Dr Kev. - Kam Servicing Network.

Hello again!

What a hot week it's been! I don't know about you, regular reader, but I'm sure I've lost weight just by sweat alone! It has been incredible and we have had so many cars coming into the workshop with various cooling problems. And, I'm sorry to say, checking back on the customer service records for most of these cars, I discovered that we had warned the owners about the states of their cooling systems... You can lead a horse to water (oh, for a glass of cold water right now!) as the old saying goes!

The football season has started again - and has picked up from where it left off. Derby lost and Forest won (congratulations guy!), so no change there. Oh, and talking of sport, I managed to beat Shaun on the golf course over the weekend!

In all of my years as a mechanic, I don't think that I have ever had a job as perplexing as Mr Johnson's 1999 Peugeot 306 TDI that came into the workshop last Thursday. Mr Johnson (name changed to protect his innocence) had been recommended to us by the Williams family (as an aside, did you know that over 90% of our business now comes from word of mouth?), who have been long standing customers of ours.

It all seemed very simple really. After Mr Johnson had bought his 306 from an auction up North (he was down visiting the Williams' family), he noted that the intermittent windscreen wipe wasn't, well, wiping. Additionally, there was no park function, so he had to time the exact second that he turned the wipers off to get them to stop at the bottom of the 'screen. I rubbed my hands in glee, a nice quick job to make a change from the lengthy rewiring tasks I had been undertaking recently.

"Ah, Kev, there's slightly more to this story," said Mr Johnson. My heart sank. "I've been to three separate garages, had a brace of new parts fitted, shelled out a load of cash and still it doesn't work. And no-one seems to know what the problem is. It's time to see if you really are as good as you claim!"

The gloves were thrown down - this was a true Dr Kev challenge. Armed with my trust toolkit and multimeter (for checking the electrics), I advanced on the recently arrived Peugeot like John Wayne facing down the bad guys in 'True Grit'.

The first thing to do was obviously to check that all of the new parts that had been installed were not only correct for the model and the year, but that they were actually working. So, I tested the new relays, the new motor, the new spindles and wiper arms, the new switch and I even checked that the brand new wipers hadn't stuck to the windscreen in this heat. It all checked out.

To be honest regular reader, it made me sick to think that Mr Johnson had been to so many garages and been forced to pay out so much money without getting any resolution on the problem. Then again, what would I have done in the same situation? Probably put my hands up and admitted that I didn't know. But I couldn't do that now - I was on a challenge to uphold my name!

To escape the phones and hurly burly of the main workshop, I took the 306 to the Technical bay at Heanor, where I was guaranteed some peace and quiet. I have to confess, regular reader, that I was totally baffled by the non-functioning wipers. So, the only thing for it was to contort myself under the dashboard to inspect all of the wires, fuses and relays that lurk under there.

You can imagine what that was like in this heat! My feet where wedged between the 'shoulders' of the two front seats, my right shoulder was crunched up and my head was almost rest on the clutch pedal at points! My chiropractor would have had a field day!

No matter which way I contorted my body, I couldn't find anything wrong. All of the wires were in good condition, the motors had plenty of juice running through them and none of the relays had seized.

The only thing to do was to take a break for a while - sometimes getting some space on the problem gives you a new perspective. While getting a nice fresh cup of tea, I decided to phone a few of the local dealers and some other mechanic friends. All of them listened to the problems and said, very kindly, that I had done everything that they would have done. It was all beginning to look a little futile.

Once I'd finished the brew, I got up and smoothed out my overalls. As I did so, a little fragment of broken windscreen glass fell out. I picked it up for a closer inspection, wondering where it had come from. As I'd only worked on the Peugeot and had put a clean set of overalls on that morning, it had to be from that car. Not that this led me any further forward...

While I was on my break, a beautiful Mercedes SLK rolled into the workshop. Now, as I'm sure you know, these also have the intermittent wipe, same as the 306, and I got to wondering how it worked.

After a few minutes, it transpired that the windscreen had tiny rain sensors in it, and the wires for these sensors ran up through the headlining. As I'd tried everything else, I decided to have a closer inspection of the 306's roof, thinking that maybe the shard of glass was a clue after all.

And what do you know? There was a tiny ruck in the headlining and under that ruck lay two neatly coiled wires! At some point before Mr Johnson had owned the car, the windscreen had obviously been replaced, and the replacement didn't have the special rain sensors in it. Once I'd given Mr Johnson the news, he authorised us to replace the 'screen with the correct one and once we had, I connected the wires up.

But how to test it? If in doubt, take a bucket of water outside and drip it slowly on the windscreen! Once the first few drops had hit, on came the wipers for an intermittent sweep! Victory was mine!

It's amazing how difficult something as simple as the intermittent wipe can be to fix in certain cars. To the naked eye, the windscreen on the 306 looks no different to a normal 'inert' 'screen and, with no history of it being replaced, it is no wonder every other garage missed the true fault.

Well, that's it for another week regular readers! Now that Mr Johnson's wipers are fixed, I think that we can al safely pray for some rain and a break from this heat!

Dr Kev Allen.