This morning I've entered the next stage of my car mechanic career: I've stopped by the junkyard to get some spare parts for Brenda's car. About a year ago, I broke off one of the door handles from the car (the door was frozen shut, and I underestimated my own strength...). The KIA dealer was happy to replace the handle, for EUR 150 or something silly like that. Considering there was enough of the handle left to operate the door perfectly (after being pointed out which part to hold, mostly), we just left it broken for a year.

A few weeks back, we found a crack in one of the outer mirrors. There was no clue how this happened, but perhaps it got hit by some stray snowball or the winter's cold made it snap. Since the outer mirrors are a failure point for the APK (yearly checkup), we really needed to replace those.

So, this morning I went to a local junkyard, that had an old Kia Pride. It was a ghostly sight, all those half disassembled cars. Some missing wheels, hoods, doors, etc. They had a spare mirror on the shelf, but the door handle was still on the car. I found a blue Kia Pride out back, and after some fiddling disassembled the door handle. I actually quite like this junkyard thing: Not only do you get to do stuff with your own car, you can find out how its done on some other car first, without the risk that you break more stuff while prying something loose.

Just now, Brenda and me put on the "new" parts, so the car is as good as new again (if you ignore the occasional squeeking and creaking, of course), for just EUR 25.

Next up is finally fixing up some rusty spots on the paint of the car, but I'd really like to have some place to put the car inside for a few days for that (lest my fingers freeze off and the new paint won't dry).