Dr Kev. - Kam Servicing Network.

Hello Again!

Have you been following the news surrounding J-Lo and Ben Affleck? Are they getting married? Are they calling it off? Are these people living in the real world? In fact, are they even taking marriage seriously - I thought that it was meant to be a firm commitment for life, not something that you can turn on and off like a light switch... Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I hold family values close to my heart - as does Kam as a company since it is family run and always has been. We like to look after our customers and build steady relationships with them - you'll find no 'Hollywood Revolving-Door Weddings' here...

Talking of family values and weddings, this week's story concerns Miss Abigail Smith (name changed to protect her innocence - although the pseudonym is now somewhat superfluous as you'll soon discover) and her beloved VW Karmann Ghia. Miss Smith has owned the Karmann for the past five years and, being a true VW enthusiast, does a lot of the work on it herself. Brake pad changes, engine servicing and rudimentary tuning are all within her perfectly manicured grasp - and I must say that she does an excellent job as every time it comes in for an MoT, everything is usually spot on.

Not this time though. For once, Miss Smith had decided to ask us to do the servicing (and getting a free MoT in the process), because she couldn't risk chipping a nail or scratching her hands. You see, Miss Smith was about to become Mrs Jones in a lavish ceremony and wanted everything to be perfect. And of course, perfect meant being driven to the service, by her father, in the Karmann Ghia. She told me all of this excitedly while she was booking the car in.

"Oh Kev, you should see the dress! And the hotel! And the flowers! And and..." You can imagine, regular reader, and I do have to confess that my eyes filled up slightly as I imagined my little girl in this position later in her life. The perfect man, the perfect wedding, the perfect life... And that was just Mandy's wedding day!

As soon as I turned the key, I heard something I didn't like. There was a rattle, underneath the engine note. A very light rattle, nothing really that noticeable beneath the grumble of the air-cooled flat four. I'd heard it, once, years ago on another VW that was steadily stripping all of the bearing shells in the engine. Miss Smith had told me that she'd heard something amiss a few days back, but with all the wedding preparations hadn't really digested it.

I shook my head. With all the love Miss Smith had lavished on the car, surely this couldn't be happening? Just before her wedding? I shook my head again, probably a loose bolt somewhere.

To cut a long story short, I was right (sometimes I really hate being right). When I drained the oil from the engine, there were hundreds of tiny shards of metal in there. Something was badly wrong in the engine. Time for a phone call.

"Oh" was the only reply I received. "Oh Kev." I could hear the tears welling up in Miss Smith's voice. "Oh Kev. What am I going to do?"
The options were few. We could either strip the engine and rebuild it, fit a second hand powerplant or get a new unit sent from one of the specialist VW parts dealers.

"We couldn't give you a Kam guarantee on any replacement engine," I told her. "You'd have to rely on any guarantee that came with it. If we rebuilt the engine then we could guarantee it. But I don't know how long that would take. From the phone calls I've made, it looks like buying a new reconditioned unit would cost about the same as Kam doing the work for you."

"Oh Kev...If I ask you to do the work for me, can you have it done in time?"
It was going to be a tall order, a very very tall order.
"Miss Smith, I guarantee that I'll have the Karmann back with you for your wedding day. And if I don't I will personally pay for a limousine to take you to the church!"

As I'm sure that you know, Kam is a family run company and we like to treat our customers as part of the Kam family. So, once the lads heard about the task in hand, I was inundated with offers of help. Everything from fetching and carrying the new parts that would be required, to cleaning the car (inside and out) once we'd finished! That's what I call team spirit.

The workshop was a flurry of activity, with phone calls being made to find the best rebuild parts at the best prices, the old engine being carefully taken apart and assessed. Once we knew what we were facing, it was a race against time to get all of the parts delivered and installed.

It took two days to get the engine into a state where we could confidently refit it (most of the time was waiting for parts to arrive). With the wedding now less than 36 hours away, I had to make provision for failure and arranged a limousine - making it clear that they might not actually be needed. This was going to be tight.

The evening before the wedding, we finally got the engine in and tuned. Regular reader, it purred like a kitten! But that wasn't the end of the story. You need to be gentle with rebuilt engines, so I had to take it on a lengthy road test to start wearing it in. This was 10pm and the car had to be outside Miss Smith's house for 8am the next day. The time window was closing - fast!

I am delighted to say that the roadtest when even better than I had hoped and when I got back to the depot at about midnight, the lads were waiting there to give the car a thorough polish and wax ready for the big day. It was finished at about 3am, time for me to get a few hours sleep before changing into my Sunday best (no, not a footy strip1) to deliver the car, bang on 8am.

I tell you regular reader, seeing the look on Miss Smith's face made up for the lack of sleep, the awkward job and the stress of watching the clock! But that's what we are all about here at Kam - we'll go that extra mile for our customers.

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen