Bleeding Brakes!

It was my birthday last week. With characteristic eccentricity my mother didn't just give me a keepsake to mark the occasion. She wanted me to have something that I would genuinely like and realised that she wouldn't know what to buy. Instead she gave me a cheque and the task of both cashing the cheque and buying my own present.

I work nearly full time and the nearest bank that is open on a Saturday is a 15 mile round trip from my house with difficult parking, I wasn't delighted about the "chore" component of my present.

This is what she eventually gave me.

It's, not a hookah pipe, it's not a bong, and it's not some sort of marital aid. It's a manual pressure bleeder for the brake system in a car. Ordinarily you need either a friend, an airline, or a spare tyre. With this system you half fill the vessel with brake fluid and pump it up to 10psi or so. It screws onto the master cylinder reservoir and then you have the whole system under pressure and the fluid being constantly topped up. You can bleed the brakes perfectly without assistance and changing all the fluid in the system becomes the work of minutes. It's just what I've always wanted – for the last few weeks since my friend lent me one.

Richard "billy-no-mates" B