Morris Minor Owners Club

Remember, the Titanic was built by professionals, The Ark by amateurs.
http://www.wheels-inmotion.co.uk/forum/ ... r=all&st=0

MarkyB wrote:Remember, the Titanic was built by professionals, The Ark by amateurs.
http://www.wheels-inmotion.co.uk/forum/ ... r=all&st=0

Thanks, saved that site to favorites, horrific.

hours of fun there!
might help remind me to recheck everything is tight

The Alfa one made me laugh. Ive had to correct a few like that after some monkey has been playing mechanic

Some of that stuff is shocking. Whats with that AMG rim?

Thats why my beloved only goes in for MOT and tracking.BODGERS!

Not all of us are 'Bodgers'

No, In fact there is one minor trader who is pretty much the only person I'd trust with my car

Not all of us are 'Bodgers'

Indeed - the firm that posts those threads do it because they do it right.

My absolute fave was the Alfa rear trailing arm assembled randomly, and more like a picasso painting when compared to the other side.

Shocking was the EXTEMELY scrubbed tyres caused by taking a car with good tracking and totally messing it up - then telling the owner that it needed the suspension replacing! I could have done a better job of the tracking by eye.
Or the Mondeo with a misaligned rear wheel where they played with the front tracking and couldn't work out why it still drove badly...

I had a bad garage experience with my first Minor - allowing them to do some work for the MOT which they made a hash of. That included their letting the YTS kid do welding repairs, bodging a trunnion pin, cutting and shutting a brand new exhaust etc....
I've never let a garage work on one of my Minors since then. I'm not perfect either - especially in my old age! I'm usually very good, but about 3 or 4 years ago I serviced my Vectra and didn't torque up the front wheel nuts The rumbling sound was familiar so I realised n the first drive... when I was young I had the same noise on a Talbot Samba after my dad had changed the wheels round. It must run in the family

We've all done that at some point Ray. The trick is to learn from it.,...

my worst ever mess up...

I serviced a Civic, including an oil change. As the car is so low I took the front up on wheel ramps. I continued to do some maintenance underneath and moved the old oil container "out of my way".
When finished I reversed off the wheel ramps. I'd managed to position the (full) old oil container in the driving line at the end of the ramp so the wheel landed on it and it got crushed by the tyre. The container wrapped round the wheel leaving only a small gap each side and therefore shot oil with high pressure/flow all over the brakes

It took a LONG time to clean it all off from the brakes and strut and tyre. Although I tried to clean them, it needed new brake pads.

Guess what one of the sevice jobs had been? I'd fitted new disks and pads the day before

Jonathon, having been in your white rocket at the National calling you a bodger couldn't be further from my mind.Genius more likely.
I was merely commenting on the workmanship shown on the site, although Minor bodgers probably exist somewhere.
The mum of a friend of mine managed to find a garage that left a bleed nipple undone after changing brake fluid-luckily the car had dual circuit brakes.

no offence taken LD, only jesting in my post. but seriously there are traders to be wary of so your comment does have relevance
Glad your track experience was enjoyable, ( not sure about genius though)

Longdog wrote:although Minor bodgers probably exist somewhere

Yep, in [moderated ]

It's like anything else really; you get good and bad. There are some pretty crummy solicitors out there and of late, the bankers haven't done such a good job either. It isn't just garages and builders who have charlatans among their ranks.

I think a good amateur will do a better job than a bad pro but a good pro is hard to beat (Especially if time is of the essence). The question arises as to how you define "Pro". I am in the bike trade, though I have general engineering experience (Indeed it is only recently that there has been any kind of recognised formal training for cycle mechanics), which I think can stand you in good stead for many practical jobs.

Often people opened bike shops because they were cyclists, which in itself, is not a good enough reason. One person, who springs to mind, was a carpenter by trade. He fitted a new headset (Steering bearings) to a bike. The race, that sits on the fork crown, is an interference fit on the crown. There are various sizes but in this case, the race had an ID of 26.4 mm and the fork crown needed cutting to 26.5mm. There is a cutter, which does this and it also faces the crown at 90 degrees to the steering column. Our bike shop proprietor tried to do the job with an angle grinder (Slipping in the process) and made a mess of it. We had to build the thing back up with braze and recut it. Many people might dismiss bikes as being "Simple", which up to a point they are, though not as "Simple" as some who try to work on them. It certainly isn’t the sort of thing that you want to fall apart on you at over 40mph!!

Perhaps these days, with there being fewer skilled people about, it will get harder to find good people. It is also the case that some people expect tradespeople to work for peanuts (Often having little idea of what is involved), so it is sometimes a double edged sword.

I try to do as much of my own work as I can (Time permitting). I have had work done by one well known Minor specialist, who won't be doing any more for me. They did a five speed conversion, which I have now to rectify . Until I have done the job, I shall say no more but suffice to say the firm concerned showed little willingness to rectify their mistake. Had my car been used more, the fault would have shown up sooner, within a guarantee period but the fault is the result of poor workmanship and poor communication at the firm concerned. The pity of it is that they have some capable welders there for bodywork.

By contrast, some years ago, I owned a racing car. I needed an exhaust system for it and I took the car to an exhaust maker. The proprietor was a former tool maker and his workmanship was faultless. Not only was the system beautifully finished but it was efficient, thus enhancing the power of the engine. He was a good man at the top of his trade.

but seriously there are traders to be wary of so your comment does have relevance

Indeed. I just had a drive in a 51 plate Passat. Georgeous car - just what I want, everything is right but I just don't trust the trader. The forecourt had changed names so many times over the past 10 years and when I popped my head round the door there were 3 blokes there who all behaved as if they owned the place.
I whiffed a bucket of cod and started looking elsewhere.

The last time I trusted my car to have a set of tyres put on it was some years back on a Metro . It wouldn't be fair to name the chain but the first letter is K and they are quick.
The tyres were on one of their special advertised promotions, and when fitted, they made the car sound like a bus! Shrug of shoulders "what do you expect for budget tyres" was the answer. Then 10 days later I had a letter from tyre importer saying there was a serious safety fault with that tyre batch and I should return immediately to the fitting centre for a free replacement set. This I did, showing the letter to them. They happily changed the tyres and balanced them, which was a plus, I thought, as I hadn't paid for that option in the first instance.

So, what is the gripe?

First, the Manager noted on the computer transaction that I hadn't paid for balancing the first time, so ordered the fitter to take the balance weights off! Then he asked for my copy of the original bill. This I had neglected to bring, assuming that the covering letter from the tyre importer, naming the fitting centre and tyre details, and my details, would be sufficient.

But no, the Manager then explains that he can't supply exchange tyres without proof of purchase, and tells the fitter to take them off and re-fit the dangerous tyres. When I remonstrated with him over this, he called me a f****ing trouble maker (customer relations-what are they?)
At this point I demanded to speak to his head office. He laughed as he pointed me to the phone, telling me they wouldn't be interested.....

I ended up speaking to a Mr Tom Farmer, Managing Director, in Scotland.

He did, however, seem concerned!

I don't know what he said to the, now worried looking Manager, when I passed the phone over, but very shortly they were re-fitting the good tyres that they had just removed after having refitted the dangerous tyres that they had removed at first (I think thats right!) They even re-balanced them, and checked/set the tracking as a goodwill measure!

As I turned the car onto full lock to drive away, the tyres screamed on the floor. I had seen how much they had wound the tracking out by, so took my 19mm spanner out of the boot and reset it back to approximately where it had been originally, ignoring all the protests of "you can't work on your car in here", etc etc...

The following Thursday I noticed an advert for a managers position at this establishment appear in the local paper!

About a week later I had a letter from K.........ts Customer relations department, stating that due to the events of that fateful day, I was no longer welcome at any of their branches! Thank God for that

Hmmm, Hardly good customer relations there...

First, the Manager noted on the computer transaction that I hadn't paid for balancing the first time, so ordered the fitter to take the balance weights off!

So they had your bill up on the screen, but manager then refused to supply the replacements! priceless

The ban was probably for working on your car on their premises!

At a similar establishment ~20 years ago on my mum's car I was told that both wheels needed adjusting to set the tracking... the left one in, and the right one out (by exactly the same amount!).
The kid using the equipment looked confused when I said "so the current setting won't hurt the tyres at all then.Thanks, I'll leave it just as it is"

I can't see how a new set of tyres should require a tracking reset anyway. I think it's all about reducing the possibiility of customers coming back with complaints about severe wear issues within weeks because the set up was way out before they even entered the tyre depot.
Do they have a disclaimer over tyre wear if the tracking isn't set?