By Jessica Rowe
Earthquake-rattled Christchurch motorists who have been putting up with third world quality roads now have another headache - their older vehicles cannot take the punishment anymore.
The cracks and the bumps and the potholes are wearing out car shock absorbers in unprecedented numbers, mechanics say their workload's leapt 50 percent.
Undulating roads, pot holes and major slumping are tough on the vehicles, and mechanics say around a third of cars going in for a warrant of fitness need their shock absorbers replaced.
“It’s caused a lot of cars that have been okay up until now, to actually start leaking in the shock absorbers, bushels and suspension, and block air filters from dust from liquefaction around town,” says Motorworks mechanic Keith Reid.
And it is not cheap to fix. Car owners are having to fork out around $250 to replace just one shock absorber – that is up to $1000 a car.
The council says around half of Christchurch’s streets suffered damage in the February quake.
“We are making progress towards the repairs of those roads, most of that repair is what we call ‘makesafe’ before we can come back later and complete the job properly,” says Paul Burden, Christchurch City Council.
More than 50,000 individual road faults were recorded after February, and only 20,000 of these have been repaired so far.
And permanent repairs will not be carried out until underground services are fixed.
It is going to be another five years before the city's roads are back to normal, and until then motorists will just have to slow down if they want to protect their shockies and prolong the life of their vehicles.
3 News