Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi all after a much stalled restoration of my convertible i am speaking to Charles Ware abut carrying out the bodywork (i am a mechanic), could anyone give me either there own experiances or opinions of them?

any help would be of great help

We are not allowed to give negative comments about traders on here so any responses you get will all have to be positive. All I would say, without predjudice, would be to shop around a bit and compare prices ;-)

yes shop around

and not allways morris mminor specialists

many thanks, does anyone know of any bodyshops in the South Wales area? Not being in the trade anymore i only know about the big shops who would not be interested

We have a few contributors from Wales on here - I'm sure someone will be along to help soon enough.....

We aren't allowed to say negative things about traders, so I shall say no more

You wouldn't happen to be the guy who I had my rear axle off would you?

they did a good job on my traveller

We had Gill's van body done there.

See: http://potteries.mmoc.org.uk/Members_Ca ... n/Gill.htm

NOTE: Just the body though. No mechanicals, engine, etc.

We are not allowed to post negative experiences but no harm in sending a PM with a really bad experience....if any of course...

I think the best is to shop around, however recently I found them to be the cheapest on one or two items and found their service very good certainly better than one or two other specialists.. I only went to them for a "worst case" price so was very very suprised to find them the best price.

I'm no mechanic myself, but I've found the Charles Ware team excellent. They restored my Traveller (inside, outside and underneath) a treat and were good on the communication front. True, the hourly rate's higher than for many local mechanics, and there's VAT on top of all labour and parts, but, personally, I was happy to pay good money for good work. (I also got the odd extra thing thrown in for free.) They're nice people, too, and it's a pleasure to roam around their workshops and backyard: lots of lovely moggies!

Jamesy

I've only had some parts of them, but they have been lovely. Really helpful and very pleasant.

Ken

Just sent you a PM...

I have found them to be a very frendly bunch especially on the spares counter. You have to walk through the workshop to get to the spares dept.and i have stood and watched them doing particular jobs like fitting a windscreen and on another occasion, fitting a gutter to a traveller and they went out of their way to show me how its done. Not sure if i could afford their renovation rates though.

Hmm - I'm sure someone recently posted a very different picture of the 'spares' service ??

I sometimes drop in for spares if I'm in a hurry to get them, as they're just round the corner, though they aren't the cheapest in my experience. And there are some nice people there. And..... as in all things, 'caveat emptor' of course.

Positive: The staff were very friendly when I went there, and they generally had the bits I needed in stock.

Negative: The engineer's report on my mog they restored 8 years ago.

I saw kates car whilst it was actually being fixed..... Not pretty.

The first time I went to cw`s was on a saturday and the staff were very friendly and let us stroll around the workshops its like going back in time the cars there look very good indeed but we were suprised with the amount of filler used on the cars in mid restoration this could be down to the customers budget though, not the cheapest place to buy a moggy but like I said the staff were friendly and seemed to know their stuff.
Tony