Auto Service News

It seems like this news section is dominated by composite doors and not running a garage and recovery service as it started out as. The trouble is, that has just about been the story of these few monthe nothing new or different has really happened, so I am afriad it is another bit of me anout composite doors.
I decided that because the garage was pretty much a safer place after having that side door and the one at the front of the garage fitted, I should get a composite door for home too.
So it was ordered, in black if you are wondering, delivered 10 days later because my wife wanted a particular glass esign and then fitted the next day. Pretty much trouble free except the day i waqs fitted was the only day it rained in a fortnight.
So composite doors, am I a fans? Well pretty much yes as I have boought three of them in pretty much the same number of months, mainly for security reasons, after someone has tried to get into your business or home, it is funny how we change our priorities. We have some American stuff to talk about next time, so these composite doors stories may be goen for good or least for a little while.

As you know we do a fair bit of vehicle recovery if they should breakdown away for home, so we were a bit surprised to what happen just recently. We got a phone call from a motorist who said he had broken down and could we recover his car back to our garage, which we did wondering why he didn’t want us to look at it by the roadside. We couldn’t work on the car straight away anyway as the garage was full and we had to finish 1 or 2 jobs first but then we would get on to it. So he left and said he would be back soon.

Then we get a phone call from this guy stating that the AA would soon arrive at the garage to look at the car and get it started and would we leave it outside to do so. I found this strange and insisted he paid for the recovery charge at this point, which he did. The AA Patrolman turned a bit later also a bit surprised and possibly a bit embarrassed to find himself working on a car we have recovered back to the garage. He couldn’t understand if this guy had AA Roadside Assistance, why he would have called the garage out to recover the car first and be hit with that bill. The AA patrolmen did a good job and 20 minutes later the car springs to life and work done.

So when the guy turns up to collect his car I asked him, why did he pay for recovery and then get the AA out to fix the car? He then told us that he didn’t think the AA would be able to fix it by the roadside and because he only had an AA Roadside Assistance policy and not a recovery one, he was worried that the car would have been towed to the nearest garage rather than ours, which he said he trusted.

So i asked him, why he did not get the AA out first and if he had not been able to fix the car, then ring us up to pick the car up? He then froze and you can hear the brain ticking, “never though of that” was the reply and an embarrassed motorist drove away in his car, with a recovery fee paid

The great thing about lighter nights is things calm down, the bad thing is cash flow. Our roadside assistance service has slowed down a bit recently since the snow has gone and to empty someone permanently on nights can cost more than what we get in return. This sort of a middle sate, as in one hand very few people are going on holiday and knocking the miles and breakdowns, and in another the really cold nights have just about gone.

Cars that were going to struggle with the winter months, have probably already failed and been repaired. So I sit down and start changing the priorities on the garage, form night call out roadside assistance duties, to servicing and possibly a new salvage project.

We have been looking at some American salvage projects lately, but that is for another blog post. Good luck with Toyota that seem to be having all these recall issues, I have worked only on a few of these why? because in my opinion they rarely breakdown, but of course there have been serious issue with these in the USA, lets hop none over here.

OK our mini excavator got to work hard as the sow kept comming down and down, These little vehicles are excelent in the snow and their rubber tracks can cover just about anything at any low temperature. But we must have given it too much work as eventually these rubber tracks snapped and this little excavator was going no where. So thanks to the internet and in a few days, minimax parts had sent out a new rubber track set. In fact I want to mention minimax rubber tracks a bit more, because when everything stopped, somehow their delivery got through and it was only for this delivery we were able to clear the garage yards and forecourt and get our recovery vehicle out. Each morning, when someone got in. the first job (after a cup of tea) was to get in to the little unit and move the sow to an area, which normally has parked cars on, but there were not many thereat this time. I know most of you do not have a mini excavator, well there are worse things ot buy with our British winter

It will be no surprise to you all if I was to say our car breakdown cover service has got extremely busy is a short period of time. The call outs are a mixture of cars breaking down at night with the extra battery power needed for the cold weather and the mornings where the normal most reliable car suddenly does not want to start on the way to work.

The night time call outs have been the easiest to sort. Normally a good battery booster can give the extra power to get the most stubborn of car started again, if not the jump leads get attatched to the recovery vehicles batteries. We makes ure they have enough juice tio get home under their own steam, checking the alternator.

The morning breakdown cover call outs have been a different story. In nearly all cases the lack of starting has been becuase of cylider head issues in that the owner did not check antifreeze levels and now the car wont start becuase of water in the cylinder. What is ironic about this, is that is most cases you can still get away with a few days driving before the car will not start. Yet these owners, still did not get the car seen to when clearly they knew they had an issue.

Anyway, this is money for us, this is what we do and to be honest, if everyone maintained their cars the way they ought to, we probably would not be in business, with the exception if servicing.

Yes I hve been poorly, something my wife calla “Man Flu” and yes I have been away fromt the garage. I have come back and of course we are no further on with our salvage projects, everyone is in a bad mood because the garage it starting to get cold and we have not brought the big heater blowers in yet.

I hate this time of year with the dark nights and really do hate bonfire nights etc. It gets too cold and we need to work wioth the lights on, raher than sunlight. It is one of the downsides of working on cars, is the enviroment you are working in. On saying this, it isn’t half as bad as what our riadside recovery guys have to di, especially if they answer a call hrough the night. Lying under a car on the side of a duel carriageway at midnight is not the my idea of a good job, which is why I employ others to do it.

It will not be long before cars will not start and those without breakdown insurance will be ringing us up to help. It is a good job too, becuase there is good money to be made with 24 hours recovery service, i often wonder why many do not buy national breakdown cover, currently the Green Flag are doing this for a mere £20, less the Friday night’s beer.

No thta is not why I was ill. now it is time to get back to work.

The holiday period seems to have started early this year with quiet a few breakdown recovery call outs from motorists out of town. It is sometimes quite amusing (but not for the customer) to see what people are driving and their expectations of how far the vehicle with 3 passengers will actually take them.

OK I’d admit these old Nissan Micra’s are great little cars. Even at the age of 15 years, it is very likely these cars will start first time, still not cost much for MOT’s ,get your kids to school and ideal for regular trips to the shops. But when you fill them with 4 heavy people, try to squash luggage into the back, the rear screen and under the seats, fill it up with petrol and drive at 80 mph down the motorways, there is a god chance that you are pushing the car just a bit too much. I suppose what surprises me much is the speed they expect to get to their destination and a lack of understanding of what pressures they are putting under an old car.

What is even more surprising id why they do not invest 30 pounds on a breakdown insurance policy even if it just to cover that 14 day UK camping trip. Look, I am not expensive, but I can tell you I charge for than 30 pounds to call out to a car and if I have to tow it off a motorway, a lot more. We haven’t even talked about the cost to repair the vehicle. I know about cars, work on them everyday, but I still have a recovery package for when I am away from home and my own trucks cannot pick me up.

It is only June and I am looking for a bumper summer as many Brits stay at home this year due to the financial turmoil this country is in, it will be good business for me, if they do not prepare for their holiday by buying breakdown insurance.

The beginning of February was just too busy to do any more updates here with the spell of bad weather. We needed to double the staff on 24hr call out duties to try and cope with the demand for breakdown recovery. Of course we struggled like everyone else, not its being able to cope with the demand but the bad weather was stopping us getting to stricken motorists also.

As the police were telling all motorists to stay at home we were out there, trying to get around stricken vehicles and fallen trees. At one time we ourselves had to be rescued as one of the guys misjudged a corner and slip off into a ditch. Luckily the ditch was not that deep and after a tow from a friendly competitor and he was on his way again 30 minutes later.

Some of the national breakdown insurance companies gave us a ring on a few nights to help motorists that they could not get to, because of time. There was a real chance of catching hyperthermia and unprepared motorists ignored warnings and headed towards remote areas, armed only with a mobile phone, assuming that if they got into trouble, he would be the only call out. How wrong they were, with many waiting hours, until previous calls were finished first.

The national breakdown insurance companies also struggled, so rather than having at best unhappy customers and at worse, dead customers, they rang us and other breakdown recovery services to help get to some of their workload. One new programme quoted that demand was 40 times the normal and all emergency services were stretched and as usual the UK seemed to be less prepared than other countries, even though we knew it was coming.

The result was less staff in the garage and a few cars got fixed a bit later than planned, so a few complaints came our way, even though the customer had nowhere to drive and in fact should not have even picked the cars up with amount of snow on the roads. The roads even just outside of our garage was littered with future salvage projects as drivers thought they could get from A to B on the same time as before. As the media pounded us with images it seemed that eventually the message got through and many decided to stay at home, so the call outs gradually got less.

Forgot to tell you about our Ferrari experience and believe it or not it was not our first time. The first time that is to get a call out regarding a Ferrari that had broken down about 2 miles from our garage. I would love to say it was a great driving experience taking that Ferrari back put on the road on a test drive after getting it started again, but it would be a lie. Because just like the first Ferrari call out we got about 2 years ago, there was strict instructions not to touch the car.

Please take the car away from the roadside and lock it up somewhere safe until it can be picked up and taken to a proper Ferrari specialist, was the message. The experience was an amusing one and to be honest we did look under the hood, to the rear if you know what i mean to see if there was something obviously wrong, as we could not see anything within a few seconds, we closed the hood and pushed the car into a safe spot in the garage.

We never met the owner and even though we took some photos we thought it would be inappropriate to publish them here, so our Ferrari experience ended when another recovery vehicle turned up and winched this 430 on to the back.

I had driven a few Ferraris before on a driving experience day. I can see why someone would want to own such a performance machine, but to be honest even if I could afford one, I would still refrain from owning one. It would be cheaper going to a driving experience once a month, which is just about how much most Ferrari owners get to drive the or cars anyway and never in the way they were designed to be driven, fast on a track.

We are all allowed our opinions and I have one from experience regarding cheap breakdown cover or annual protection as a whole. There are times when this can be valuable and I can tell you that my call out fee is more than the cheapest roadside assistance policies available from certain breakdown cover organisations. But what I believe really happens is that most people never need to call out an engineer and that most people do not need breakdown cover at all and therefore they are not buying cheap breakdown cover at all.

When speak to clients they normally tell me this is the first time in years that they have needed and emergency service and even though they know they are going to get quiet a high bill, when they take into account the years they have not bought an annual breakdown cover policy, they believe they are ahead on the deal.

Just because I am an engineer does not mean my cars cannot breakdown either. In fact I would say I put far more attention into my customers’ cars than my own. The last thing I want to do on my day off is to work on my cars also. What I can say is that in the last 7 years I have never broke down in any vehicle i have owned. I am sure this is common throughout most drivers, the fact is many people buy so called cheap breakdown cover every year for decades and never need to call someone out, so is this a cheap option or not.

I believe, so as long as you know who to ring when something happens and you make sure your car is serviced correctly, you will still be ahead in the money stakes should you need to make an emergency call. As I said at the beginning, this is an opinion only.