The grumpy thread

[Mr_Bo11ox]

It cant be that difficult i wouldnt have thought, is it the 1.9 diesel?Can you manage without the van for a couple of days?

[Minimad5]

Good luck with the job Minimad.

Thank you very much (As afew people have commented on the lack of pay with the motor trade)...I have been told that the motor trade is not that well paid,And to be honest its not the money i am after.But instead the experience, excitement and joy of working on cars.No matter the weather if there is a job to be done on a car i will do itIf anyone is after big money i have heard surveying is big moneyand welding.A young lad who lives 2 doors down does welding and has a nice little MGF and is no older than early twenties, who is on a rather big wage packet.Good luck with everyone applying / looking for work or apprenticeships(By the way get onto www.rolls-royce.com/apprenticeships if you want an apprenticeship as they have raped my college with posters - Yes i have applied)

[pogweasel]

It cant be that difficult i wouldnt have thought, is it the 1.9 diesel?Can you manage without the van for a couple of days?

No Reg_Bo1, it's a 1.5 DCi thrashfest... could manage for a couple of days I suppose... Need to fix up, look sharp and get my BMW mot'd for standby duty first though.

[pogweasel]

If anyone is after big money i have heard surveying is big money

ahahahahahahahahahaha*falls off chair**rolls on floor*Not my sort it's not!If you get some good breaks or are prepared to undertake shitty/risky work then you can make some OK coin, but alot of the time you'd be better off stacking the shelves in Tesco. At least that is a secure job.

[Minimad5]

What line of surveying are you in Pog ?I don't know first hand thats why i said "I have heard" as me and my tech teacher were talking about jobs and what i want to be and so on and so forth.She said her brother (or something like that) is a surveyor for a big chemical plant and has to do alot with containing certain items and chemicals and all that, and he is on just over £70,000 a year.Which is considerably more than she gets £35,000

[garethj]

Pog, can you do the cambelt with the old trick of sliding the old belt off towards the engine block and sliding the new belt on, then cutting the old one out and pushing the new one all the way home? Saves lots of faffing about with lining the cam up againIs the cambelt tensioner easy to get at?

[pogweasel]

What line of surveying are you in Pog ?I don't know first hand thats why i said "I have heard" as me and my tech teacher were talking about jobs and what i want to be and so on and so forth.She said her brother (or something like that) is a surveyor for a big chemical plant and has to do alot with containing certain items and chemicals and all that, and he is on just over £70,000 a year.Which is considerably more than she gets £35,000

I do land & dimensional building surveys. Here's a link to my site: http://www.surveyandmapping.co.uk/It's not a bad job, but you have to be prepared to take a gamble to get the good £'s. I actually make more working as a sub-contractor than I do on my directly commissioned work, whih is crazy, and I obviously have to front alot of costs to keep things rolling. When I was employed in london, permanant, full-time etc, with overtime and bonuses, I would typically make about £40k, but that was in the 'boom times'. Things are much tougher now, but I'll struggle on. It's a case of feast or famine at the minute, I'll have 6 or 8 really mad weeks then nothing for a month which makes things 'interesting'.Starting at the bottom rung, assistant/junior salaries are about 14k basic.

[Minimad5]

Aah cool :)I only know what i was toldLets hope you start raking in the cash

[shite_meister]

I'd like to have a go at working in a parts department. That way I can use my skillz for remembering stupidly unimportant details and get paid for it.

...and have some old twat whinge at you because the manufacturer has chosen to ask £35 for a set of car mats, it used to really piss me off having people assume I just made the prices up myself, thats the price so buy them or fuck off.I'm in the parts dept of a commercial vehicle garage now which is a friggin nightmare, all trucks are built to a customer's orders so you can't just remember the basic body because it could have anything fitted and Jersey has different vehicle laws so axles are changed-total nighmare but at least we don't get wankers moaning about the cost of touch-up paint.

[Cavcraft]

What line of surveying are you in Pog ?

 

I don't know first hand thats why i said "I have heard" as me and my tech teacher were talking about jobs and what i want to be and so on and so forth.

She said her brother (or something like that) is a surveyor for a big chemical plant and has to do alot with containing certain items and chemicals and all that, and he is on just over £70,000 a year.

Which is considerably more than she gets £35,000

Would that be near Ellesmere Port by any chance?

[wuvvum]

Yo Pog

 

 

Is this you?

[Mr Lobster]

I have been told that the motor trade is not that well paid,And to be honest its not the money i am after.But instead the experience, excitement and joy of working on cars.No matter the weather if there is a job to be done on a car i will do it

Thats a good attitude to have. But, the motor trade really isn't well paid. I don't mean a bit less than other industries but a lot. The rise of big dealer groups has vastly changed the industry, and not for the better. The excitement of working on cars soon wears off when you spend years getting qualified and end up with a ok but by no means great wage, working against a manufacturer book time and under constant pressure. I know a lot of technicians and an awful lot of them aren't having much fun in their jobs.I don't want to put you off but think about it before you do it. I've been in the motor trade 18 years now (started at a tiny Renault dealer in Blackburn in 1992) and I suppose I've done ok. But if I could start again I'd do something very different.

[pogweasel]

Is this you?

No. I'm not quite so photogenic. Plus iStock-photo is much easier/cheaper...

 

Here's me at work:

[Timewaster]

Heres a post I put on another forum recently:

 

Originally Posted by Shredtheibanez View Post

i'm currently 17 looking to get into the motor trade. What do you think?

You want my advice?

 

DONT!

 

For every decent job in the trade, there is a dozen shit ones with lousy pay.

 

In an independent garage you will get old shit to work on, who's owners aren't prepared to spend a penny more than they have to.

 

In franchised dealers you stand a good chance of working for some jumped up prick in a cheap suit who is timing how long you take for a piss break (this actually happens!) and booking in 15 hours work and expecting you to get it done in 8, just so he can get a bonus.

Plus you have to endure the insult of being paid £10 an hour while your work is being charged out at £50.

 

Running your own garage usually means spending as much time chasing unpaid bills as doing any work. Plus you have a mountain of regulations to adhere to, expensive specialist tools to buy, stuff that has to be dealer programmed, long hours, working weekends, rent, rates, waste disposal costs... it goes on and on and on

 

Golden age of the motor trade has long since gone.

[Minimad5]

What line of surveying are you in Pog ?

 

I don't know first hand thats why i said "I have heard" as me and my tech teacher were talking about jobs and what i want to be and so on and so forth.

She said her brother (or something like that) is a surveyor for a big chemical plant and has to do alot with containing certain items and chemicals and all that, and he is on just over £70,000 a year.

Which is considerably more than she gets £35,000

Would that be near Ellesmere Port by any chance?

I don't know, she just mentioned what his job entailed and his salary

I will ask though

[Minimad5]

Thats a good attitude to have. But, the motor trade really isn't well paid.I don't want to put you off but think about it before you do it.

Yeah i understand were you are coming from, and i would prefer to work at a classic vehicle repair centre rather than a mainstream garage as i am not the worlds biggest fan of "We now fix cars with computers and just wait"The whole idea of a Mechanic fixing a car is the MECHANIC not a blooming computer. (I know 9 out of 10 times computers are only used for diagnostic use, but still it's super crazy the way the world is going)I have had the priviledge of working in a garage for a short while which was unpaid. (The lack of money did not bother me)But what did bother me is the way they carried out the workFor instance a certain car ... lets call it car "A" came in to get its tracking done, and breaks bled.This was done by using a bit of sandpaper, to scrape the dirt off the track rod ends which appeared like it had been atleast attempted with an object.The bleeding of the brakes was then done by taking the rubber dust cover off the nipple, loosening it to let abit of fluid out and tightened up againWhich to anyone looking could appear like the work was carried outThis p*ssed me off no end, and i complained to "Mr" who earned lots of money and sat in an office.He promptly told me to shut up or leave.After this i asked if i could do the majority of the servicing (as i was not happy with the way i had seen work carried out.)i was shocked when i got the green light but only because i was not getting paid, meaning more money for "Mr"Which in the end just shows how cr*p the money is in the motor trade.And how desperate certain high end companies are to meet there quota.I would like to go self employed but i don't have the fundsSorry to rant on Mr Pog- may i add you look a rather young chap in your picture.

[pogweasel]

I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated.

[r.welfare]

Pog, what year is your Kangoo? I think my copy of Autodata only goes as "new" as 2004, but at least that will give the book time for the job, if it's on there.A colleague had a similar issue with his 307HDI - got quoted £400 for a cambelt change, it's only 3.3 hours and an OEM belt and tensioner on the Bay is 70 notes, so that's a stiff hourly rate (Pug main dealer, naturally).

[Minimad5]

Pog, what year is your Kangoo? I think my copy of Autodata only goes as "new" as 2004

Mine goes upto '07Is yours CD3 ?pop us the engine code if you don't have it covered**edited**

[r.welfare]

Mine's CD2. Bloody useful it is too.

[Minimad5]

Mine's CD2. Bloody useful it is too.

PM me your address and i will pop you CD3

[The Liberator]

If you're a middle-aged old bag with big dyed hair and a primrose yellow Mini, can I ask that you not get shitty with me because my correct and legitimate use of a roundabout interferes with your lack of ability to know which lane to be in. In fact, rather than sounding your horn continuously and pointing at your glasses, I'd be grateful if you'd quietly go home, study the Highway sodding Code, and only come back with a grovelling apology for your stupidity and ineptitude.I have lived in London for five years, enough time to accept that about 91.5% in London drivers have no clue whatsoever about lane discipline. It'll take a while longer before I'm prepared to accept that I'm to blame for this cluelessness.

[Ratdat]

I have lived in London for five years, enough time to accept that about 91.5% in London drivers have no clue whatsoever about lane discipline. It'll take a while longer before I'm prepared to accept that I'm to blame for this cluelessness.

If I'm ever unfortunate enough to have to go to London, I take the oppotunity to drive like a complete wanker as it seems to be the way everyone else does. Undertaking, hopping back and forth between lanes and cutting people up seems to be the way to make progress there.

[Mr H Sceptre]

I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated.

Were you born with a plastic spoon in your mouth?

[Station]

Sounds trivial but ...

 

Why do TV programme makers insist on putting shitty stock music in documentaries? I was watching 'The Salvager' today, and it's a constant drum n bass track while he's making a complete mess with a load of reclaimed timber. Those 'documentaries' on 'big buildings' inevitably get the stock 'metal' track running through it. For fuck's sake, why is this needed? Even the most sedate of woodworking programmes gets a distorted arse of a soundtrack over it. There is no need whatsoever for music at all!

 

I may have mentioned this earlier, but it's worth another entry.

 

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/TVdocumentaries/

 

If I want shite, mediocre music running ill-fittingly behind a documentary about trains, I'll select anything from my collection of CD's, LP's and mp3s thanks. It's totally unnecessary.

[pogweasel]

I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated.

Were you born with a plastic spoon in your mouth?

Yes, unfortunately. Though hoping it transmogrifies into silver soon.

I have lived in London for five years, enough time to accept that about 91.5% in London drivers have no clue whatsoever about lane discipline. It'll take a while longer before I'm prepared to accept that I'm to blame for this cluelessness.

RULE #1 OF LONDON DRIVING:Whatever is happening behind you is someone else's problem. That's all. Those shiny reflective things at the extremities of you vehicle are for checking your hair/eye-bags/bogeys ONLY once inside the M25. If you happen to cause offence to those aft of you whilst driving, just stick a not-very-apologetic hand out of the window. If their disgust is signalled by short sharp horn blasts or a continuous tone, simply substitute the wave for an extended middle digit.

[pogweasel]

Pog, what year is your Kangoo? I think my copy of Autodata only goes as "new" as 2004

Mine goes upto '07Is yours CD3 ?pop us the engine code if you don't have it covered**edited**

It's a 2005 1.5DCi SL70 panel van....

[Minimad5]

There are so many different engines on the programme ranging upto 2007

Clicked the last one in hope as it had specific 2005

 

 

 

Is this the one ?

(hope so)

If yes, then i can send you via email all / any information you need

[brammy777]

I love Autodata.

[pogweasel]

Yes, that will be it. Whatever you've got that's relevant if you ould forward to me to: mailpogspeed.comThanks!!PS> If you can do that before tomorrow night, I might be able to sort out treats as I am up at Ham Sq Wed/Thurs...