Halfords car check...

[stuboy]

Go on take ur old, weird shite...

 

https://www.halfordsautocentres.com/car-care/free-5-point-check

[New POD]

Whats included:

• Headlight & brake light check
• Wiper blade condition check
• Battery health check
• Windscreen chip check
• MOT due date reminder

[Floatylight]

Whats included:

• Headlight & brake light check
• Wiper blade condition check
• Battery health check
• Windscreen chip check
• MOT due date reminder

So there will be a run on batteries and wiper blades then..

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk

[theshadow]

they sure will,nice mark up bulbs,wait for lidl etc???

[Aston Martin]

£15? ?

[stuboy]

dude read it out, i chuckled and said tempting it may sound ill pass

[clayts450]

48 minutes ago, Aston Martin said:

£15? ?

Fuck me, so no different to what I do every Sunday morning on my entire fleet then ? I'm clearly doing this wrong, and need to offer my services for a tenner in a gazebo erected opposite Halfords then, maybe ?

 

ETA :  Autoshite car maintenance, your gullibility is our concern

[stuboy]

4 minutes ago, clayts450 said:

Fuck me, so no different to what I do every Sunday morning on my entire fleet then ? I'm clearly doing this wrong, and need to offer my services for a tenner in a gazebo erected opposite Halfords then, maybe ?

dont forget if u look after partners car, mine owes me 4 years of checks

[LightBulbFun]

"and coolant level check"

bring them an obscure Air Cooled car and say nothing, and act all innocent 

and watch as the poor guy who has probably never seen an air cooled car before, tries to figure out where the coolant bottle is

[martc]

6 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

bring them a well known Air Cooled car and say nothing, and act all innocent 

and watch as the poor guy ....

...opens the bonnet and tells you the engine is missing*.

* you could up the ante and tell him you think there's a spare in the boot and ask him to swap it over.

[big_al_granvia]

fiat 126 anyone????? or ask them to price up a water pump for 1

[Stanky]

Wasn't it someone on here who had a tale of when they took their rubber cone mini to Halfords for an MOT, and when it failed on a cracked spring they asked the tester to show them the offending part, causing some rather hasty scrabbing around, red faces and a suggestion that VOSA might look rather witheringly on such practices if they continued?

[LightBulbFun]

I remember in a similar vein reading on here of a Reliant Robin failing an MOT because of a brake imbalance across the front "axle" LOL

(im not sure how that one happened/turned out in the end tho sadly!)

[lesapandre]

Halfords find themselves in a difficult spot and probably want to encourage shoppers with this 'offer'.

Current analysis:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/04/halfords-issues-another-profit-warning-as-poor-summer-takes-toll

These simple checks are beyond some people. I recently helped someone blow up their tyres. Finding the correct pressure in the handbook that covered multiple models was task in its own right.

[Mally]

1 hour ago, Stanky said:

Wasn't it someone on here who had a tale of when they took their rubber cone mini to Halfords for an MOT, and when it failed on a cracked spring they asked the tester to show them the offending part, causing some rather hasty scrabbing around, red faces and a suggestion that VOSA might look rather witheringly on such practices if they continued?

Someone at my local Halfords owns a rubber coned Mini.

In excellent condition and with every panel a different colour. I must try and remember to take a photo.

[Floatylight]

"and coolant level check"
bring them an obscure Air Cooled car and say nothing, and act all innocent 
and watch as the poor guy who has probably never seen an air cooled car before, tries to figure out where the coolant bottle is

ATS once told a friend of mine his BX needed new shocks & springs..

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk

[tooSavvy]

3 hours ago, big_al_granvia said:

fiat 126 anyone????? or ask them to price up a water pump for 1

No..... Ring ECP... (whichever one is in the box = guaranteed to be the wrong one)

[nigel bickle]

I was sceptical of Halfords, until we bought a little Mazda, a couple of weeks back

it came with a Halfords mot fail. Helpful,y half price, (£20) as the driver worked for them ( fiance to the owners daughter) - so ‘ generous’ natch? Nope.. their fail caused her to lose trust in the car & bin it off. If we hadn’t bought it ( having been highlighted here!) it would have been scrapped. They felt it was terminal

 

So, what did it fail on?

Emmissions. . Despite passing all the tests easily, it failed the smoke test? I see nothing but steam coming out the 3xhaust, diminishing to nothing after 5 mins. It’s a clear as any other car on the road, uses no oil, no sign of any sort of smoke. Yet a fail...

Front  n/s flexi needs doing. Nope - but the metal pipe it’s attached to certainly does ( as does 2 others, not spotted)

Steering column bush wear. Nope - not that anyone can find with vigorous testing

Oil leak excessive.  Presumably that smear on the edge of the rocker cover....not yet a drip.

Seat belt webbing frayed. Nope, nothing anyone can see. Looks as new

Tailgate struts weak. Yes - but when did they ever become part of an MOT? Totally irrelevant

Tyres worn close to limits. We measured them , lowest was 5.5 mm. About 1/3 worn...

Coil springs corroded. Wiped off that advisory rust with a damp rag. 

O/s front flexi Slightly deteriorated.  Really. We can’t see a spec of rust on the ferrules, no cracks, splits or bulging.

Anti roll bar bushing worn.   Nope, not even with a crowbar

N/s rear wheel bearing noisy?   None of can hear/ feel anything when spinning it ip

Subframe mountings corroded. I thought this was the killer, but ( onn8nspection) the areas spotless. There IS a tiny hole on the inner sill ( sorted) but that wasn’t picked up

Rear spring mounting corroded. Absolute Horlicks. It’s close to factory.

 

Its been a very long time since I ve seen an inaccurate test as bad as this - made even worse as he was doing it ‘ for a colleague’.  Had it been us, we would probably have referred it to DVSA.m

Anyway, we went over it carefully, as did our tester , and found a knackered cv boot ( as did they)  & tired metal lines. Could have got them through but we changed them anyway. Brakes, eh? Can’t piss about there. 
 

Look it’s history up. It’s all there.

 

 

[ETCHY]

I once had a Renault 5 auto's headgasket done at Halfords. I was young and bloody stupid, the car was never right again !

[Mrcento]

My experience of Halfords autocentre means not only will i ever go back to a single one anywhere in the country, but i'd happily clip anyones ear that recommended them.

The one near me, there's no other way of saying it, is bent as fuck.

You can put a car in and the criteria is pretty simple, if the boy likes the car, he'll test it. He'll probably not pass it, will fail on something bullshit (something like brake pipes corroded despite then being replaced a month before the test), but nothing that surprise surprise, he won't be willing to fix for a fee. If he doesn't like your car, you're going to have one hell of a fail sheet including the bizarre and the downright impossible, and will simply damage your car whilst looking for more, so determined is the tester to fail it and make it seem beyond repair.

My cinq has painted inner rear arches, a pretty strict MOT place would use the corrosion testing hammer and give an advisory "vehicle is undersealed" even if it passed the mallet test. Not HAC... no, no, they get out a metal ball pein hammer and start rattling the fuck out the inner arches to such an extent, they start taking the paint off and leave the insides looking like the surface of a golf ball.

They also somehow managed to jam a lifter in the engine, presumably because for the emissions, it was cold by the time they got to it and to warm it up, they just bounced it off the rev limiter from cold for 5 minutes.

They then started failing the thing on nonsense like insecure fuel filter (in a metal bracket, exactly as is from the factory, torqued down to spec, unable to move a millimetre), untidy horn wiring (because one part was not clipped down flush on the slam panel at one point) and an ecu diagnostic plug being able to touch the air filter housing if left unclipped from its harness and stretched far enough. Wheel bearings when all are new, Emissions, tyres, brake imbalance, handbrake, insecure battery (that was bolted AND strapped down)

I took it up with the service manager who just laughed when i questioned the faults and he just told me to take the car away and scrap it, they wouldn't touch it again,. (i did say "Thank fuck for that") to the boy,

I drove past my usual place (only used halfords because MOT £20 and my place was fully booked for weeks in advance), popped in and they were laughing at what had been flagged up to such a point, they stopped work, gathered everyone around and looked over some of them, had a laugh that anywhere would act like that and confirmed i'd been done, there was little to nothing they'd flagged on the surface that was close to a problem. They just told me to bring it in to them when i'd sorted the lifter that was ticking away now, when i did that and they tested it, it did fail (on something Halfrauds didn't even flag up, think it was a ball joint boot had a knick in it and was seeping out grease) and passed on all the things HAC had failed it on, including emissions first time.

[willswitchengage]

7 hours ago, clayts450 said:

Fuck me, so no different to what I do every Sunday morning on my entire fleet then ?

A lot of people at this time of year still seem to struggle with the 'have I turned the lights on when I start driving' check.

[strangeangel]

Once, when I was absolutely desperate, I went into Halfords to buy glow plugs for my old C15 van. "Are they the same as spark plugs? We've got those". I shit you not.

 

Having seen the sort of helmets  they employ, there's no way I'd even let them near my push iron that I haven't ridden since 2007, never mind any of my cars.

 

[lesapandre]

6 hours ago, Mally said:

Someone at my local Halfords owns a rubber coned Mini.

In excellent condition and with every panel a different colour. I must try and remember to take a photo.

That's because they take home a different part every week.

[trigger]

My mates girlfriend took her 207 to Halfords a couple of years back using one of their £20 vouchers were it failed miserably and she got quoted nearly £700 for repairs by them, including new headlights and tyres all round from what I can remember, my mate rang me for my advise and I took him to sack them off and take it to a different garagae as the faults didn't sound right to me, the next day he rings me to tell me he took it to the garage next door to his work and it passed with only a couple of advisorys...

[New POD]

1 minute ago, trigger said:

My mates girlfriend took her 207 to Halfords a couple of years back using one of their £20 vouchers were it failed miserably and she got quoted nearly £700 for repairs by them, including new headlights and tyres all round from what I can remember, my mate rang me for my advise and I took him to sack them off and take it to a different garagae as the faults didn't sound right to me, the next day he rings me to tell me he took it to the garage next door to his work and it passed with only a couple of advisorys...

At which point I'd be contacting VOSA because one of the MOT testers is a fucking lying twat or the other is far too lenient. 

 

[trigger]

I'm trying to remember the exact details but I remember my mate saying that the mot garage he used were shocked at Halfords findings.

[Wack]

They're still trying to even up the numbers

The court also heard that, over a four month period, 2,463 vehicles were given an MOT at Mr Hussain’s garage, yet none failed. The average failure rate in Britain during that period for an MOT was 32 per cent.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/8490271.accrington-garage-owner-jailed/

 

[Zelandeth]

Wouldn't touch em with a bargepole...though there is great temptation to take something improbable in there for giggles.  The big chains are always a gamble...though I'm sure there are perfectly decent examples out there and I feel really sorry for them getting tarred with the same brush.  My usual stop for tyres etc these days is the Newport Pagnell branch of Formula 1, and they run a tight ship and have never messed me about or tried to upsell me rubbish.  They did snap a wheel stud on the Invacar, but I was standing right there and it was bad luck rather than incompetence!  They offered to pay for fitment of the replacement, no questions asked.  Though I didn't take them up on that as the incident revealed to me that they were all stuffed.  They aren't all like that though...

I remember Kwik-Fit in Aberdeen being utterly baffled by the engine not being in the front of my Skoda Estelle when they insisted on doing a full check when I got tyres there (was a case of them being the only place that stayed open late enough for me to fit around work at the time).  I also nearly died shortly after leaving the forecourt as my car bounced down the road like a clown car on ice skates...they had stuck 45psi in all four tyres.  About 20 is right in the fronts on an Estelle!

The Bicester branch (while I was at the other end of the country) screwed my husband over by charging £300 odd for work on the brakes on my 107 for the MOT which they never touched.  I didn't find out about that until several months later (as the brakes seemed fine to me, and it was failed on scored discs rather than poor performance)...though I hit the roof when I figured out we'd been done.

Find yourself a good independent and stick with them...might cost you a few quid more in the short term, but it'll save you a fortune in the long run.

Shudder to think how many perfectly decent motors have been scrapped because of these crooks.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

Turn up in a Steam Wagon.

Couldn't quite do that (not that I'd complain at a shot of something steam powered...seeing a Doble up close would be an automotive bucket list item), though I do know someone with a Ford Model T...

[paulplom]

All sounds a bit like British Gash to me.

On another note, The kwickshit in Blyth Northumberland 100% does hooky mots. Passed a mates astra van via dodgy back street garage with cracked discs, subframe hanging partially off. We stripped it down on his driveway as the brakes still weren't right, the pads crumbled and fell to bits and there was still a socket present that had been hammered on to one of the subframe bolts. Along with other stuff. We weren't the only ones to complain either. Was about ten years ago so things might have 'changed'.