Jobs that garages wont take on

[Eddie Honda]

Clutches?

 

[Split_Pin]

I have to say my local garage have never turned down any job I've given them in the 9 years I've been using them, and some of them were likely ballaches on worthless cars. Such as the rear axle on my Corsa or a Renault timing belt.

[Wack]

I use a mechanic in Blackburn, He'll replace a £10 bush rather than fit a £160 wishbone though some of the stuff I've seen him doing I'm surprised he's not chucked it up and got a job in a petrol station, like removing black death from a taxi in lumps, he looked like a coal miner

 

plus there's the jobs that take hours to get a bolt out that nobody wants to pay for , diagnose a difficult to sort problem that everybody else has turned away, get it wrong and you've worked all day for nothing because nobody wants to pay for a car that's still broken and they don't want to pay the full bill when it's finally fixed because you fixed something that wasn't broken even though the symptoms were pointing at it with a big red arrow.

 

Plus when you fix something as a one man band it comes with a lifetime warranty should it ever go wrong again , he put a clutch in an Iveco, 3 months later it went, because the 5 drivers drove it like morons , overloading it and dropping the clutch to try and make the wheels spin they also burned out a reconditioned back axle in under 6 months , I bought the same axle for the same van and when I sold it 2 years on it was still fine

 

I'm not surprised they only want to do services and brake pads

[Split_Pin]

I'm reading between the lines on this thread and it looks like the attitude of customer has a very big part to play in it. I think if you are the sort of customer who accepts that certain jobs, such as changing a PAS rack on a car with a subframe will involve a £100 part but 7 hours labour (and likely outweigh the value of any older car and you dont want it back tomorrow) then you should be OK.

[gordonbennet]

I'm reading between the lines on this thread and it looks like the attitude of customer has a very big part to play in it. I think if you are the sort of customer who accepts that certain jobs, such as changing a PAS rack on a car with a subframe will involve a £100 part but 7 hours labour (and likely outweigh the value of any older car and you dont want it back tomorrow) then you should be OK.

 

Thats exactly it, if you as a customer don't take the piss and are reasonable, and a please and thankyou have been known to help, the right garage will look after you preferably garages operated by the owner, i avoid chains ie fast fit joints like the plague, main dealers too @ £stupid hourly rate plus fit not repair ethos to keep the glass palaces full of receptionists and gell haired suits.

[twosmoke300]

Completely correct - the customers with the best most patient attitude get best / quickest / cheapest treatment . People that are genuinely hard up and let me know in advance ( not when they come to collect ) also get a bit of leeway on the time to pay the bill . Although I have found it's the genuine poor that pay up straight away and usually try and give me a tip .

I would say that if your reg garage starts being silly with prices / attitude then maybe you need to think back if you have been a dick in the past

[twosmoke300]

Oh and diagnostics is not a quick plug in with a 20 quid Argos machine ! It can be hours and hours of unchargeable work using thousands of pounds worth of scanners / scopes etc .

[twosmoke300]

And stop ringing me after 6pm and dinner time ffs .

[Snipes]

Oh and diagnostics is not a quick plug in with a 20 quid Argos machine ! It can be hours and hours of unchargeable work using thousands of pounds worth of scanners / scopes etc .

Why not charge for those hours? You’re providing g a service with specialised gear. We didn’t charge full rate but we did t do it for free, either. It was actually a sore point with the boss at the time; people offering free checks.

[twosmoke300]

It's a difficult thing - often the charge would be over the vehicle value and I'd rather take a small knock now and keep a customer / their friends etc

[theshadow]

the place i know still diagnoses with a 40 .00 scanner,not even  monkeys,still charge vat even though hes not reg,wants a mechanic to work for 65.00 quid a week...

[twosmoke300]

Charging vat and not being registered - report him that's a criminal offence .

I have a relatively cheap £1200 scanner I use for initial code reading but other more in depth but not as user friendly stuff for more tricky jobs

[The_Equalizer]

Half the reason I do work on cars myself is find a decent garage can be a pain. I've had a fair number of dubious experiences yet I never quibble over a job nor fail to pay cash on time.

 

I've got an Indy I use for my Merc, but even he - despite being fairly straight talking - is obviously constantly juggling all sorts of factor when taking on a job. The last time I went to him he spent a good ten minutes saying how much harder 'the game' was. Oddly he's fixed things that I thought would be a right fiddle for little money such as the hood not working (these can be a 'mare on CLKs) for £50 and a seriously annoying squeak on a C-Class which turned out to a broken exhaust bracket, again £50. In turn he was obviously not interested in swapping over an exhaust manifold on the CLK which, when I got round to it, was totally plain sailing. Was it that he'd done one before and it was a pain, the fact the job was probably about six hours (air intake and supercharger needs to come off), or I was supplying the new manifold? I guess I'll never know.

[sierraman]

With clutches I’d guess it’s hard to compete with Mr Clutch on price given that’s all they do.

[twosmoke300]

Did you wince at the thought of paying 6 hours Indy labour to do it ? Maybe the book time was two and he had been bitten on one before and you had given the impression that you wanted it done cheaply so he thought balls to it

[twosmoke300]

With clutches I’d guess it’s hard to compete with Mr Clutch on price given that’s all they do.

Cardboard clutches fitted badly - don't want to compete with that thanks

[Bren]

Guy who sorted the vectra told me he is constantly having to pay for diagnostic courses to keep up - the public don't see this.

 

Another thought - I wonder if the public get stroppy with main dealers after they have enjoyed the "free" coffee?

[The_Equalizer]

Did you wince at the thought of paying 6 hours Indy labour to do it ? Maybe the book time was two and he had been bitten on one before and you had given the impression that you wanted it done cheaply so he thought balls to it

 

I'm more than happy to pay what it takes and really don't think I'm one of those try and nail the cost down to the last penny. I know he'd done one before and, although unsaid, it had been a bit of an arse of a job. He was also very busy with bread and butter stuff. 

[tommytwo]

Interesting thread. I shall be taking my car elsewhere this year after being charge two years running for work that I did not ask the garage to do. Thats after 10 years of using the same garage. I guess that is because they no longer wish to work on 26 year old cars.

 

My previous garage dropped the hood after I told them not to because it tended to jam shut. Only found out when the battery died two days later. Took three days to get it open again. Next garage drove the car into a post getting it into a service bay scrapeing paint off the bumper. No apologies!. Wish I could do my own MoT tests.

[mercrocker]

Place I take the Morrises knows that they only get jobs I can't be arsed with.   I assume they would rather start from scratch than put right one of my fuck-ups.   He is realistic about timing etc and although they do loads of classics he only takes in two at a time because its never just the work that they are booked in for - something is either seized, shears or is worse than the customer thought.   

 

The van thing mentioned above is happening to another garage I use regularly.   They have a fleet contract too and the sheer workload limits what else they can take on.   I think what both businesses appreciate (apart from the money) is that I always have something else to use so I can leave stuff with them and don't need courtesy cars or 5.30pm collections etc. 

 

I treat both garages respectfully, I would probably be a bit shafted without them TBH (and the Merc independent Mrs R. uses) - these relationships take a long time to build up. 

 

The only time I actually got a refusal from anybody was when I had a charging problem on my Citroen GSA and I walked over to a so-called European Car Specialist after it died in town one day.   "Sorry we don't do Citroens" was the only response I could get.....Fair enough, it was a twat to work on sometimes.

[alf892]

Some jobs can go tits up for no good reason.

 

Father Alf used to avoid doing head gaskets on Imps unless he knew the car well.......because he could be letting himself in for a world of pain. Get it stripped and sensibly would want to check rad and have head checked by m/c shop......all of which cost money.

 

Owner would say 'well the last place I'd it for 50 quid so why do you want 150 quid'

 

Well yeah.......but here you are having it done again so 50 wasn't so good.

 

Then you get customers who reckon they could do it themselves but haven't got the time......often a massive pia who should be told to fuck off and do it themselves.

 

Worse are those with mates who know about cars.......

[bigstraight6]

Interesting thread, I am very fortunate as the small local garage business I use for things I don’t fancy doing myself is run by a good friend, he’s an excellent mechanic as is the young chap that works with him and there’s nothing that won’t take on.

I was down there yesterday and there was an old but very tidy Sierra estate that they were swapping the 1.6 pinto engine for a 2.0 litre supplied by the customer, quite a lot of stuff needed swapping over and once the engine was started zero oil pressure! Back to the drawing board on that one then. There was also a 54 plate BMW 320D that had shat it’s engine (no surprises there as BMW diesels are hopeless) and a lump from the local breakers was going in.

All This is very typical of the work they do, and they look after all their customers and charge very reasonable rates.

[Guest Hooli]

 

 

Then you get customers who reckon they could do it themselves but haven't got the time......often a massive pia who should be told to fuck off and do it themselves.

 

 

Customer attitude again. I could do most of the work I put a car into a garage for, but don't have the time/space/tools/inclination to do it. The place I use know that and will say why it'll be a twat/easy job if asked. No problems at all as they know I understand their side of it & won't take the piss.

[pshome]

I found that garages don't like to take jobs on older cars because of the parts situation. 

It maybe a 30 minute job to change break pads and disks, but it may take hours on the phone trying to find the parts. Time the customer does not pay for. On top of this, once found, the parts may take days to arrive while your car blocks an otherwise revenue generating lift or workspace. 

I usually tell the garage up front that i will take care of getting the parts once they told me what they need and that there is no problem to park the car wherever there is space until the bits arrive. Makes both sides feel better: i am sure good quality parts are being used and the garage need not worry about hard to find parts.

[twosmoke300]

One policy I do have is that if customers supply their own parts and they are wrong / faulty then they will get charged for doing it twice if I have to .

[pshome]

One policy I do have is that if customers supply their own parts and they are wrong / faulty then they will get charged for doing it twice if I have to .

 

i think that is perfectly acceptable... at least to me as a customer it is.

[rantingYoof]

My local trusted garage is a two-guy operation and charges £40ph labour, which is quite competitive for the area. He has a two-post lift outside his workshop and inside the workshop are cabinets of tools arranged in a manner that brings James May to mind.

 

He normally has supermini shite parked in there, and he is quite forthcoming with what he will and won't touch in terms of jobs and/or whole vehicles. When I was ringing around for cambelt changes on Supernaut's Omega he noped out of it sharpish (as did most places actually!). My dad manages to get him working on the 3.0 CDTi Signum by virtue of being a long-term customer who pays immediately without any quibbles and recently blanked off the EGR valve to try and improve its running but wouldn't contemplate anything more than that 'because it wouldn't be worth it on that thing'. He paled when he first saw my dad's XF and said 'you're not going to expect me to come near that are you?'

 

He services my car which I think remains straightforward enough to not attract any criticisms although he recently confirmed that the rattle from the gearbox when my car was idling is likely to be the dual mass flywheel, and this prompted a tirade against such pointlessly expensive components that just go wrong and cost a lot of money. If I asked for a new clutch/flywheel I would be surprised if he took the job. I'm not sure what the book time is on a DMF/clutch on an S60 but the parts alone are around £400 looking at eBay.

 

I'll go to him until I drive something that he refuses to touch as he's excellent and I appreciate his bluntly polite honesty.

[twosmoke300]

The problem with turning down modern stuff is you will end up with next to no work ! Or just welding up rusty rubbish .

[richardthestag]

round my way I had a bugger of a job finding anyone who could choon up a pair of twin stromburgs. 

 

specialists could do it but had a 5 month leadtime on workshop space. good for them I say.

 

did it myself in the end courtesy of Mr Gunsons.

 

local garages I have tried will not touch anything when I supply parts, too much risk on them which I can understand.

 

Also shitroen particulate filter change and reset. nooooo way. Citroen main agent did it though so no real issue

 

anything to do the Range Rover transmission they wont go near nor Jag X308 gearbox faults!

 

I cannot blame them for any of the above, they are in business and do offer suggestions and are brutally honest about why they dont want to do the job. 

 

I help a few local chaps out who also have staaaaags and just couldnt find folk to fix them this side of the end of summer.

[richardthestag]

The problem with turning down modern stuff is you will end up with next to no work ! Or just welding up rusty rubbish .

 

My prob is garages only wanting to take on stuff they can plug in to diags