blade

[les]

Bought some wiper blades from Halfords the other day, they actually offer a fitting service. I can sort of understand a childs safety seat, but a wiper blade?

[MarkyB]

People don't want to get their hands dirty, break finger nails or just lack confidence with anything mechanical.

[mike.perry]

I managed to fit a new pair on the Focus all by myself

[picky]

It seems to be the trend nowadays to be completely incompetent with cars. A friend of mine called the AA when he had a puncture, waited 4 hours for someone to come and change his wheel And he didnt understand why I was shocked. I offered to show him how to fit the sparel but he didnt seem keen. Madness.

Anyway got to go, the the electrician has arrived to change the lightbulb in the living room

[MarkyB]

Lots of things are conspiring to stop people doing things, car makers are covering everything up and using bespoke software on their cars.
The government is legislating against doing DIY too.
Next thing you know they will bring back people to put fuel in our cars, it's very dangerous stuff you know!

[picky]

Software doesnt always mean restriction against DIY though, it just means you need a different set of tools. We recently bought an OBD cable, you plug one end into your modern car and the other end into a usb port of your computer. the car collects a list of error messges you can read, along with intake temp, fuel pressure etc things like that. Free software online you can use. Its just a very different approach. and not much use on a morris minor

[MarkyB]

Mostly all you can do with generic software is to read and reset DTCs or trouble codes. This has some value but the things the makers software can do are quite mind boggling.

It seems that many of the things you pay for like more power, auto wipers and other things are in all the cars, if you pay for them, they get turned on.