smart
Part of things
Posts: 134
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Oct 24, 2020 10:17:29 GMT
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Had a positive experience this morning that actually made me realise how rare that seems to be and how low my expectations are of anything to do with the motor trade! I was a paint sprayer for many years then became a buyer for a large used car dealer so spent nearly 15 years in the trade before I managed to escape! I needed a new tyre on the camper van for its upcoming MOT and wanted a Landsail LS388 to match the other 3. 1 because they are very cheap for a 103 load rated tyre but also they are very hard wearing and good in wet + dry. The only garage near me that sells this brand is Halfords auto centres. This automatically filled me with dread and an image of some 16 year old managing to somehow damage my van carrying out a simple tyre change! Turns out my motor trade snobbery was misplaced! The guy doing the job jacked the car up correctly, used an axle stand and wheel chocks. Then used a breaker bar to remove the nuts, rubber mallet to free the wheel from the hub, cleaned the hub and inner face of the alloy with a wire brush. He then refitted the alloy with new tyre, using a bit of copper grease, half tightening the bolts by hand before using a torque wrench set to the correct torque to finish. Even got the tyre pressure right! To me this is real basic stuff, I’ve painted hundreds of alloy wheels and the above is exactly how I did it. Sadly it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it done properly without a wheel nut gun cross threading my bolts or tightening them to 400nm Owning retro vehicles that need a bit of extra care taken or some knowledge/experience means I find it hard to trust when I hand it over to others to work on them. That’s mainly because my expectations are so low because in my opinion/experience the levels of professionalism are often (not always) very poor. Was nice to actually have a good experience. Am I just being pessimistic because I spent 15 years in the trade and have a very poor opinion of it or are my thoughts the norm here?
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Last Edit: Oct 24, 2020 10:19:17 GMT by smart: Spelling!
1998 Rover 400 Derv
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Oct 24, 2020 10:51:18 GMT
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Sadly it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it done properly without a wheel nut gun cross threading my bolts or tightening them to 400nm This is the main reason I went and bought a big DeWalt impact wrench, every time I have tried to take a wheel off in the past few years I have struggled jumping up and down on a breaker bar until it nearly broke to get my bloody wheel bolts loose!
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Oct 24, 2020 15:46:53 GMT
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Sadly it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it done properly without a wheel nut gun cross threading my bolts or tightening them to 400nm This is the main reason I went and bought a big DeWalt impact wrench, every time I have tried to take a wheel off in the past few years I have struggled jumping up and down on a breaker bar until it nearly broke to get my bloody wheel bolts loose! You need a length of scaff tube longer than the bar.
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Oct 24, 2020 16:07:43 GMT
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This is the main reason I went and bought a big DeWalt impact wrench, every time I have tried to take a wheel off in the past few years I have struggled jumping up and down on a breaker bar until it nearly broke to get my bloody wheel bolts loose! You need a length of scaff tube longer than the bar. I know! The bar would have broken before the bolt came loose though! In fact it started to bend it at the hinge.
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Oct 24, 2020 16:18:40 GMT
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Nice to hear good service being given A few months back I posted on here on seeing my son saving the day for a customer at his workplace ,I was at the garage to pick him up when a local nurse out on call turned up with a poorly sounding car , I forget which make , but my son diagnosed the cambelt was breaking up and needed replacing ASAP Now those boys were due to lock up and go home on that Saturday lunchtime, instead they ordered the belt straightaway from euros Fitted it in less than an hour and got the said lady mobile and back out in the community To say I was proud would be an understatement my lad is 17 years old And knew the severity of the situation and dealt with it with great maturity And that small garages reputation was further enhanced within the local area Customer service is king in any business
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Last Edit: Oct 24, 2020 16:19:32 GMT by Mercdan68
Fraud owners club member 1999 Jaguar s type 1993 ford escort
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Oct 24, 2020 21:09:36 GMT
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Sadly it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it done properly without a wheel nut gun cross threading my bolts or tightening them to 400nm This is the main reason I went and bought a big DeWalt impact wrench, every time I have tried to take a wheel off in the past few years I have struggled jumping up and down on a breaker bar until it nearly broke to get my bloody wheel bolts loose! Last time I got some tyres fitted - I asked them to be fitted to the wheels in the boot. They asked if I wanted fitted back on the car once they were done (as it was very obvious they were the ones it should be on rather than the two temp ones it was wearing at the time). I said no, just fit and balance and put them back in the boot. 15 mins or so later I heard one of the fitters asking the receptionist if they were to be fitted to the car - and she said no. He obviously thought she must have misheard and saw me sitting there so asked if I wanted them fitted on the car. He looked at me like I was completely INSANE for saying no ..for that exact reason - I knew they’d over tighten them with their air tools...so I would prefer to do it myself!
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Oct 24, 2020 22:15:16 GMT
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I think the word must be out in local tyre places here, I've used two different fitting centres for Blackcircles purchases and my regular place for my family wagon tyres, tracking or punctures and all use torque wrenches and I make sure I watch that the torque wrench actually does some tightening up prior to getting to set torque. When I had all the tyres changed on my Boxster at BC they obviously knew about the Porsche etiquette of having the wheel centre cap badges with the point of the shield pointing at the valves Its more the places that do a 'Full service' for £90 that you have to watch for corner cutting!
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Last Edit: Oct 24, 2020 22:15:44 GMT by duggers
Needs a bigger hammer mate.......
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Oct 24, 2020 23:03:00 GMT
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Firstly I'll say, it's the individual, not the company, and you would be right to mistrust places like Halfords that offer zero training before letting school drop-outs loose on a safety-critical part of an automobile - but within that business and many others there are people with a real interest and skill. The yound man that did the work for you deserves some praise for doing the job correctly and independently. However spent nearly 15 years in the trade before I wanted a Landsail LS388 to match the other 3. 15 years should have taught you not to fit Chinese junk to your vehicles. Regardless of how well they are fitted, your camper is now a liability to yourself and every other road user around you (like most cars on the road, lets be fair). Of course many "in the trade" equate 'cheapest' with 'best' so it's no surprise that the trade has the reputation it does to begin with... it's self perpetuating don't you think?
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It's definately the individual. I've had some absolute nightmares at Kiwkfit and won't ever use them again but I'll never forget the one guy who went out of his way to help me. When I had my Lincoln Towncar I wanted the tracking doing and they had it in the ramp for 15 minutes before deciding it was too knackered to do it. "Everything's seized so there's nothing we can do," they said. A fella over heard and asked if he could look before they dropped it and got the gas torch out. He spent 30 minutes carefully releasing all the nuts and then tracked it up perfectly! After this great experience I went back with my next car and they made a right mess of it 3 times over.
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smart
Part of things
Posts: 134
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Firstly I'll say, it's the individual, not the company, and you would be right to mistrust places like Halfords that offer zero training before letting school drop-outs loose on a safety-critical part of an automobile - but within that business and many others there are people with a real interest and skill. The yound man that did the work for you deserves some praise for doing the job correctly and independently. However spent nearly 15 years in the trade before I wanted a Landsail LS388 to match the other 3. 15 years should have taught you not to fit Chinese junk to your vehicles. Regardless of how well they are fitted, your camper is now a liability to yourself and every other road user around you (like most cars on the road, lets be fair). Of course many "in the trade" equate 'cheapest' with 'best' so it's no surprise that the trade has the reputation it does to begin with... it's self perpetuating don't you think? So before buying a set of alloys for my van I suffered from the same prejudice as you for Chinese tyres. When I worked for a dealer in 2012/13/14 they bought a large amount of part worn tyres. The tyres were premium brands and they were bought (from Germany) to replace any Chinese tyre that happened to be fitted to a car we were selling. Customers would be put off buying a car that had Chinese tyres fitted. We kept some of these tyres on a wall of shame because they would be strangely misshapen and worn in ways which showed there terrible build quality. Fast forward to 2019 and I bought a set of VW van alloys for my camper. Downside was they had Landsail tyres fitted which meant I’d have to fork out another £5-600 on new tyres (Khumo or Falken preferably) However the tyres exceeded the load rating I need (very rare on a VW T5 camper conversion!) and had plenty of tread so thought I’d fit them untill I decided what I’d replace them with. To my surprise they were very good. 10,000 miles later including a 1000 mile trip to freezing/snowy Scotland for New Years and a 3000 mile trip to Spain at temps exceeding 40’C and the tyres have been superb. Far far superior in terms of grip/braking ability to the commercial Continental tyres that the van came with whilst having a higher load rating (103 compared to 101 - I’m aware construction is stronger in a commercial tyre) The wear rate is very even and there is no perishing (unlike every Michelin tyre I’ve ever bought) I can’t disagree with you that many people on the road either through ignorance or stupidity are a safety liability to themselves and others but don’t assume I’m one of them. Think of Chinese tyres like Skoda. Rightly or wrongly they were considered a joke in the 70s/80s/90s. By the mid 90s VW were sorting them out, by the late 90’s they were excellent cars. The same thing will happen with some Chinese brands, they now have the technology, it’s their choice whether to use it to produce curse word or quality
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Last Edit: Oct 25, 2020 5:55:39 GMT by smart: Spelling
1998 Rover 400 Derv
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,191
Club RR Member Number: 170
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I wouldn't call it predujice but rather trying to make excuses. I've done it before as have many others.
My sister's Saab came on the 'grippy' LS388s as you put it. I'll admit they didn't feel very different to a Kumho. However, the 325,000 mile Mondeo we gave to her always had on Michelins. She from the get go knew the Saab didn't drive right. I kind of knew why as it was on curse word tyres, sorry, good tyres.
I in the past however, have just driven on the tyres until they die, generally moaning alot.
A year ago, she binned them to fitted a set of Goodyear Eagle F1s onto the car, which for once she paid for despite my dad offering to (he always has done for some reason). To quote my sister
"Why did you let me drive the car around with such curse word rubber? Are you guys actually mad? What on earth is £170 for two things that can transform the drive? Finally, this now drives how I remember that Mondeo driving".
My friend before me didn't think much of it.
FWIW, she's not a tyre snob and doesn't know alot about cars. I tend to fix them up for her, and my dad fund it occasionally.
For me, that was the lesson to not simply live with the tyres. To be fair to those Landsails, they lasted nearly 25k up on the front of it. They've have been useless after the 70BHP remap we did to that car however. It used to spin up occasionally with 150BHP, let alone 220!
I've had poor branded tyres before, which were Continentals oddly. However, they were part-worns, old and with slight shoulder wear from underinflation. Yup, they were £70 for all 4, and I was being very tight. The mad thing? I sold the car because of them.
No car has cheap tyres these days. It's one reason why my Mondeo is still on 17"s and not 18s or 19s as the 17s are near half the price. On the M3 I simply admit it's the cost and I knew that when I bought the car. Pretty simple.
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Last Edit: Oct 25, 2020 9:36:13 GMT by ChasR
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smart
Part of things
Posts: 134
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Oct 25, 2020 11:11:13 GMT
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It’s all about context really. I use my van for camping so lots of miles with couple of hundred kilos of stuff and for that reason I use a ‘cheap’ (probably 10 brands that are cheaper than what I pay for Landsail) load rated XL ‘SUV’ tyres. They offer much more grip, softer ride and are quieter. If I drove round all day with a ton of sand in the back I would use the commercial tyres that the van came with.
I created this thread because I was pleasantly surprised at getting good service from someone who knew what they were doing. Obviously this should be the norm but sadly isn’t always in the trade. You could use the new mid life crisis event that is the VW T5 scene as a prime example. Whether its conversion companies that install rock’n’roll beds with wood screws or all the numpties that fit alloys/tyres from a 1200kg hatchback to a 2000kg Van there is a lack of professionalism in the trade. I think it’s poignant to us because retro cars in particular need that extra bit of care/knowledge from the people who work on them
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Last Edit: Oct 25, 2020 11:14:22 GMT by smart
1998 Rover 400 Derv
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adam73bgt
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,864
Club RR Member Number: 58
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Oct 25, 2020 12:22:56 GMT
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I think it’s poignant to us because retro cars in particular need that extra bit of care/knowledge from the people who work on them Totally agree with this, my brother has a Saab 9000 which he was just about ready to scrap because it had broken down and the first garage he took it to, changed the ignition module and when it didn't fix it, declared the engine to be junk and not worth fixing! I told him to get a recommendation for a better garage (thanks to the East Coast Retros Facebook page here), he took it to the second garage, they diagnosed a small wiring fault and the car ran fine! A bit of professionalism in taking the time to diagnose a fault properly saved him a lot of money and grief. Also without wanting to stoke the tyre debate, I've run Landsails before and they're fine
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Ryannn
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,421
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Oct 25, 2020 12:58:04 GMT
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I’ve never had tyres crack on a daily other than landsails that were on a car when I bought it. Someone had clearly had a puncture and didn’t want to fork out on a matching kumho that was on the other side.
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Oct 25, 2020 13:50:48 GMT
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Chains usually take a lot of stick some justified like anyone else i guess but i have been very impressed with my local Kwik fit . Ive used them for tyres and oil changes and both have been excellent . In winter and needing a oil change i though i would just let them do it for times sake . I think it was £45 and they have a basic check of other componenets as well while they are at it . It would have cost me £35 plus for oil and filter plus doing it in the wet so a bargain .
Tyre fitting has been pleasant as well as about the keenest prices i could find . I used there mobile fitting service as well and it was spot on . The most important thing is communication . I call for a oil change and they ask me what time i want to drop it off , how long it takes when i can collect it and call or text me to tell me its ready . Same with tyres .
I have to say the thing that means the most and is most likely to infuriate me is communication . If you say your going to do something and you don't then that really boils my @@@@ and makes me never want to use you again , whether its calling me to tell me about a situation or not calling me back when you should or in the case of being mobile not turning up when you say without a call or text.
I often get the feeling in a lot of garages that the service is on its head - your the customer but you end up being treated in such a way that you feel like you should be grateful rather than them trying to make sure you get what you need and are happy with the outcome.
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Oct 25, 2020 16:31:31 GMT
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I’ve never had tyres crack on a daily other than landsails that were on a car when I bought it. Someone had clearly had a puncture and didn’t want to fork out on a matching kumho that was on the other side. My factory fitted Pirelli P Zero are 2.5 years old/12k on the front and they are starting to perish! To be fair though they get slagged off on the Mustang forums as not being fit for purpose and everyone bins them for Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S. I would have but I've barely done 500 miles since feb 😥
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Last Edit: Oct 26, 2020 0:20:23 GMT by joem83
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Ryannn
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,421
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Oct 25, 2020 18:28:23 GMT
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I’ve never had tyres crack on a daily other than landsails that were on a car when I bought it. Someone had clearly had a puncture and didn’t want to fork out on a matching kumho that was on the other side. My factory fitted perilli zeros are 2.5 years old/12k on the front and they are starting to perish! To be fair though they get slagged off on the Mustang forums as not being fit for purpose and everyone bins them for Michelin ps4s. I would have but I've barely done 500 miles since feb 😥 I just put Yoko’s on everything except my track car, that gets whatever works out to be the stickiest
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Oct 25, 2020 18:30:46 GMT
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Quite a few years ago now... but we had a shitter of a 1.6 Cavalier hatch - needed an exhaust manifold gasket. Most of the tyre and exhaust places sucked in their teeth when I asked what would happen if a stud broke. Not Kwik fit - we'll sort it sir, and no, no extra charge. price quoted was actually cheaper than most of the other places I tried too. I had looked at the studs and didn't fancy their chances so let them go for it... sure enough, most of them sheared, they replaced the lot, and the gasket, and even gave me a discount because I had had to wait longer than expected - most impressed. Also surprised...
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1968 Mini MkII, 1968 VW T1, 1967 VW T1, 1974 VW T1, 1974 VW T1 1303, 1975 Mini 1000 auto, 1979 Chevette, 1981 Cortina, 1978 Mini 1000 1981 Mini City, 1981 Mini van, 1974 Mini Clubman, 1982 Metro City, 1987 Escort, 1989 Lancia Y10, 1989 Cavalier, 1990 Sierra, 1990 Renault 19, 1993 Nova, 1990 Citroen BX, 1994 Ford Scorpio, 1990 Renault Clio, 2004 Citroen C3, 2006 Citroen C2, 2004 Citroen C4, 2013 Citroen DS5. 2017 DS3 130 Plenty of other scrappers!
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wu11ie
Part of things
Posts: 117
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Oct 25, 2020 18:35:21 GMT
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Regardless of how well they are fitted, your camper is now a liability to yourself and every other road user around you (like most cars on the road, lets be fair). Of course many "in the trade" equate 'cheapest' with 'best' so it's no surprise that the trade has the reputation it does to begin with... it's self perpetuating don't you think? So before buying a set of alloys for my van I suffered from the same prejudice as you for Chinese tyres. Fast forward to 2019 and I bought a set of VW van alloys for my camper. Downside was they had Landsail tyres fitted which meant I’d have to fork out another £5-600 on new tyres (Khumo or Falken preferably) However the tyres exceeded the load rating I need (very rare on a VW T5 camper conversion!) and had plenty of tread so thought I’d fit them untill I decided what I’d replace them with. To my surprise they were very good. 10,000 miles later including a 1000 mile trip to freezing/snowy Scotland for New Years and a 3000 mile trip to Spain at temps exceeding 40’C and the tyres have been superb. Your one experience of Landsails doesn't really equate to the dozens, maybe hundreds, of customer cars that I've repaired or dismantled after accidents, fixed handling issues on, felt nervous driving, and replaced plain dangerous tyres on (new and used) that have been almost to a fault, Landsail, Triangle and Nankang. You can call it prejudice if you like, I call it experience. It also doesn't mean that I think every premium tyre is a good tyre - most Michelins are utter scrap - but when you have a customer car twitching dangerously all over the road and you rotate the Chinese tyres from one axle to another and all the handling issues mysteriously disappear... you've got to question whether they really are all equally good, don't you? If that was just once, maybe it could be considered debatable. And I'd like to point out this: "I can’t disagree with you that many people on the road either through ignorance or stupidity are a safety liability to themselves and others but don’t assume I’m one of them." I did not use the words ignorance, stupidity, or people. Your VAN is what I described as a liability, like other CARS out there. Totally different subject. I'll say no more on your thread anyway. My point was that all this experience and talking about great service - only to then fit sub-standard components - seems incongruous. I'll stick by that.
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