Tuesday, July 09, 2002
Kam’s Column - 09/07/02
Hello Again!
What a summer this is turning out to be. First of all, no World Cup trophy. Then no Wimbledon trophy and now the rain is coming down as if it’s the bleak midwinter. One minor consolation I suppose is that the surprise Wimbledon Champ, Lleyton Hewitt, is Australian which means if you go back a few generations, there are probably a few British genes in there somewhere… Scant solace though. Maybe next time.
My house is still strewn with boxes. Mandy’s doing her best to unpack them, but given that there were 96 in the first place it is proving to be a bit of a mammoth task. I seem to remember that around the time we moved, scientists succeeded in teleporting a laser beam across a lab. Very useful, but apparently it’ll be a few more years before my Royal Doulton is as easy to transport…
At least everything got from our old house to the new unbroken, unbashed and on time – if only everything was that simple! Mr Fox (name changed to protect the innocent!) certainly agreed with me when he brought his lovely 2.0-litre 16v Hyundai Coupe into the workshop.
“Kev, I need some help with this… thing,” he said, gesturing with disgust at the Coupe. “I’ve been to several other garages about a fearsome juddering from the brakes, but after a few months, the problem always returns. The car’s four years old and already has had three complete sets of pads and discs!”
Now, if Mr Fox were a 20-year-old baseball cap clad boy racer, then I wouldn’t have been too surprised. But he wasn’t. He was one of those people who treat a car properly, attending to its every need and not thrashing the mutton out of it. Something was definitely wrong.
“No worries Mr Fox,” I said as soothingly as I could. “We’ll get it sorted for you.”
“Thanks Kev. I saw that you now deal with imports from your advert and thought I had to give you a try!”
Shaun was the lucky person to take the Coupe on a road test. In the normal run of things, the managers get to cherry pick their jobs and I would have loved to take the car out myself, but I was right in the middle of a timing belt job at the time. On his return, Shaun confirmed that the car was indeed juddering.
“Probably like that warship did when it ran aground last week,” he added somewhat mischievously. So the first job was obviously to strip the braking system down to find the culprit.
Within minutes, the causes of the problem were evident and, as ever, it was a two pronged affair. First, the wrong thickness pads had been fitted. As they wore down, they overheated the brake discs and caused them to warp in much the same way as vinyl records do if you leave them in the sun. Added to this, because the previous pads had been far too thin, the brake piston was forced to over-extend itself, which resulted in the calliper sticking and the piston seizing.
Thankfully, our Internet supplier knew just about everything there is to know about the Coupe (which is one of the reasons we use them – they have everything we require at the highest quality and the best price) and it didn’t take long before we found the pads and piston needed for that particular model year. I think part of the problem stemmed from the fact that this Coupe had been imported, hence different specification pads were required from standard UK spec. After noting down the price, I called Mr Fox.
“Is that really all that is required?” He asked.
“Well, yes.”
“That’s brilliant, I thought it would be far more complicated and expensive than that!”
Once the pads and pistons were fitted, the Coupe behaved exactly as it should have done – a smooth ride, lashings of acceleration and plenty of stopping power.
When Mr Fox returned to pick the car up, he still seemed dubious. After all, he had taken the car to other places in the past and not got a permanent fix. Moreover, because we’d sourced our parts from our preferred supplier and spotted the problem quickly, the bill was low and I could see in his eyes that he was wondering if there was a catch…
“Mr Fox, I know that you haven’t had much luck with the braking system in the past,” I said. “So, if the problem returns in the next three years, I guarantee that I’ll foot the bill of repairing it myself.” And we shook on it, deal done.
It’s obvious that we’re coming up to the summer holidays and our message about the dangers of broken timing belts is being taken up by force (finally!). Shaun and Scott have been the main belt changers in the past week, but we’ve all been helping out. In fact, I’ve got a rather lovely Mazda 626 V6 waiting for me once I’ve finished writing this. Who says I can’t always work on the cars I want?
Until next week, happy motoring!
