The worst time was during the London riots in the summer of 2011. As you can imagine there were police cars and riot vans going down all over the place, being targeted by rioters and getting smashed up. We could barely cope. I was in North London one minute, South London the next, then over to East London, you couldn’t stop. I couldn’t believe the damage that people were doing to these vans, smashing them up, scrawling graffiti all over them. Respect and law and order was completely out of the window.
I can remember going to a police station in south-west London and having to collect one of the area cars which was one of the big BMWs. It was a tight squeeze to reverse the truck up the side of the station, so I checked the car and it started. I parked the truck out the front, dropped the flatbed, and drove the car out by the side of the station. I was just lining it up to drive up onto the back of the truck when I was suddenly surrounded by about twenty guys kicking and rocking the car, spitting and threatening me. I thought, fuck this for a game of soldiers, whacked it into reverse and drove straight back into the station car park. I went inside and told them I was being attacked out there, so they sent out six officers in full riot gear: truncheons, shields, and everything, to protect me while I got the car on the back of the truck.
Then I jumped out and started putting the straps onto the wheels when one of the officers shouted at me, ‘Forget them, just get the fuck out of here!’ So I jumped in the cabin and shot off as fast as I could, with this BMW bouncing around on the back. If I’d gone over a bump it would’ve jumped straight off, so once I’d got what I reckoned was a safe distance away I pulled up in a quiet side street and fitted the straps. My heart was racing, I tell ya. For a few days people just weren’t scared of the police anymore.
To me, it made no sense. Sure I’ve had my run-ins with the police over the years, but they are there to protect people and keep the peace. They are human beings just doing their job. But the mindless way these vehicles and officers were being attacked beggared belief. As well as all the damage to shops and businesses they also caused hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage, if not millions, to these police vehicles. It hurts me because having worked with the police so closely I know what good, honest people they are. In fact I am the godfather to a child of a couple who are police officers.
At my age that kind of caper is stress I can do without. God knows how the actual police officers put up with that sort of behaviour day-in day-out, so I leave the recovery vehicles to other people now.
But the Met know me very well and they trust me, and someone with an expert knowledge of motor vehicles can be useful in all sorts of ways. So once in a while I will get a phone call asking for a bit of help, but I’m afraid I can’t say any more than that…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CLASSIC COCK-UPS
We all learn from our mistakes, but we can also learn from other people’s mistakes too. As you can imagine, after fifty years working in garages I have seen some right cock-ups in my time – far too many to list here, I’d need another seven books to tell you ’em all. Like anyone I make mistakes myself, but for some reason these don’t come so readily to mind, maybe I was too embarrassed about my blunders, so I blanked them out.
So here is a selection of balls-ups by both mechanics and customers that really left me scratching my head wondering what on earth they were thinking. Some are so obvious I would hope no one would ever think of repeating them anyway, but these people made mistakes and here they are, so that you don’t do the same things.
In garages all mechanics think they are all full of knowledge and each thinks he’s better than his colleagues. I call this the ‘bullshit baffles brains’ scenario. Here are some examples:
• A so-called first-class mechanic I worked with in the early days tried to find an air leak in an engine. To this day I can’t fathom why he sprayed WD40 onto the manifold. As a result both he and the engine caught fire. Luckily for him another mechanic was at hand with a fire extinguisher to put it out. A lesson was learned by him, and no serious damage was done, except to his pride.
• Speaking of leaks, another mechanic tried to fix a water leak in the cooling system of a VW Beetle after the receptionist filled the worksheet out incorrectly. What he forgot was that the Beetle was an air-cooled engine, and it didn’t rely on water for cooling, so he spent the best part of a morning looking for a radiator that wasn’t there!
• I once worked with a mechanic called Jim the Nut, not because he was crazy, but because every bolt he fitted, he over-tightened and snapped it – every time without fail. I’m all for ensuring nuts are securely tightened but if you overdo it they break, and believe me once they’ve broken they are a bitch-and-a-half to get out again. It cost him so many hours in unpaid overtime trying to unthread these bolts and put new ones in that he eventually left.
• Putting a car on a vehicle lift needs some knowledge about where to put the arms of the lift. One guy was in such a hurry to lift the car he placed the arms in the wrong places: not on the correct jacking or secure points designed to take the weight. This resulted in the arms going through the car’s body and a very costly repair which had to come out of his wages. And we’re talking probably hundreds, if not a grand or more. What’s that old saying, more haste less speed?
• Never dick about with a hot engine – they can be lethal. A couple of years ago I saw a so-called mechanic remove the water cap from a hot engine, whilst it was running. I ask you, what an idiot! The boiling water scalded his face and arms, it was terrible to see, as if it happened in slow motion, but we got him under the cold tap as quickly as we could. He got a few scars from that one, I tell you. He certainly learnt his lesson and hopefully he learnt it for your benefit too.
• Replacing an alternator is quite a simple job, providing you disconnect the battery. One fool (a mature mechanic with an attitude) did not. As he removed the alternator the main live wire touched earth, resulting in a near burnt-out car. Had the apprentice not reacted quickly and cut the live wire at the battery the car could have been toast – and the guvnor would’ve made that mechanic the margarine on top of it!
• My pet hate is a mechanic who thinks he knows everything. In fact, you never stop learning. One day this Mercedes A Class automatic comes into the garage in ‘limp home’ mode, with a warning light on the dash. Our expert diagnosed transmission problems, carried out a scan code and filled out the job sheet. The client was called, and it turned out that this expensive repair of the transmission would cost about £1,800 plus VAT. Go ahead, the client says, and the mechanic duly removes the front frame complete with the transmission. Replacement unit fitted, car started, scan coded and the same problem is there. Wonderbrain says: ‘It’s a faulty unit,’ so he again removes the front frame and fits another one. SAME PROBLEM. I then noticed when he went to test drive the car it had no brake lights, so it was just a faulty brake switch all along. This cost the client about £8 and problem solved. The mechanic was sacked for arrogance after he verbally assaulted the manager when he was in a foul temper. Pride before a fall and all that.
• Another head-scratcher involving brake lights, this time for me. One of the secretaries’ cars was a Nissan Primera. It would idle perfect, rev-up stationary perfect, but on the road there was no power. I scan coded the car, no faults, tried again and no faults, live data road test, no faults. Checked for a blocked catalytic converter, no fault. I’m racking my brains, thinking what on earth is going on? Then I noticed she had no brake lights. Nissan, in their eternal wisdom, put in a safety connector from the brake circuit to the engine ECU – so that if the brake lights don’t work you are limited to 50 per cent less speed. It was a ‘safety feature’. This will also apply if you fit LED bulbs, as the circuit is then not complete. Brake bulbs replaced, no further fault. I learnt something from this: NO ONE is all knowledge, not even an oldie like me.
• As you can imagine there is a lot of machismo in a garage, a lot of testosterone flying around, and occasionally you get a mechan
ic who likes to show just how macho he is. Well, a garage I was doing consultancy work for had one of these. This fool was refitting a Chrysler Voyager clutch when the transmission lift packed up. Instead of asking for help from another mechanic to lift in the transmission he lifted it himself, got halfway up and dropped it. The casing smashed to pieces and a new transmission had to be fitted. Our Macho Man had to pay it back weekly from his wages, and it cost him about £750.
• Lesson learnt with power tools. A mechanic replaced the track rod ends in a Mercedes CLK, re-tracked the wheels and went for a road test. The steering went, and he nearly hit a wall. This fool had used an air gun (a compressed-air driven tool that can be used as a spanner) to tighten the track rods. The ball socket literally pulled through the housing on road test. NEVER tighten these or steering components with air guns, they have to be torqued up to a specific poundage (i.e. tightened to a specific degree, using a torque wrench adjusted to the correct setting). You cannot tighten this kind of joint to the correct degree with an air-powered gun.
• George Orwell was right, Big Brother is watching you… In one place where I worked we got a basic wage plus commission on all the jobs we completed, so if you were quick you earned good money, or you’d earn from advising customers to have extra work. Now as you know, I would never deceive a customer and the dealership itself wasn’t in the business of trying to scam people either, but the prat mechanic on the next bay to me pushed a screwdriver through the radiator of a car to get extra work and to sell a new radiator. The trouble was he didn’t realise that over the previous weekend CCTV had been fitted in the workshop. He was caught red-handed, sacked and prosecuted for criminal damage.
• A great result! A guy I worked with in the early days thought he was top dog, and everyone else was a fool. This was until he had to change inboard brake discs and pads on a Jaguar XJS. (Inboard brakes and calipers are located near the differential instead of on the wheels, as in most cars.). We let him struggle for four hours, knowing that the job can’t be done his way. Eventually I pointed out to him that the rear frame had to be dropped to gain access to the brake discs. His words? ‘Fuck off, I know what I’m doing.’ OK, if you say so sunshine, I thought. Come the end of the day the car is still in bits. He went home and never came back to work. Again, his pride was broken; no wonder they say it’s a deadly sin.
• I’ve mentioned this before, but I really hate those ‘fast-fit’ places. A lady brings her car in with the TomTom satnav working OK, but when it’s switched on, the engine misfires and eventually cuts out. These satnavs are normally powered by a lead that is plugged into the car’s cigarette-lighter socket. But this unit had a wire behind the dashboard with a live connector, all neat and tidy. We had to remove part of the dash to trace the wire, and OMG some clown had jumped a live one to the nearest live terminal, which happened to be on the main computer wiring! When I asked the client she said that it was fitted by one of the fast-fit garages who supply and fit free of charge, but she paid the optional extra £80 plus VAT for a neat wire fitting. This could have caused a fire and also burnt out the ECU, so we replaced and fitted the wire correctly. This type of bodged fitting gives the garage trade a bad name.
Not all the mistakes are made by mechanics. I know they say the customer is always right, but seriously, were this lot? The stupidity of some people beggars belief at times. They pay good money for a car and then they treat it so badly they pay even more to get it fixed, or they blame the garage or someone else for the problem. Whatever it is it never seems to be their fault.
Most of the time the problem is that they don’t know what they are dealing with and are too scared to ask until it is too late. Here are some prize idiots who could do with doing an apprenticeship in a garage, or in some cases having their driving licences revoked.
CLUTCH CALAMITY
Going back a few years I remember a client had an Aston Martin DB5, a beautiful car that should be treasured like a newborn baby. His wife drove this as a status symbol, but every year the clutch was gone. She always ‘rode’ the clutch, and the poor thing (the clutch, not wife) had to be fixed and the husband had to shell out hundreds for the repairs. The hubby asked me if I could fit a heavy duty unit, so that she could not ride the clutch any more. I got through to a very well known clutch manufacturer, who at great expense could supply a heavy-duty clutch plate and pressure plate, which was duly fitted by myself and paid for by hubby. I told the lady to be very careful, as there was now a very sharp bite on the clutch and it was necessary to release it gently. Her reply was: ‘I have been driving for over thirty years, do not tell me how to drive.’ Well I think you can guess what happened next. She snatches the keys, jumps in, clutch engaged and off she goes. She collided into a wall beside the garage, causing over £1,000 of damage. Red faced, she just gave me the keys back and walked off, not saying a word or making eye contact. Boy, was I glad I wasn’t in her house that evening.
PROBLEM POO
Talking of relationships on the rocks, it’s amazing what tell-tale signs a car can sometimes reveal. The number of cars that are brought in for a valet that have footprints on the headlining. And there’s only one thing going on that gets footprints on the ceiling! Some valeters are more discreet than others about this, and it’s not always the wife’s footprints either. Then there was the case of ‘the smell’. A Rolls-Royce came in with a terrible smell inside the car, and after some investigation we found a used nappy full of poo tucked under the front seat. We called the owner and his wife answered, but she said her children were all grown up. The couple were in their sixties, and she couldn’t fathom where the nappy could’ve come from. Two hours later I get a call from the hubby, who tells me he’s been kicked out of house and home. Turns out he’d been having an affair with a younger woman and got her pregnant, but had recently broken up with her. Out of spite she’d hidden the nappy under the seat. Man, he was in the shit!
FIT TO BUST
An irate client complained that his suspension was very hard and the steering was too light after we serviced his car recently. We checked all the components and found no fault. Then we checked the tyre pressures. They were set at 65 ft lbs instead of 32 ft lbs! It’s a wonder they hadn’t exploded! He denied any knowledge of doing the tyre pressures himself, but when I checked the job sheet it stated tyres set to 32 ft lbs. That would be a huge error for even the most inexperienced of mechanics to make, so I called the client back, his wife answered, and I told her what I’d found out. The wife said her hubby likes to tinker with the car and last week he’d used his new tyre inflator gadget. She’d dropped him right in it! When the client came in to collect the vehicle he apologised. Maybe he’ll think twice about tinkering with stuff he doesn’t understand in future.
OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS
Another muppet who liked to tinker was the owner of a BMW 320i that was brought in by the AA with reported overheating. We checked the water and found that vast amounts of a milky oil-and-water mix was in the header tank, so we put a dipstick into the oil and found the same watery milky mixture there too. All these symptoms point to a blown head gasket, which can be serious, but on further chatting to the client, he mentioned he topped up all the levels himself. It seems that this plonker filled the engine with water and the header tank with oil, the doughnut! A full flush out of water and engine was carried out, the sump was removed, and a new gasket, refill with new oil, filter, water and anti-freeze done the job. The client was embarrassed, a few quid lighter in the pocket, but happy.
THE TAPPET TINKERER
Please, if you do fiddle with your car and you make a cock-up, just tell the garage from the start. You’ll always get found out in the end and it will save you a lot of money for the time spent by the garage trying to find the fault. An MGB GT 1974 was booked in with terrible shaking on idle – you could feel it through the whole body. The engine mounts checked out OK, the exhaust pipes were not touching the body’s underside, and the performance was low. I asked the client if
any previous work been done to cause this, and he said it was perfect until the last weekend. As a precaution I removed the rocker box and, lo and behold, you could see that there were no tappet clearances, so no wonder the car was running rough with no power (the tappets open and close the valves that admit and release combustible and spent gases in sequence, so their correct adjustment is crucial to the engine’s performance). I adjusted the clearances and it ran perfect. Seems the client was too embarrassed to tell me he attempted to adjust these himself with little knowledge, and ballsed it up. Fess up, it’s the easiest way!
WIRE WOOL WALLY
A Porsche Cayenne 2009 comes in for a paint estimate. Three panels were literally scraped back to bare metal, and the thing was a fucking mess. I asked the client if it had it been vandalised. No, she replied, it was parked under a tree, loads of bird droppings were on it and so she thought to she’d do her hubby a good deed and clean it off with the old wire wool. Fucking WIRE WOOL! She’d caused carnage! Three panels prepared and re-sprayed at a cost of £1,000 plus VAT – probably the most expensive scrubbing pad ever!
A POSITIVELY NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE
Old Riley Pathfinder verses Triumph Stag! Our clever-dick client decided to jump-start his Riley (i.e. use the battery power from a second car – his Triumph Stag – to start his Riley) in the garage at home. His jump-leads (used to connect the cars, battery-to battery) were short so he had to put the cars bumper-to-bumper in order to attach the leads. He went to start the cars and burnt out both of them – the wiring looms and batteries were blown. Why? Well the Riley is dynamo powered, with a positive earth, and the Stag is alternator powered, with a negative earth. The bumpers touching connected the Stag’s negative terminal with the Riley’s positive terminal, creating ‘reverse ground and live’, with the result being a total short-circuit. Fifteen hundred pounds later there were no more problems, except a deep empty pocket and a client with a more comprehensive understanding of electricity.
Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth Page 19