The grumpy thread

[calebaaront]

3 minutes ago, Talbot said:

Just wanted to re-iterate that a full service has absolutely nothing to do with the clutch.  There's essentially nothing that can be checked or looked at.

£150 to fit a clutch is eye-raisingly cheap.  and not for the right reasons.  That sounds too cheap.

I know that lol, it's just if the clutch went before I got it serviced I would of done it all at once but now I have to wait for more parts. Its a garage that I've been using for years. They did the clutch on my brothers Audi last year and was perfectly fine. 

[Talbot]

Their overheads must be astonishingly low to be able to do a gearbox-off clutch for £150.

[calebaaront]

His prices have always been low, most of the Taxis that run in Portsmouth use him. Everytime I go in there he always has at least 8 cars in the workshop. I've never really had any issues apart from him sometimes taking a few weeks. 

[RoverFolkUs]

I second that £150 is extremely cheap.  On a 30 + year old car with things bound to be seized up as well...What's the hourly rate out of interest?

£60 + VAT is cheap here in Sussex. £65-80 + VAT being the going rate. Here you'd expect a gearbox in/out to be £300 + VAT + parts as a baseline. For the more complex ones, it's even more, as an example, in the case of a Citroen C4 Picasso with the 10.9 hour book time.. you do the maths!

I can say there's no shortage of work at the moment either. Which is very unusual for this time of year. 

[Harriytait]

6 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

What's the hourly rate

I’m the brother in question, he doesn’t charge an hourly rate, just charges a price once the work is complete, he’s definitely a bit of a back ally garage and a lot of people say to avoid him but he charged £190 to do the clutch on my Audi A6 last year and it’s been fine since. Also charged £200 to do a full engine swap on my dads old Zafira and that lasted fine too, though in stark contrast he’s had my Proton since probably August and hasn’t finished the work yet so he’s definitely hit and miss

[artdjones]

10 hours ago, calebaaront said:

Thankfully it's only £65 for a new Borg and Beck clutch and release bearing. My local garage has quoted me £150 which isn't too bad!

Don't bother with Borg and Beck. They used to be fantastic when they were owned by AP. Now they are only a name slapped onto cheap rubbish. Get a Luk, Valeo or Sachs. Probably not a huge pile more anyway for such a small clutch.

[mercedade]

10 hours ago, calebaaront said:

I know that lol, it's just if the clutch went before I got it serviced I would of done it all at once but now I have to wait for more parts.

Ha. I knew exactly what you meant. Infuriating

[Stanky]

16 hours ago, Stanky said:

Phone call from wife_Stanky earlier

"The car is shuddering really badly, I can't drive it and daughter_Stanky needs to be at school"

"can you take the Daihatsu? its a bit loud, but keep the revs down and its OK"

7 minutes later

"yeah, I'm not driving that, the police will pull me over"

And of course, the mercedes is in for an MOT tomorrow, so I currently have 0/3 cars which my wife is able to use. I suggested we buy another car. She wasn't impressed.

I think I might have finally reached the point in my life where I'm going to pull the trigger on something new/almost new, with an actual warranty. Life is fucking difficult enough without having to roll around in the dark and rain on a january evening fixing another ungrateful twat car. I'll have a look at it tomorrow in the daylight, might just be a duff spark plug, but I bet it'll have dropped a valve or the almost new cambelt will have skipped a tooth or something. I just despair sometimes.

Very curious. I had a good nose around in daylight and everything seemed ok. Cambelt is tensioned correctly, no fault codes, engine mounts nice and tight so I started it up to see what was going on. 

Started fine and settled into a slightly rough idle, but not concerningly so. I revved it up a bit in neutral and it seemed OK, revving normally so I took it for a short drive between work meetings. Seems to drive fine and idles fine once its warmed up a bit. It revved through to 4500rpm in second gear fine.

I'm putting it down to doing mostly short trips and it being cold and damp here. It certainly not burned an exhaust valve or majorly shed the cambelt so thats a good thing. Its in for an MOT next thursday so its stay of execution may be short lived!

[puddlethumper]

12 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I second that £150 is extremely cheap.  On a 30 + year old car with things bound to be seized up as well...What's the hourly rate out of interest?

£60 + VAT is cheap here in Sussex. £65-80 + VAT being the going rate. Here you'd expect a gearbox in/out to be £300 + VAT + parts as a baseline. For the more complex ones, it's even more, as an example, in the case of a Citroen C4 Picasso with the 10.9 hour book time.. you do the maths!

I can say there's no shortage of work at the moment either. Which is very unusual for this time of year. 

I had my gear box changed the other week. Box out , box in. £150. Mind you there's not much to undo on an Xud.

[PicantoJon]

I see that Eddie Hall was the last person to put an oil filter on me Picanto... 

Bastad thing is welded on! 

[meshking]

On 1/25/2023 at 8:18 PM, Zelandeth said:

Why does nobody write how to guides any more?

I don't want to watch a fscking video!

https://manpages.org/fsck/8 here you go!

[Markeh]

10/10 to either the Evri delivery driver who placed a parcel in my bin, took a photo then took it out again, or watched her put it in there then nick it (because who the hell goes into people's bins looking for parcels to nick). I hope whichever arsewipe nicked it is delighted with their £15 stone dead and half-stripped ThinkPad.

[twosmoke300]

On 18/01/2023 at 22:50, mitsisigma01 said:

Who actually makes bulbs for Halfrauds , probably some other Chinesium outfit🤔

A good guide of bulb quality is the countries they are type approved in . This into is on the bulb as an E number . Iirc E1 is Germany and the number that Osram bulbs have on them . If they are TA in a country with a stan at the end then maybe their regs aren’t as strict and bulbs tend to be lower quality . This is my findings anyway and what I can say is that Lucas bulbs are wank these days . Had H4 and 7’s where the base plate was mounted pissed up and the amber indicator bulbs fail a mot when brand new they are so white . 

[sierraman]

I’d second that about Borg and Beck, it’s just rebranded horse shit. So the labour aspect is around £85? So assuming it takes him no more than four hours then he’s charging £21.25 an hour. Where’s he working from for that? 🤣

[High Jetter]

Just looked at insurer's renewal quote for house buildings and contents cover - 75% up on this year! They will get one phone call and if they don't lower it to at least what THE SAME INSURER is offering on a comparison site I will go elsewhere.

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 1/25/2023 at 2:48 PM, Zelandeth said:

Why does nobody write how to guides any more?

I don't want to watch a fscking video!

Solar panel wiring crimping tool - 12 minutes on YouTube (aaaarrrgh) 30 seconds on https://www.instructables.com/ - there's some crap on there but also some useful stuff (used to be a lot of computer stuff but I see they now do baking)

[horriblemercedes]

1 hour ago, High Jetter said:

Just looked at insurer's renewal quote for house buildings and contents cover - 75% up on this year! They will get one phone call and if they don't lower it to at least what THE SAME INSURER is offering on a comparison site I will go elsewhere.

I'd just switch - renewals are generally more expensive that new quotes and they won't change that system

[artdjones]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

I’d second that about Borg and Beck, it’s just rebranded horse shit. So the labour aspect is around £85? So assuming it takes him no more than four hours then he’s charging £21.25 an hour. Where’s he working from for that? 🤣

I think it's £150 for labour and the clutch supplied by the owner (hopefully not a Borg and Beck one).

[Rust Collector]

3 minutes ago, artdjones said:

I think it's £150 for labour and the clutch supplied by the owner (hopefully not a Borg and Beck one).

Hopefully it's one of these instead:

[High Jetter]

25 minutes ago, horriblemercedes said:

I'd just switch - renewals are generally more expensive that new quotes and they won't change that system

Yup, no joy on phone, she even admitted that it is a crazy situation. Will probably stick with same insurer more cheaply via a comparison site.

[hairnet]

so something happened last week that might have been life threatening and got told by hosp to get doc to poke it

doc said it was ok medically and if it doesnt dissapear by end of next week to come back and theyll scan it

told work on sunday that they told me to go docs monday (had hosp appt tuesday also)

after tuesday had good news about ongoing which work were told about but the threatening decided to catch laryngigits which meant i was coughing alos constantly

work told weds about tues - but obvs not a thing that will go away in 24 hours - i tried to ring them but whisper worse than useless  (its been a week and half)

got a letter this morning - Y U NOT RING US?!?!?!? (see above) also was texting them and work phone was not sending all messages

its not a sprained ankle its not concussion it doesnt go away

also anything happened theyve been told - also they have all my phone numbers why they not ring me?

oh you might need a sick note  - no its not been a week (4 days)

im gonna go in on monday and ralf and cough all over them and make them understand - funny its never been are you ok do you need help??

[Mally]

On 1/24/2023 at 12:09 PM, Split_Pin said:

Go compare has netted me £189 with Swinton. Not as good as last year but I doubt E sure could have beaten that. My brown 93 is also insured with Esure and I only renewed it in December. It was around £150 for the year and is almost identical to the red one save for being a manual.  How do they work out their quotes?!

I tried to insure my new to me Rover 75. It's too new.  Well into 4 figures. You don't know how lucky you are.

I've had to put it on my normal policy and will be sacking the Streetka or SORN it soon.

I really love my Streetka, but it's useless at B and Q for carrying anything more than a screwdriver.

 

[Split_Pin]

How on earth are you 4 figures? I have found all my 75s to be slightly more expensive to insurers but by that I mean about £250 a year. 

[Metal Guru]

4 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

How on earth are you 4 figures? I have found all my 75s to be slightly more expensive to insurers but by that I mean about £250 a year. 

I still get quotes for my Impreza upto £3k even though I’ve actually paid under £200 this year.

When my son was 17,we tried to add him to the policy on comparison sites ( for a laugh really), and got one for £34k.

[Spiny Norman]

Getting random insurance quotes for things is a great game when you're bored. Apparently I could insure a Lamborghini Aventador on my current details (daily driver, parked outside in an area of Glasgow that's often on fire) for about £1000. The only added stipulation being they'd want a tracker on it. I always enjoy telling teenagers this when they get quotes for three grand for some manky old Corsa.

Talking about home insurance, our buildings insurance is taken care of by the factor so all I have to arrange is contents cover which for the last 20 years has been hovering around the £50-60 mark. This year I get the renewal letter through with a quote for £150, along with a long winded letter about how the rules have changed and they're not allowed to offer cheaper quotes to new customers than to existing policyholders and how that makes the system fairer which sounded like complete bollox to me.
And so it turned out, went on the meerkat site and got a quote for £48 from the same company.

Insurance premiums are seemingly calculated along the lines of 'think of a number, chuck some runes in the air then ask the cat'.

[Split_Pin]

I tried to change my auto-renewal preference online (to 'no') for esure but I was pushed to a phone call. So they've pissed me off again. I'm also fairly sure that's now illegal.

When I finally got through to someone who had given up pretending they weren't reading straight from the same script they had done for the past 5 years, they then said they could offer me a more competitive quote. 

Why could they not have made me a more competitive offer in the first place? I know why, because they're hoping many customers will just take the path of least resistance and accept.

There was no way they were going to be able to knock almost £100 off the renewal quote and beat what I had found on gocompare so I declined. 

A shower of bastards.

[Mally]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

How on earth are you 4 figures? I have found all my 75s to be slightly more expensive to insurers but by that I mean about £250 a year. 

I insured my last one as a classic, 3,000 miles, with Peter Best. Around £300, but 4? years ago. That was '02 reg.

This one is '04 so I expected a bit higher due to inflation.  Forget the actual P B quote, but iro £1,350.

Couple of other specialists refused to quote.

Tried a classic comparison place, Came up with Flux at £1,237. Massively undercutting some of the others. I'm 77, it may not help.

Checked with our in house Flux man, who to his credit reduced the Flux figure by almost £500!

Seems the underwriters or whoever are sticking to age on Classics (or maybe just 75's?) more that they used to. Mine is less than 19 years old.

I think if you  started in the past, your premium will rise, but I'd get a firm price elsewhere before I turned a reasonable price down.

Anyway, my Ka is with the AA, full ncb, £380 ish. They will swap me to the Rover FOC. So that's my only option, and it's done now. 

[sierraman]

Some providers just quote mad money tbh, there’s only a few on any car for me that will quote anything like a reasonable price. Some I could get a quote on a Invacar and it would be four figures.

[Metal Guru]

1 minute ago, sierraman said:

Some providers just quote mad money tbh, there’s only a few on any car for me that will quote anything like a reasonable price. Some I could get a quote on a Invacar and it would be four figures.

They quote silly prices because they don’t want your business for whatever reason. They do it that way so you don’t have to say you’ve had insurance declined on future proposal forms which really does make your insurance expensive.

[Ged]

£800 to insure Xantia, £380 to insure Xantia engine swapped 305 with all modifications declared mmok. I was shocked how cheap it was for the 305 with mods being 21 I was expecting to get absolutely rinsed.