Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Kam’s Column - 17/09/02
Hello Again!
Perhaps it is time that I hung up my mantle here at Kam… The mantle of resident Derby fanatic that is (what else could it be?) – the golden boys lost again and, to make matters somewhat worse, it was against our archrivals Leicester. Not good – I hear that the cricket tours at this time of year are nice. Oh, wait, haven’t I missed the season’s action…
At least some sense seems to be coming into the world this week as it looks like the Iraqis are going to allow the UN weapons inspectors into the country to have a poke about. I do sometimes wonder though quite who to believe – all of the papers carry a different slant as do the TV news programmes, and the politicians seem to be little better than bickering school yard children. Still, I’m not a politician, so on with this week’s tale which proves that all things shiny are red aren’t necessarily good.
Mr Spencer (name changed to protect the innocent!) brought his 11-month old VW Golf TDI into the Kam workshop on Monday morning displaying what appeared to be some electrical gremlins. Naturally, the first thing that I did was to point out to him that the car should still be covered under the manufacturer’s warranty.
“Well, yes Kev, in theory at least” he replied. “But take a look at this.” In 11 months, the Golf had clocked up a truly astronomical mileage, which is why the original distance related warranty didn’t apply.
“I’ve only had the car for a few days Kev – I bought it at auction and got quite a bargain – but there are a few things that I would like you to look at. The electric window motors aren’t playing anymore, the brakes are hard as my wife’s rock cakes and the steering isn’t particularly taut. It can’t be anything too major I’m sure – the car is only 11 months old…”
Indeed, you don’t often get a list of woes like this on such a young vehicle, but you also don’t see the odometer so far advanced either. Hopefully it was all just standard wear and tear although you can’t always be totally certain if you are buying from an auction.
I picked on our resident in-house electrical guru, Scott, to attend to the windows. Scott had only just returned from a week off sick with tonsillitis; something I was convinced that only kids got. Maybe Scott is just a big kid really…
Within minutes, I heard Scott bellow with laughter. Unconvinced that a VW Golf’s window mechanism is a cause for hilarity, I went to investigate. By the time I got there, he was literally crying – not because of the laughter though, he had paused to wipe his eyes and got a speck of dirt in one…
Anyway, holding the window up was a pristine, unmarked, totally factory perfect piece of plywood! On further investigation, it turned out that the driver’s side regulator had seized and that it was a relatively simple job to free the mechanism and restore the windows to full up-down-up glory.
Then it was the turn of the brakes. The pedal was indeed as hard as anything even though it looked as if most of the brakes were brand new. The cause in fact was a withered seal on the rotary pump and, once the rubber was replaced, the brakes were like the windows – perfect.
The last job on the list was to carry out a full tyre change. As you know, we at Kam are rather fond of Stunner tyres, as they have a no quibble 2-year guarantee against accidental, vandal or kerb damage. In addition, they are superb tyres that grip in all conditions and suit the high power of Mr Spencer's TDI Golf. Once we had swapped all of the tyres over (the originals were almost tread-bare!) I gave Mr Spencer a call and invited him down for a test drive.
“Kev, that is superb! It handles like a completely different car. I love it!” But I could see in his eyes that he expected our bill to make his bargain buy into a pound eater. He did in fact query the bill when I handed it over –
“Haven’t you missed the tyres off that, Kev?”
“No, Mr Spencer,” I said, pointing out the relevant line. “There they are.” He squinted a bit and then rocked back in his seat.
“Have you any idea how much I’ve saved by getting my tyres here rather than elsewhere? On second thoughts, I won’t tell you – wouldn’t want you to go meeting the competition prices now would I?!?”
Another satisfied customer. Talking of which… I’m off to New York next week to see a friend who owns a garage over there. Maybe I’ll come back with some new ideas!
Until next week, I’m missing you already…
