Dr Kev. - Kam Servicing Network.

Kam’s Column - 21/10/03

2003-10-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Well, it's been quite a time recently for Mr Blair. Our esteemed Prime Minister has been under fire from pretty much all sides recently - so it came as little surprise that he was taken into hospital on Sunday with a heart complaint. Whatever you think of the man, his politics or methods, you can't help feeling sorry for him. It can't be easy to be in his shoes right now, what with the rumbles of Iraq, the Hutton enquiry and continuing concerns over the rail/tube networks that no one seems to be able to fix (send in Kam, that's what I say!). My thoughts are with him and his family and we all wish him a speedy return to health.

In such turbulent times, everyone needs a little light relief now and again. Mine came in the form of a recent sporting tournament. No, I'm not talking the latest Derby game, nor the cricket. National pride was at stake recently in the World Conker Championships. Yes, regular reader, there are such things (and I'm sending the little ones armed with bags full for some undercover playground training!). In a sport that has gained in global popularity over recent years, I am delighted to say that Britain are the crowned victors in both men's and women's championships, in spite of a chronic shortage of useable conkers (apparently). In fact, the situation got so severe that it's reported conkers had found their way onto the internet auction house E-bay! And the prize for achieving such dizzying sporting heights? Tankards, goblets and unlimited ice-cream...

I'm sure that you know one or more people with some form of sniffle or virus. I've got one myself (please bring on the tea and sympathy - well, just tea will do fine thanks!) and I know people in every corner of the Kingdom (shouldn't that be Queendom at the moment? A thought that has been perturbing me for a while...) with everything from a light cold to a full-blown stomach virus. So, as you can imagine, it wasn't too pleasant having to open up the workshop in the cold on Sunday morning - a task made less onerous by Shaun and Scott's beaming faces. Why where they in at that hour on a day they weren't rostered to work? Be patient, regular reader. The answer comes...

On Thursday last week, Mr Greenwood brought his 15-year old Mercedes G-Wagon into the workshop to have a replacement radiator fitted.
"It's loosing about half a cup of water a week, Kev" he told me as he handed over the keys. "I know you warned me about the state of the radiator at the last service, but I just haven't had time to get it seen to" (where have we heard that before, dear readers?). "So, here it is!"

"It won't be a problem Mr Greenwood," I said, signing out a courtesy car at the same time. "It shouldn't be too long to get the new radiator and even less time to put it in for you. I'll give you a call when it's done."
"Excellent. Just so long as I can have it back by Sunday as I've got a wedding party to go to."

I looked at my watch. 11:30am on Thursday. "No problem."
Well, as predicted, the radiator was sourced from one of our trusted suppliers and delivered within 24hours. A short while later and the new unit was gleaming inside the engine bay while the old one, leaking obviously from a small hole in the matrix, languished in our disposal bin.

Now, many fast fitting companies would simply drop the new radiator in, re-anti-freeze the system and let you get on with it. But not Kam! The thing is, anti-freeze has a habit of finding any weak points in hoses and rupturing them. And of course, we don't want this to happen to you. So I pressure tested it - and water went everywhere! One of the heater hoses had split and we didn't have one in stock for this rather unusual car. So it was back to the suppliers, and I made a call to Mr Greenwood to update him on the situation.

To their credit, the suppliers actually sent one out by a special rapid delivery service to ensure that we could get the car ready for Mr Greenwood well in advance of his Sunday deadline. With the new part in one hand, and a fresh Lemsip in the other, I went back to the G-Wagon.

Another pressure test saw a second heater hose split and cover me in the fresh coolant that I'd just put into the car (it also topped up my part finished cold cure with antifreeze - that should ward off any bugs...)! Typical! It was now early afternoon on Saturday, and I was completely prebooked for the entire day on Sunday... Things were going to be very tight.

At least, I thought they were until both Scott and Shaun piped up.
"I'll come in tomorrow for you, Kev," they said, virtually simultaneously.
"Haven't you got a Golf Tournament tomorrow Shaun?"
"Yes, but I'll have to miss it. We need to get this car sorted!" Now that's what I call real dedication.

So it was the both lads arrived cold and early on Sunday morning to finish the G-Wagon for Mr Greenwood. The second heater hose had arrived (along with another that I'd ordered, just in case) and within an hour was installed. Time to hook it up to the pressure tester.

The howls of anguish could be heard as far away as Leeds I'm sure. As the pressure built up in the system, the G-Wagon revealed that it had blown a core plug out of the engine block! It looked like game over, until Scott checked on our superb computer system and found that the G-Wagon shares plugs with another Mercedes model - and we had a set on the shelf!

The lads not only replaced the blown plug, but also replaced the others for good measure - and do you know what? This time, the car pressure tested OK! Everything was hunky-dory and it was time to deliver the car back to a rather sheepish Mr Greenwood. Why sheepish? Well, when the lads arrived with the G-Wagon, he admitted to them that his pride and joy had been loosing closer to three pints a week! That's some half cup, Mr Greenwood!
The moral of this week's story is that Kam don't just do a complete garage service. We don't stop at tyres, clutches, exhausts, engine diagnostic tests or even complex mechanical/electrical rebuilds. We'll go that extra mile to ensure that every problem is completely solved to give you total peace of mind, and keep you out of the workshop for longer! If we hadn't pressure tested the G-Wagon, Mr Greenwood would have been back in a very short time with all of the same problems - costing him more time and money...
Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 14/10/03

2003-10-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Regular reader, I am totally ashamed by the latest outbreak of football violence in Turkey. I'm not going to speculate on which team started it, or who threw the first punch - but I will say that it is totally reprehensible and does even more damage to the beautiful game. Someone once said that rugby was a hooligan's game played by gentlemen and football, a gentleman's game played by hooligans. On the strength of the antics in Turkey, I'm left wondering...

There's a fight of a different kind brewing in Parliament. Iain Duncan Smith (or Ids as he is known - sounds like a medical condition to me) has, apparently, acted improperly and employed his wife as the diary secretary when he became leader of the Conservative Party. Well, I'm sure that is very wrong and very naughty, but let's face it regular reader - do we really care? Let's ignore the minor issues and get back to proper politics - healthcare, education, law and order, pensions and the like. If this country spent as much time worrying about the things that matter as the little fringe bits that don't make a blind bit of difference in the real world, I feel that we'd actually get something done... I will get off my soapbox now.

Which reminds me... David Blaine is coming to the end of his "Box Stunt" - 44 days sealed in a glass box dangling over the Thames. A feat of endurance, surely, but I personally don't see the point. Hunger strikes are nothing new and it isn't really anything that special. Now, a Buddhist 100-day fast retreat - that's something different...

This week's tale concerns a Mr 'X' - name completely obscured to totally protect his identity and prevent his misguidedness becoming common knowledge. Anyway, Mr X owns a brought his 'P' plated Peugeot 306 in for its full service and free MoT last week.

"Now Kev, I know what I'm about with this car" he said, waving in its direction. "There's nothing wrong with it, it's mint. I'll see you in a couple of hours."

Well, let's just say that Mr X didn't really know what he was about with this particular car as it failed the MoT on plenty of minor points, although to be fair all of the major systems scraped through. As you know, as well as providing the MoT sheets, we also do a thorough inspection of the vehicle, which we carried out before performing the full service. We do it this way around, because then we can give the customer an instant idea of exactly what is needed, rather than finding the faults in dribs and drabs.

I was quite shocked when I got to the rear brakes. Removing the drums was quite a job - not helped by the large amounts of brake dust that liberally coated every surface and were compacted into every groove. Once they were off, a familiar sight greeted me - the cylinders were leaking from behind the dust seals but hadn't quite got to contaminating the brake shoes.

Naturally, I advised Mr X of this when I gave him the full rundown of the car's health. However, the knowledgeable Mr X only gave me permission to fix the MoT points and a few of the service recommendations.
Now, I'm a man of the world and understand all about budget concerns. I know that sometimes the ready cash isn't there to fix everything at once, but the brakes were potentially deadly. We insisted that it should be done, but Mr X wasn't having any of it and refused to get his wheel cylinders replaced.

A few days later, Shaun took a phone call from a very panicked Mr X.
"Shaun, I need you to retrieve my car from a brick wall!" As it turned out, Mr X had had to stamp on the brakes to avoid a cute, fluffy bunny rabbit that had leapt out of a hedge at him - and found that the brake pedal just went to the floor! That cute, fluffy bunny rabbit had a lot to answer for, by the sound of it (it wasn't Mr X's fault of course - or was it?).
Shaun naturally dispatched the Kam Rescue Team to the scene and disentangled the wall and the 306. Fortunately, the 306 only sustained light cosmetic damage and wasn't seriously injured.

Once back in the workshop, Shaun started to strip the brakes - and guess what he found? The brake cylinder dust seals had given way and dumped all of the cylinder fluid over the brake shoes! It didn't take that long for Shaun to fit new shoes and cylinders to make the 306 roadworthy again.
"I should have listened to you the first time," said a dejected Mr X. "If I had done I wouldn't have hit that wall and would have actually saved some money..."

It isn't our business to tell our customers how to spend their money, but we do try to give the best professional advice that we can. It's obvious that we are in this trade to make money (we do have to eat!) but not at the expense of our customers. As I hope you, and any potential Mr X's out there, should know - we only fix those things that need fixing so if we do recommend something, you know that it really should be attended to. And of course, if you have got a particular budget, we do our utmost to stick to that.

Until next week, drive safely!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 07/10/03

2003-10-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Dr Kev for Councillor! What do you think, regular reader? Dr Kev standing
up for the rights of the community, voicing political opinions and getting
things changed for the better?

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not running for office just yet.
Watching the political dogfight in California with Arnold (yes, we're on
first name terms) has got me thinking about how easy is may be to get into
office. Of course, I haven't got the millions in the bank or the support of
some of the continent's richest people (or the womanising misdemeanours in
my past to add colour to the campaign) so it would be a little more of a
struggle. But surely there must be an opening for someone down to earth,
honest and trustworthy?

Talking of scandal, have you been following the allegations surrounding
certain Premiership players? Of course, we can rest easy that Derby Town
aren't involved - sometimes being in the first division has its advantages!
On a serious note, the allegations are shocking and don't do anything to
enhance the reputation of a sport already marred by crowd misbehaviour. I
hope that the whole sorry situation can be wrapped up smoothly and
correctly.

Doing things correctly has always been a great concern of mine, which is why I went into the motors business in the first place. There isn't any point
in half doing a job, or not doing it well enough - especially if you are a
mechanic with people's implicit trust in you. In fact, not doing things
properly is one reason that I give to dissuade some wanna-be mechanics from tinkering with their cars. A very good example of this is Mr McGregor (name changed to spare his innocence and blushes).

Last week, Mrs McGregor had noted that the brakes on the family Vauxhall
Corsa were "feeling just terrible". Mentioning this to her husband was the
first mistake, as he is an unrepentant tinkerer. Having worked a lot on his
first car (an Austin Allegro back in the day), Mr McGregor decided that
modern cars couldn't be that much different and promised his wife that he
would sort out the brakes post haste.

It all seemed to go well until Mr McGregor handed the keys to his better
half for test drive. We're not privy to the conversation that followed, but
suffice to say that the situation was even worse. Being a busy lady, Mrs
McGregor decided to take 'Olive' (on account of the number plate letters you
see) to the local fast fitter, just next to her office.

An hour later, and several pounds lighter, Mrs McGregor was told that the
brakes would need a bleed - and that this workshop didn't have the relevant
tools! Can you imagine that, regular reader! Obviously Mrs McGregor's next
step was to bring the car to someone who did have the correct tools for
every job - us!

Naturally, all of this couldn't have happened in the week - and 'Olive'
arrived on the Sawley forecourt bright and early Sunday morning (Mr McGregor had been tinkering on the Saturday).

"I'm getting fed up of this, Kev. I should learn not to let him play!" Mrs
McGregor was highly indignant, especially as she had to be at a family lunch
in just a few hours time!

"Just leave 'Olive' with me, and I'll fix it for you," I said with my most
reassuring political campaign type smile. "In the mean time, have a
courtesy car. I'll call you once everything is completed."

Well, I'm surprised that Mrs McGregor dared to actually drive the car into
us! The brakes were frankly shocking, and I didn't have the nerve to even
get to the end of the road on the test run. Back in the workshop, it was
time to see what Mr McGregor had been up to.

Actually, to give him credit, he hadn't done a terrible job - he'd just not
replaced the calliper return spring properly. Very important but very hard
to do at the same time. Once it was fitted properly, it was time for
another test run, which only yielded a slight improvement.

The only solution was to have a look at the back brakes, as I would have
given a Dr Kev guarantee on the front now that I had checked them. You
wouldn't believe the state of those rears! I don't think that anyone had
ever looked at them! Thick in brake dust and road filth, the brakes were barely working, and when they did, the muck on them was causing them to
catch and not move smoothly.

It took me a couple of hours to strip them down completely, clean every
component and put them back together. Once this was accomplished, the car stopped on a second's notice! Job done.

While the car was in the workshop, we also fixed the driver's door, which was sagging somewhat due to a missing 8mm bolt. And would you believe it,
the fast fitter didn't have a bolt that would fit! Not only have we got a
tool for every occasion, we've got the nuts and bolts too!

Later in the afternoon, the McGregors were back to collect 'Olive'. They
had obviously had a good lunch, as Mr McGregor was asleep in the passenger
seat of our courtesy car - and Mrs McGregor was looking more than a little
miffed at having to drive (yet again, as she told me later!).

She was delighted with the state of the car, and enthusiastically told me
that she'd now hide her husband's toolbox so that he couldn't tinker
anymore! How mean - she should let him keep at least one spanner, and maybe a wrench too. I'm sure that a full socket set would be appreciated as
well...

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 30/09/03

2003-09-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

Well, regular reader, what a weekend! Derby and Forest, face to face on the field. Derby on a trip to Forest's home turf; Forest, higher in the table, expecting a victory. And what happens? A 1 - 1 draw! What a result for the Derby lads! I'm not saying who should have won the game, but it was exciting to see the two local sides battling it out! And, as we're right on the border of the Derby/Forest territories, everyone is pretty happy with the result!

In my excitement over the footy, it had nearly slipped my mind that we are now deep in the dark depths of political conference season. Every time I flick on the news, there's an update from the Labour Conference in Bournemouth with another grey suited politician frothing the faithful into a frenzy. All very well and good, but I'm unconvinced that Conferences can act as anything more than rousing the already converted rabble. If politicians want to get more votes, then surely they should be listening to the country at large, not just the activists who will probably vote for them in any eventuality?

Anyway, away from politics for a second, this weekend was a very special one. No, I'm not talking footy (for once) - rather the fact that, for the first time ever, Kam was open on a Sunday! Yes, that's right. We've been promising Sunday opening for quite a time and now Sawley will be throwing its doors open seven days a week! This should, in theory, make everyone's life a lot easier - you'll have more time to get your car serviced and we won't have a mad rush on Monday mornings. However, it doesn't always work that way, as I'm about to relate...

Mr Swinton (name changed to protect his innocence) brought his Renault Laguna TDI in to us on Sunday morning for its MoT. During the course of the test, I noted that the radiator was in a frankly shocking state - but believe it or not, the radiator isn't an MoT failable item! So the car passed the test, but that radiator was worrying.

"To be honest, Mr Swinton, I'm not actually very happy about allowing you to take this car home." I said. As you know, I won't recommend work unless it is definitely needed - and if we didn't fix that radiator, I was worried that some serious damage would be done. "We've got a courtesy car available now, if you want to leave yours here for a new radiator."

"Thanks Kev, but I've got a load of tools in the boot, and all of my golf clubs. Plus I need to pick the wife up, she won't be happy if I'm delayed. Look, I'll drop the car off on Tuesday morning on my way to the golf club. You'll be able to sort it out then, won't you?"

I really wasn't very happy about this. But you know the old saying - you can show a customer a failing radiator but you can't make them top it up...

Anyway, the Laguna arrived as planned on Tuesday morning, but not under its own power! Mr Swinton had evidently forgotten to tell his wife how serious the problems with the radiator were, and she'd tried to take the car to work in Leicester. It doesn't sound so bad, until you realise that there had been an accident on the road and the traffic was at a standstill. Within moments the temperature gauge would have been standing to attention...

"Looks like you've got another head gasket job on your hands, Kev" said the AA man (who incidentally is becoming a well known colleague as he's brought so many timing belts into us - I'll come back to this later).
This didn't look good at all, so I dispatched Mrs Swinton with one of our courtesy cars and hauled the Laguna into the Tech Bay at Heanor, where we do all of our major work.

Well, regular reader, the job took around 11 hours. As you can imagine, I had my heart in my mouth as I was stripping the engine down - there could be some serious damage lurking within the aluminium cylinder heads.

But, as luck would have it, it was only the head gasket that had blown! The break was quite obvious between the third and fourth cylinders and, once the head had passed the re-facing and crack testing procedures with flying colours, it was relatively simple to get the Laguna put back together. Of course, all of this expense was totally unnecessary as I'd offered Mr Swinton a courtesy car on the Sunday and would have fixed the problem before it became even more serious...

From end to end, it took us a short three days to turn the Laguna around - that includes waiting for the engineering company to re-face and crack test the head to make sure that we weren't storing any problems up for the future. Even I was impressed!

Now, I've already mentioned timing belts once, but I'm going to come back to them now. I'm still getting cars coming in with broken belts - even after I've given owners verbal and written warnings - and there are still people out there wasting money on easily avoided engine repairs! I'm trying to save you money and aggravation, regular readers! Listen to Dr Kev!

With the winter rapidly closing in (and bringing plenty of colds and sniffles with it), it's time to think about booking your car in for a comprehensive Kam Winter Service. We'll ensure that every aspect of your car is ready for the cold, damp, inclement weather, to protect you from any unforeseen expenditure over the winter months.
Naturally, we can carry out checks like these on a Sunday down at Sawley, so give us a call and make an appointment. And, as I'll be in the workshop, why not come and meet Dr Kev face to face in his Surgery?

Until next week (or next Sunday if you're going to come visiting Sawley)

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 16/09/03

2003-09-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

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

Kam’s Column - 09/09/03

2003-09-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

I don't know if you saw the England game on Saturday, but it wasn't the most inspiring display of skills that I've ever seen. I won't go as far to say that it dragged, but I certainly wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat (in fact, I was slumped rather far back into it, digesting a particularly wonderful lunch). Still, it was a solid performance and can be looked on as a good warm up game. I don't know about you, regular reader, but I long for a bit of excitement...

World news this week hasn't been particularly vibrant either. The Hutton enquiry is still dragging on, and I have to wonder whether anyone is really interested in the result any more. It was briefly exciting when Big Tone took to the stand, but no real revelations came of it. More interesting is the pending communications reshuffle at number ten - and even then that is fairly dull for most people (apart from certain journalists that is).

This week's tale saw me doing plenty of preparation for the footy season - in fact, after this tale of derring-do, I think I'll be as fit as Becks himself! How and why... You'll have to be patient!

As you know, most of our business now comes from word of mouth recommendation, and so it was that Mr Ed Daniels (name changed to protect his innocence) found us a few years back. A friend of my father's, Mr Daniels then owned a rather fine vintage BMW. The years took their toll and so he decided to trade up to the latest Ford Mondeo Tdi, taking delivery of the fine beast just last week. All was well until he went to the theatre on Sunday night.

Whether he didn't enjoy the production or just fancied a few drinks at the interval is as yet unrecorded, but when he left the theatre, he decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the car in the multi-story where it had been sitting for the evening, and return the next morning to collect it. Although he wouldn't have been over the limit, Mr Daniels takes the highly sensible 'zero is best' policy when it comes to drinking and driving. And anyway, it was on the top level of a multi-story - what harm could it come to?

Well, regular reader, when he returned to the multi-story the next morning, Mr Daniels discovered that his new pride and joy had been vandalised! Some urchin had decided that this was the vehicle to steal for the night and had managed to gain entry into the cabin. However, all attempts at hotwiring had failed, thanks to an anti-theft ignition pack fitted to all Mondeos. As you can imagine, this was a double-edged sword - the car hadn't moved but the console and wiring loom were pretty much trashed. So he called Kam in desperation. (You may be wondering how the criminals were going to get the car out of the car park as it was ticket only entry/exit. It appears that Mr Daniels had left his entry ticket in full view in the car - so to the ticket booth attendant, all would have looked hunky-dory...)

"Kev, my recovery company won't come up the multi-story - I'm stuck!"
"It's OK, Mr Daniels. I'll get the lads out with a courtesy car and the recovery truck, and we'll get your car back to the workshop."

If only things were that simple! When Glynn arrived at the multi-story, he discovered that it was in fact one of the older style with low ceilings - meaning that we couldn't get our truck under the front barrier, let alone up the ramps! And as the Mondeo wouldn't start, there was only one thing for it - to come back to base and get Dr Kev!

Out we went again, me with my toolbox, Glynn with a Thermos. And of course, this being an older car park, the lifts weren't in great shape - so I decided to use the stairs. All eight flights of them!

Once at the Mondeo, it was fairly simple to diagnose the fault (that the wiring loom was shredded and the console broken!) and work out which parts would be required. A quick phone call to the local Ford dealer was all that it took to check that they ad the relevant bits on the shelf, so down the stairs I ran. Then back up because I'd left the truck keys with Glynn (he was minding the Mondeo in case another urchin tried their luck). Then down again.

I was back within the half-hour, running up the stairs loaded with all of the new parts from Ford. It didn't take long to rewire the ignition and refit the console, and with that done, it was time to recode the key and set the ECU back up again. Guess where I'd left my recoder? Yes, in the truck, outside! Once more down and up...

Eventually the job was sorted and the Mondeo started up good as new. Thankfully, the car park didn't charge for the overnight stay - I think that they were feeling guilty that the car had been vandalised on their patch! Still, it's all part of the Kam service, to reach places other companies can't - and it did my fitness training a lot of good I can tell you!

This week has been another Stunner for Stunners and I've had so many people comment how cheap the tyres are - even in comparison to some dedicated fast fit style tyre depots. If you don't believe me, do a bit of ringing around and then come down to Kam!

A number of customers have asked me this week about Sunday opening. We are planning to open on Sundays in the future, but which depot and when is still under discussion! It is an open, on-running topic of conversation and I'll let you know more when I do!

On a final note for the week, it's getting dark and chilly again, so it's a good time to consider your winter service. Of course, Kam do quite a number of checks for free, so come down and see how much money you won't be spending!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 02/09/03

2003-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Have you seen Beckham's comments about losing the chance to win the World Cup that have been published in the media recently? He feels that he's missed the best opportunity to lift the trophy that he's ever had - and seems to have written the rest of the England squad off in the process by saying that last year's competition may be the best chance that any of them will ever have! What about the current or future line-ups? No wonder the press keep blowing hot and cold on him if he's coming out with those statements!

Something else I spotted and just had to tell you about is the latest Toyota Prius. Now, you know me, I love all cars equally (but some more equally than others) - but this Prius looks like something special. It isn't the car as such, but rather one of the options that you can buy for it - the automatic parking system! Yes, that's right, the Prius will park itself without any input from you at all! Just imagine that - I'd love to get the chance to test it out in some of the more poorly designed multi-stories that I've encountered. Mandy would love it, as she finds reverse parking a bit difficult at times if the kids are play-fighting in the back (as children do). I wonder if Toyota would be kind enough to give me a go; in the interests of unbiased reporting of course...
As you all know, we were running a skeleton staff here on Bank Holiday Monday to make sure that we could get your cars back to you in time for the return to work on Tuesday. With plenty of jobs on the books, it was quite a busy day. However, the schedule changed slightly when Mr Amberton (name changed to protect his innocence) brought his Ford Transit in.

"Kev, I really need your help! I'm trying to get a piece of machinery to one of the businesses on the industrial estate and my van is grinding and banging at me! I need to deliver this equipment because the company are working today and have a production deadline to meet!"

He was looking really rather panicked by this point. Glancing at the van, I recognised the logo on the side as belonging to one of the locally based industrial courier firms. "Ok Mr Amberton, it shouldn't be a problem. What I can do is lend you one of our works vans so that you can make your delivery while we attend to the Transit."
His eyes positively lit up, regular reader, and he pumped my hand enthusiastically. I can't tell you what he had in the back of that van (a machine of some sort, but nothing like I'd encountered before) but it was rather heavy! Once we'd packed him off in our van, it was time to get the Transit into the workshop.

Since we knew that Mr Amberton needed the van back as soon as possible (he had to get another piece of equipment back to the Scottish borders by nightfall), I asked the ever-wise Glynn if he would give me a hand. Naturally he agreed, not before making another brew though! I swear that man has caffeine for blood!
Mr Amberton wasn't exaggerating when he said that the van was grinding. Think of an old fashioned football rattle (the rectangular thing that you swing around) and that was just one part of the noise! It was also whistling and banging at the same time - this was not good.

Obviously, the first thing to do was to take the wheels off, as it was plain that the noise was coming from that area. You won't believe what we found under there and I don't think that I have ever seen such a mess in all my years in the workshop!
As soon as the driver's wheel came off, the problem was clear. Because the van had been hammering up and down the motorway, and had obviously missed some vital services, the brake discs were broken! There was a huge crack running through each front disc, the pads were threadbare and the mechanism was worn down almost as far as you can go. I can't believe that the van still stopped!

On further investigation, it transpired that the wheel bearings were significantly worn and both lower ball joints were completely shot. Amazing. Of course, being a Bank Holiday Monday, not many companies are as dedicated as us here at Kam (or Mr Amberton's courier firm for that matter) - so where were we going to get the right parts?

Help was at hand in the form of our super computer model list, which gave us the numbers for all of the bits that we would need to repair the running gear. And, what do you know, the Kam parts store had everything on the shelf! A quick phone call to Mr Amberton brought him up to date with the situation and gave us the go ahead to fit all of the new parts.

You're probably wondering how long all of this took. Well, I can tell you that from the van grinding in to purring out, we spent two hours on the job! As you can imagine, Mr Amberton was delighted - so much so in fact that he has given Kam the maintenance contract for all of the vehicles on his fleet (over 20 vans I'm told)! He is coming back next week to trial our Stunners as he's heard so many good things about them through this column!

Of course, not all grinding noises are as easy to diagnose as this one was. But it just goes to show that what might just sound like a grind could actually be deadly serious (potentially literally). I'm still amazed that the brakes on that Transit worked at all - there really was a very nasty accident waiting to happen there. But all's well that ends well!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 18/08/03

2003-08-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

Mandy's been complaining this week about her newly rediscovered status as a football 'widow'. I keep explaining to her that this is Football, not just any old obsession (did I really just say obsession?) but she's having none of it.

However, when I pointed out that I would be taking the kids out for the morning on Saturday, leaving her to some much needed peace and quiet, she almost pushed me out of the door! I must have won that little argument, as she's bought me a new Derby scarf. Or perhaps she wants me out of the house more often?

After last week's story, we've had tale after tale of electrical disaster coming into the workshop. The most perplexing came down from our Sutton-in-Ashfield car sales site. They'd taken a two year old Ford Galaxy in as part-exchange and were giving it their usual complete mechanical and physical check over (which includes a full pre-sales service and MoT). Anyway, everything appeared to be spot on, until the inspector finished the test drive, parked up in the parking bay and tried to lock it. The central locking refused to work from the driver's door. There was no motor noise, no resistance against the key turn, nothing. However, all was fine from the passenger door.

"Kev, it's Paul up at Sutton - I've got a problem that I need you to fix. In fact, I could do with it done sharpish as I've already had someone see the car arrive and are hassling me for a test drive!" (Paul's the manager up at Sutton by the way)

"No worries Paul, I've got a willing victim," I shot a glance over to the as-yet unaware Shaun. "We'll get it sorted for you."

Once the Galaxy arrived, Shaun took one look at it and informed me that I was the finer auto electrician and that he couldn't possibly tackle a job of this magnitude. He disappeared after delivering this little speech before I could see whether he was just trying to unload a potentially fiddly job or was being straight-up. What do you think regular reader?

It looked like it should be a fairly simple fix, so I got down to the task of removing the door panels to check the motors. And what do you know? Both the driver and passenger door were chocked full of new bits! Each had a sparkling motor, linkages and even micro switches! It seems that the previous owner had had everything replaced without actually getting the problem solved and so had chosen to offload the car! From a quick mental calculation, I estimate that around £600 had already been spent...

I checked each of the components and the interconnecting wires with my trusty multimeter and found nothing amiss. Once I'd put the panels back into place, I tested the locking again, just in case it had decided to spark back into life, but found that it still didn't work from the driver's door.

Just as I was going to get myself a contemplative brew, I happened to notice that there was a service history folder sitting on the rear luggage cover, so I opened the boot to pick it up.

That's when something very odd hit me - I had only just locked the doors (from the passenger side), but hadn't put the key anywhere near the boot lock! When I removed the inner panelling, I couldn't believe my eyes - the tailgate was devoid of any central locking parts at all! The brackets were present and correct, but there were no motors or anything! Curious...

It is possible that the lack of locking apparatus in the boot could cause a fault further down the system, so I replaced all of the missing parts (which we would have had to do to make the car sellable anyway) - but still no joy! I could tell that this was going to be one of those really perplexing tasks.
Once I'd sorted out the rear tailgate, it was time to have a look at the service history. It was here that I found my next clue - a small receipt for "Bodywork Repair: tailgate, primer and paint", but with no more information than that. This got me thinking, and I started searching around the rear of the car looking for any signs of damage.

Why the back? Well, if the car had been in a rear end shunt and had to have the tailgate replaced, then this could explain the lack of locking motors. It was a long shot...

But, in true Kam style, that hunch paid off when I located a piece of trim that hadn't been refitted quite flush with the boot lip. Under here lay a collection of loose wires and the Central Locking Control Box (affectionately nicknamed the 'Black Box'). All of these were showing signs of water damage, where rain had blown in under the incorrectly fitted trim panel. As a new 'Black Box' is a rather costly item (to say the least), my first course of action was to try and repair the existing unit - which didn't do any good.
I was sure that the 'Black Box' was at fault, it could only have been that - but I didn't want to order a new one without being 100% certain. Fortunately, luck was on my side as we were servicing another Galaxy for Sutton, so I borrowed the 'Black Box' from that one and put it into the problem car.

On first turn of the key, all of the doors locked! Dr Kev wins again! I could now order a new 'Black Box' safe in the knowledge that this was the problem and so avoid any extra expenditure.

For what I hear, the water had barely dried from Sutton's pre sale carwash before the Galaxy was out on a test drive! And of course, the new owners can be certain that it will lock perfectly every time. If only the prior owner had known that we could have fixed the locking without replacing every componant needlessly, maybe he would have held onto it!
Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 12/08/03

2003-08-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Kam’s Column - 04/08/03

2003-08-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

I was amazed to read a story in the papers about a man who has been prosecuted for helping people to cheat on their driving theory test. Not the most difficult examination in the world, the theory test was compromised by a driving instructor who allegedly made over £200,000 by communicating with examinees via a mobile phone link. Not only was this wrong, but it also begs a fundamental question - if people can't pass the theory test unaided, should they be allowed on the road at all? Your thoughts please!

I must take this opportunity to offer my apologies to all of our customers who have tried to book their cars in with us over the past week. We're experiencing a (new) upsurge in our business and, combined with a sudden rush of terminal head gasket failures, we are becoming really rather booked up. In fact, some of our customers at Heanor are having to wait three weeks for major engineering works! Let me assure you that we're working as quickly as we can, regular reader, but we can't help it if we are really that popular! Plus, as you know, we refuse to skimp on our thorough approach to problems just to reduce the waiting times...

This week's story is a truly unusual one. Mr Houston (name changed to protect his innocence) was one of the lucky customers who booked their cars into the workshop before the head gasket fever began. His car, a Mercedes S Class had a simple enough sounding problem - the automatic gearbox was periodically jumping from 'Drive' into 'Reverse'. Naturally, I told him to bring it down to the workshop for me to have a look.

Now, I knew that something was up when the Merc arrived - it had obviously had some substantial body modification carried out as the bonnet was dramatically shortened. And I'm not talking about run-into-the-back-of-a-truck shortened either! This had been done properly...

Before Mr Houston picked up one of the last remaining courtesy cars, he turned and grinned at me.

"Just before I leave Kev, I think that you ought to have a look under the bonnet."

"Erm... OK" I'd got no idea why I should need to have a look at an S Class engine to fix a problem with the gearbox, but there was obviously a hidden agenda here, so dutifully I popped the bonnet.

"I don't see what's... Ahh" I said as I looked down. There was no S Class engine in this Mercedes - instead Mr Houston had fitted a heavily modified 5.7-litre Chevrolet Blazer engine into the car.

"Yes, and it's mated to the Blazer 'box as well, Kev. Just thought you'd like to know before you start work!" And with that, he was off, leaving me scratching my head. A Blazer engine, in a Mercedes? Who had ever heard of such a thing!

Not to be dissuaded from the task in hand, I edged the S Class monster into the workshop and started to have a look for all of the obvious things. All of the filters were clean, the 'box oil was good and all of the linkages seemed to be moving freely. Although I'm not an auto 'box expert, I was fairly sure that there was nothing obviously wrong.

Which only left one thing - puzzlement. According to Mr Houston, the gear shifting had only started recently and for no apparent reason. He'd left the car with his wife for a few days while he went on a business trip to Holland and, when he came back, all the problems had started. In the mean time, his wife had only driven a few miles.

While I was standing there looking slightly confused, Glynn came sauntering past and stood next to me with a freshly brewed mug of tea. After a few moments, he pointed to the front of the car.

"You see those tyres, Kev?"

"Yes."

"What can you tell me about them?"

Looking hard at the tyres I thought for a moment. "They're not Stunners" (oh the horror!) "and they are pretty new. In fact, very new." I could still see the shop sticker on one of the treads.

"Exactly."

This left me no further forward, so I had to ask Glynn to explain just what he was on about.

"When the tyres were fitted, the chances are that the garage staff used a jack on the car rather than a lift. And, on something like this, the hard points aren't always that obvious, so certain people would have put the jack on the gearbox itself."

And what do you know? When I got underneath the car, the shroud that covered the 'box was scuffed and dented. Enlisting Glynn's help, it took about an hour to remove all of the shrouding so that we could have a good look - and the problem was then obvious. When the car had been jacked up, the weight of that huge engine and the body of the car resting on the small jack had caused the selector rods to be bent and pushed out of place.

Therefore, every so often, they would collide with the main gear selector and push the stick back into reverse. Simple! With a bit of skilful welding and rod positioning, the massive gearbox was as good as new.

It just goes to show that even a straightforward job like changing tyres has to be handled carefully to avoid any unwanted damage to your car. If only Mr Houston had come to Kam first!

When he came to pick up the car, I told him what we thought had caused the problem.

"I knew it!" He exclaimed. "Kathy had mentioned something about one of the tyres getting slashed and needing replacement. I'll be having words with that garage!"
I took the opportunity to explain to him that if he had had a set of Stunners put on, then he'd be covered against accidental damage as well as vandalism.

"OK, Kev, no need to rub it in!" He laughed.

Well, until next week regular readers, I'll be missing out on the heatwave to get all of your cars repaired!

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 29/07/03

2003-07-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

As I'm sure that you are all aware regular reader, the legendary comedian Bob Hope died a few days ago at the impressive age of 100. I know that he had a 'good innings' (as I gather they say in swanky private cricket clubs), but I was really saddened at the news as I loved his brand of comedy. I have to say that some years ago, there was a hoax going around on the great man's birthday that he had died. I, believing everything that my good friends tell me, promptly called Mandy at home, sent a text message to my best mate and generally, in retrospect, made a bit of a fool of myself!

Apparently, the rumour came from Mr Hope himself - or is that just another tall tale that I was told?

This week's story is all about charging - both financial and electronic! Mr Shaw (name changed to protect his innocence) owns a rather nice four year-old Ford Escort that kept discharging the battery after four days. It was always on the fourth day, never the third or the fifth, which in itself was more than a little odd. Being a successful businessman, Mr Shaw spent much of his time hammering up and down the motorway, so had been to four separate garages around the country in order to get the problem sorted.

"But no-one has been able to do anything, Kev" he whined. "I've spent a small fortune trying to get this sorted, I've had four courtesy cars; three separate days of waiting on train platforms when courtesy cars weren't available and a multitude of bills with nothing to show for them! It's time to see if you really are as good with the wiring as you claim!"

This sounded like a challenge.

"No worries, Mr Shaw. If you could leave the car with us for a few days, we'll get the problem sorted for you. And of course, we have got a courtesy car waiting here for you to use in the meantime."

Typically, when the Escort arrived, I was up to my eyeballs with another job that had taken a little longer than expected, so I asked the ever-willing Glynn if he would mind taking a look.

"It's fine Kev, I can't see any problem with it at all. There's a clutch of new parts fitted" (at this point I looked at him quizzically - what had a clutch got to do with the electric system I wondered. Then I realised that I had misheard!) "and there seems to be plenty of charge in the battery. I can't find anything wrong with it."

Well, if Glynn said that he couldn't find anything, there obviously wasn't anything to be found. So I called Mr Shaw and suggested that we hold onto the car until the battery ran out - which it duly did three days later. We finally had a problem that we could see!

Since I had finally disentangled myself from the previous job, I took the opportunity to look the Escort over myself. Mr Shaw wasn't lying when he told me about the new parts that he'd had fitted. Under the bonnet sat a new alternator, new starter motor, plenty of new wiring and a new calcium sealed unit battery.

As soon as I saw the battery, the alarm bells started to ring. It wasn't that it was a dis-reputable brand - in fact it was one that we use ourselves - but it was the fact that it was brand spanking new and as such needs special treatment. There are different methods of testing the charge held by batteries; one for older units and one for newer. And, on closer inspection, it appeared that the previous garage had used the old method to test it! This meant that the battery had been irreversibly damaged and, when I tested it using our latest purchase, I could confirm that it just wouldn't hold charge. I checked with Mr Shaw before dropping a new battery in and, so I'm told, it is still charging happily a week later (unlike Kam - we didn't charge Mr Shaw for the inspection that Glynn carried out or for checking the car each day; as you know we won't charge unless we actually fix something).

In fact, I'm so confident that the problem won't reoccur that I have given Mr Shaw a personal Dr Kev guarantee! If the problem reoccurs with the new battery, Mr Shaw could find himself with a shiny new Rolls Royce...

I've had plenty of phone calls from your out there, regular readers, concerned about the men in white coats milling around Sawley recently. No, we weren't doing the oil and plugs on a UFO, and it wasn't the doctors come to take me away for offering such good deals - it was the council officials coming to inspect the plans for the extension that we're going to put on the Sawley site. It's going to be a big investment for the company and, once complete, we'll be able to carry out Class 7 MoT testing. We'll bring you more on the story as it comes in!

We've also been asked about Sunday openings. At the moment, we don't open on Sundays, but we may do sometime in the future. Afterall, everyone needs a day off sometime!

I'm also getting more people than ever coming into the workshop extolling the virtues of the Stunner tyres. Mr Shaw had a set put on his Escort while it was in (he'd only got 14000 miles out of his previous branded set!) and immediately commented on how much better the car felt. From Minis to Maseratis, the Stunners are performing much better than expected for everyone. In fact, I've got a set on my personal car - and as I have a wife and two small children, you can imagine that I only use products that I feel are totally safe. That's as good as a Dr Kev guarantee!
Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 21/07/03

2003-07-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I'm sure you will be delighted to know, regular reader, that I've finally managed to extricate myself from all of those fantastic wiring jobs that you all sent into me. Many thanks to Dr Raj for filling in while I was dabbling with diodes and wrangling with the wires!

I had an absolutely brilliant weekend, possibly the best that I've had for a long time. No, Derby didn't win the Cup, nor did Owen decide that he wanted to come over on a free transfer. I spent the weekend being wined, dined and rubbing shoulders with celebrity - and it is all thanks to you out there!

Basically, you know that we are a Delphi Clutch and Brake fitting centre and, because of the size of our customer base, we were chosen to spend the weekend in the Delphi Suite at the Grand Prix!

So, there we were - yours truly along with some of the lads from the workshops - proudly displaying our "VIP Access" passes and who should we find standing right beside us? None other than the Terminator himself, Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Naturally I asked him if he would like to come and do some promotional work for Kam, but I very quickly found myself talking to the lapels of his rather large bodyguards!

Of course, one of the great things about being at the GP with Delphi was that it really drove home just how good their products are. They make parts for the axles of the F1 cars as well as some of the braking components too. That means that whenever we fit a Delphi part to your car, you are getting the same level of technology as Ralf or Michael get on their vehicles! Now that really is impressive.

Once the day's racing was over on Saturday, the Delphi company directors asked for a bit of hush, and presented Kam with an award for the best supplier in this area!

Factors like the size of our customer base and customer retention were taken into consideration, and Kam came out on top (not that we were surprised)!

Back in the workshop on Monday, it was time to flash my 'Access All Areas' badge... I mean get down to work! Mr Foster (name changed to protect his innocence) had brought his Mazda 626 into Heanor, complaining that the brakes were constantly squealing.

"It's driving me mad, Kev," he said while trying to extricate an earplug from his left ear. "I have to wear these things" he pointed to the now freed plug, "just to get myself around town! Even the neighbours' dogs are howling when I drive past!"

I didn't like to say anything, but we knew that something was coming our way when we heard all the hounds in the area making a commotion street-by-street; we could have tracked Mr Foster's progress to the metre had we had the time!

"Don't worry Mr Foster," I said, "leave it with me and I'll personally guarantee that your car will never squeal like that again."

"I might just hold you to that, Kev - I've taken it to three separate garages and haven't had any improvement whatsoever. Good luck!"

It wasn't too hard to diagnose the problem. Once I'd whipped the wheels off, it all became obvious. The previous pads and discs that had been fitted to the 626 weren't of the best quality (that was putting it nicely!) and they were badly worn. Additionally, the poor quality had meant that little fragments of the pads had become caught in the actual braking mechanism, causing it to catch and squeal. This was a job for Delphi!
Once I had spoken to Mr Foster to check the cost of the new items, I offered up a set of Delphi pads and discs to the car and had them attached in no time at all. The test drive was totally silent (apart from me humming along to the radio of course) without a hint of noise from the brakes. As you can imagine, Mr Foster was delighted - especially when I gave him a Dr Kev guarantee that the problem would not reappear during the life of those pads and discs! I don't think we'll be seeing him again until the next service - unless he forgets to refill his coolant (something that I checked quickly while the car was up on the ramp). But none of you would ever forget such a basic thing, would you regular readers?

In the midst of all the GP excitement, the world has naturally kept turning and it hasn't escaped my notice that some heat is being turned on the Prime Minister over the death of Dr Kelly. I have a feeling that this matter is going to run and run, especially once the conspiracy theorists get their teeth into it...

That's it for another week, when I can assure you that I will be back (having spent time in the proximity of the great Austrian I have had the chance to perfect my accent for those all important 'Hollywood Theme' evenings)! Have a quiet week!

Dr Kev

Kam’s Column - 15/07/03

2003-07-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I feel sorry for a couple of my friends. After working hard for the last six months, scrimping and saving, they have gone on a fabulous holiday to Kos in order to soak up some rays. Their reason for going was:

"We want some sun, Raj. We want a week lying on the beach, relaxing and getting some serious tanning action."

So, why do I feel sorry for them? Just look around, regular reader - they didn't need to go to Kos to get their tan. They could have saved all that money and stayed at home to tan just as much! Still, the change of scene will do them good.

As you can imagine, it has been a little warm here in the workshop. In fact, I would so far as to say that it has been sweltering all day, every day, not helped by the fact that we've been extremely busy. Many of the jobs have revolved around cars overheating, naturally, which could in many cases be avoided if the owners had taken advantage of our free cooling system check.

In fact, one of our customers is a long distance lorry driver and recently got stuck on a jam on the A1. Over the course of five miles (which took some two hours!) he counted 22 cars on the side of the road, broken down due to overheating. Must have been a busy day for the recovery services (if they could get through the jams that is!)
.
The most awkward job of the week was also caused by overheating. Mr Connelly (name changed to protect his innocence) had brought his 2.8-litre TDI Mitsubishi Pajero in for a full service and free MoT. Everything was going very well, until we discovered a large water loss somewhere in the system. Naturally, the most obvious thing to cause the loss was a split hose somewhere, but one couldn't be found no matter how hard I looked. There was no external leakage visible at all, so the next thing to do was a cylinder head check.

I was sorry to report that the cylinder head check came back positive, something was amiss in the bowels of the engine. The presence of hydrocarbons in the system coolant indicated it was the head gasket. A quick check on prices yielded some staggering results, so Mr Connelly decided to take the Pajero away and hope for the best, against our advice may I add.

Fast forward to the start of last week. Mr Connelly was on his way to Birmingham Airport, and the engine overheated, big style. Steam was going everywhere, the engine started to grind and the Pajero spluttered to a halt on the hard shoulder. It sounded pretty terminal, and once we'd brought the Pajero back, we confirmed that the head gasket had indeed expired.

Of course, with most cars, it is an expensive repair although not completely terminal. The Pajero however was a different story. Basically a Japanese specification Shogun, the Pajero had ceramics in the combustion chamber and on the cylinder head. To cut a long story short, this basically meant that we could not skim the head (which we later found out was unusable anyway due to more warp than the USS Enterprise) so we would have to source a new unit.

And, guess what? Only Mitsubishi make cylinder heads for the Pajero, so you can imagine what the parts prices were like! When I told Mr Connelly, all I got was silence from the other end of the line before a very faint:

"Well, I suppose that you had better get it fixed up then Raj. I love that Pajero..."

It took a week for Mitsubishi to supply the new head (it arrived yesterday) as they had to import it direct from Japan! Once it had arrived, it was a relatively simple job to install it, rebuild the engine and get it all tested. Simple? Well as simple as an engine rebuild on a Japanese giant ever gets anyway! What pushed the final costs up yet further was the fact we had to pay a surcharge on the old head when we returned it to Mitsubishi since it was so badly damaged due to the head gasket not being replaced when recommended.

This problem could have been avoided had Mr Connelly taken our original advice to get the head gasket replaced. But he didn't, a fact that I am sure he's now regretting. Granted, it wouldn't have been cheap but it wouldn't have thinned his wallet quite as much as the rebuild we've just had to do!

I'm expecting a few more jobs like this to come in over the next week or so, if this heatwave continues that is. If you want to check the status of your head gasket, then there are tests that we can do to get an idea of how well it is protecting the engine. Just give us a call and ask!

Well regular reader, that is it for another week. I'm off to try and get some respite from the heat before re-entering the oven that is the workshop to chargrill some more! I hear that Dr Kev is still tangled up in his wiring jobs, the last time I spoke to him he was rewiring a Citroen Saxo who's owner had melted the wiring loom by installing the biggest sound system since Glastonbury...
Until the next time,

Dr Raj.

Kam’s Column - 08/07/03

2003-07-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I don't know whether you have seen the news about the two conjoined Iranian girls who are undergoing separation surgery. I've been following the story with great interest - not that I'm any good with blood and gore, but I am totally fascinated by the complex medical procedure. Joined at the skull, although sharing two distinct brains, the girls have lived as a pair for 29 years.
How will they cope apart, I wonder, if the surgery goes successfully that is?

Modern medicine is full of miracles, I hope that this is one of them...

If you've been down to any of our workshops in the past few weeks, you'll know that we have been extremely busy, especially here in Heanor. Some days I've felt like I should have a spanner in each hand and a screwdriver clamped between my teeth just to get through all of the jobs! Not that I'm complaining, as you know regular reader, none of us at Kam are lay-about types and if we wanted a quiet life we'd move elsewhere. But I've never seen demand like it in all my years on the workshop floor!

I'm putting the blame squarely at the door of our free MoT offer (available with every major service) and the increasing popularity of the Stunner tyres. It seems that pretty much every motorist in this area has their MoT coming up around this time, so wants a full service as well! And while they are at it, they decide to try out a set of these fabulous Stunners too. I don't know, sometimes you can feel too popular...

Take Mrs King for example (name changed to protect her innocence). She brought her Austin Maxi into the workshop for its yearly inspection and service.

"It isn't quite right, Dr Kev," she said when she dropped 'Doris' off. "I've been having trouble seeing at night and she doesn't feel quite as responsive as she used to. The steering is... slacker if you understand what I mean."

"I think I do Mrs King, leave Doris here and we'll get her back up to speed for you."

Now, there are things that we regularly fail cars on in their MoTs. Steering, lights, brakes, suspension and wiper blades are the most common culprits and, on a quick test drive, it looked as though 'Doris' had pretty much all of these factors working against her! The steering was pulling hard left, the suspension was wallowing like a hippo and the brakes were so soft they could have been a fluffy kitten for all the good that they did. Back at the depot, and considerably paler, I teased Doris onto the ramp and sent her up into the air.

Incredibly, she didn't need any structural welding or reinforcing as so many cars of this age do, so it looked like all we'd have to fix were the things I've already mentioned. I gave Mrs King a call to tell her the news.

"Oh, that's quite a lot of work isn't Kev? Do you know how much it is going to cost?"

"Not at the moment Mrs King - I'm about to do a price check now for you. We will need to replace both the front shocks I'm afraid as yours will never get through the ticket. The steering box will either have to be stripped or replaced as well - it as simply worn with age. I'm going to have a word with one of our specialist supplier now for you, see what I can do."

As it turned out, the supplier we use for all of the vintage cars that come in had precisely what we need and at a really good price. Once I'd got the go-ahead from Mrs King, the bits arrived later that afternoon and it was time to get down to the dirty to prise off the nuts that hold the shock absorbers to the bodywork.

It took most of my body weight, a thump from a hammer and a blast from one of the torches to free up the first nut. I don't know who (or what) put it on, but it may as well have been welded to the bodywork! Thankfully, the steering box was easier to replace and I only lost the skin on one knuckle doing it.

With these task accomplished, it was time to look at the brakes, which had far too much play in the mechanism. Thankfully all that was needed was to get the mechanism tightened up a bit - the rest of it was in good condition.
As you well know, lights are an important part of the MoT inspection - and it was obvious that Doris' were going to fail - one pointed straight down and the other straight up! On all cars the alignment gradually goes out of sync over the year, and this being an older car it had just happened a little more noticeably!

With all of that accomplished, it was time to put 'Doris' in for her test - which I'm delighted to say she flew through with only an advisory on the rear tyres (which Mrs King has arranged to be changed to a set of Stunners on Friday)! A good job well done. Of course, most of the things like brakes and lights were done under the major service plan, so we didn't really have to do that much extra to give 'Doris' her ticket.

Even if your MoT isn't looming, we can give your car a check for the most common MoT failure items, for free as well! If you aren't sure about how well your car is stopping or are concerned about your suspension, bring it down and we'll give you a full report on what needs doing or not, as the case may be.

Well, that's it for another week regular readers. I can't sit here enjoying myself any longer; there are cars to attend to!
Until the next time,

Dr Kev.

PS While writing this column, I have been told that both of the conjoined twins have died during surgery. My heartfelt condolences go out to their families, friends and the medical team.

Kam’s Column - 23/06/03

2003-06-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It's Dr Raj with you again this week, taking you through the topical tales of technical triumph. Try saying that with your welding mask on!

I heard a great story recently, which I can assure you is 100% true. A friend of a friend of a friend is getting married in a few months time and had everything arranged, wedding, reception, honeymoon, the whole lot. Then he gets a phone call from the hotel where he is due to hold the reception.

"We've got a problem, will you move your reception?" Unsurprisingly, the young man concerned said 'No', especially as he had relatives flying in from around the planet and this was too short notice to change all the arrangements.

Half an hour later, the hotel is on the phone again. "If we pay for your reception and the costs you'll incur by moving venue, will you move?" Again, 'No'.

"Hmm. If we paid the penalty on all the flights that you'll have to rearrange and paid for the reception, will you move?" Another negative.

"What about if we threw in the cost of your wedding as well?"

"No."

"And the cost of your honeymoon?"

"No." Something odd was obviously going on, but the young man couldn't do all the rearranging at this short notice.

"OK. Are you buying a house?" (Regular reader, I promise that I'm not making this up)

"Yes."

"OK. What if we paid for your reception, your wedding, your honeymoon, all the penalties on your relative's flights and your house, will you move your reception?"

By this point, the young man had decided that enough was enough, so agreed. The next day, a cheque for the full amount (which I won't disclose) arrived in the post. Sign by a firm of solicitors. On behalf of a famous footballer who wanted the hotel for his son's birthday. I won't say exactly which football player, but suffice to say his son might be celebrating his next birthday somewhat closer to the Mediterranean, and has recently been playing with Daddy's present from the Queen... It's true, I promise you, hand on heart. Some people have all the luck!

Anyway, on with this week's tale! Mr Ochs (name changed to protect his innocence) brought his Honda CRX into the workshop, complaining that the ride was:

"Somewhat soft, Raj. Going around corners feels like I'm driving across treacle. It just isn't as firm as I remember it. OK, I know I've been driving the works Omega for a week, but my little baby just isn't right."
"No problem, Mr Ochs," I said. "Take one of the courtesy cars, and I'll personally get onto this right away for you."

Well, regular reader, I have to say that this was one of the easiest fixes I have ever been asked to undertake - but also one of the most potentially lethal. Mr Ochs' front shock absorbers had both given up the ghost completely. In fact, I didn't even need to get the car up on the ramps for the diagnosis - not only could I clearly see where they were leaking badly, but when I gently pushed down on the front wing, the whole car rocked up and down for a minute of so before coming back to rest! I suffer from sea-sickness, so I'm glad I found this out before taking it for a test drive!

Shock absorbers are one of the most vital parts of your car, second only to tyres and brakes in safety terms. Work shock absorbers not only make the ride far too soft, but can increase your braking distance dramatically. For instance, from just 30mph, your stopping distance is increased by something like 2-metres! That's enough to be lethal especially in built up areas...

After letting Mr Ochs know what the situation was, I replaced the shocks with brand new manufacturer specification items (at a fraction of the cost of Honda-manufactured parts!) and released the car back to him after taking the CRX on a lengthy test drive to check that everything was perfect. As a real enthusiast, Mr Ochs had kept the CRX in perfect condition, and, with the new shock absorbers on the front, it drove just like new.

We're seeing more and more spent shocks, where seven or eight-year-old cars are still running the original items. It is, quite frankly, shocking, especially as we offer a free shock absorber inspection to make sure that yours are in peak condition... Plus, as I've already mentioned, it can be lethal if you can't stop quickly enough.

I'll leave you with that thought for the week - if you're got any doubts, bring your car to Kam and we'll check it all out for you!
Until the next time,

Dr Raj

Kam’s Column - 17/06/03

2003-06-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It has been a funny old week. First of all we've got the continuing Beckham will-he-won't-he situation. Is he staying? Is he going? Does he even want to go at all? You'd think that with all the good he has done for football that he'd be treated a little better than this. Even the Queen wants to reward him - and that's saying something as I can't imagine Her Majesty singing footy chants on the terraces or even on the royal sofas.

Talking of the Queen, her birthday honours list was published recently - and she is the only person that I can think of who gives things away on her birthday. Then again, what can you give a woman who has everything? Antibiotics?

And then there has been this extremely hot weather. Sultry in fact - and not made any better by Mr Higgins' Austin Maxi which, bless it, needed the floors and sills doing for MoT. Shaun drew the short straw and was welding in temperatures approximating the surface of Mars. However, all was not lost as we had a fleet of vans in the workshop, to which we were fitting our insurance approved immobilisers

I can imagine the looks of puzzlement on your faces now - how could a fleet of vans have helped? Well, these vans belonged to a local food transport company and were refrigerated vehicles! With the permission of the owner, the lads took five minutes every so often in the back to escape the exhausting heat!

This week's tale of woe concerns a long-time friend of mine, Mr Adrian Booth (name changed to protect his stupidity - I'm allowed to say that, we've known each other for years!) and his Peugeot 406 HDI. Now, a few weeks ago, I was best man at Adrian's wedding and ever since he'd been on honeymoon. Rather than going to the sun, he'd headed to Iceland to see the incredible landscape. You can imagine what a shock this current heat wave was to him when he returned!

Anyway, before he left, he had booked the car in to have the air-con regassed but when it arrived at our Heanor depot yesterday morning, I could tell something was badly wrong. Adrian was nearly in tears.
"What ever's the matter?" I asked.

"Look Kev," Adrian held up his left hand. There was a mark around his ring finger where his ring should be - but no ring! Surely marital bliss couldn't have ended so soon? "My hands got so hot this morning as I drove here that I had to take my ring off. I put it on the dashboard, then a lorry pulled out, Kev." He paused for a sniffle. "I hit the brakes, and the ring slide down into my air vents! I can't find it!"

"Don't worry Adrian, we'll find it." That's what good mates are for, stepping into the breach when things go wrong. "Take a courtesy car, and let me get on with this. I'll call you when I've located it."

I knew that it would be one of the jobs that was going to take quite a while, so I looked around the workshop for a willing volunteer. Andy was swamped with MoTs, Elliot was fitting Stunners to the large queue of vehicles parked outside the workshop and Shaun was still repairing the Maxi. Looked like a job for yours truly then... Wonderful.

The first thing obviously was to have a good look all around the air vents, the foot wells and all the nooks and crannies around the dash, just in case the ring had miraculously reappeared. Sadly, it wasn't going to be that easy. So out came the heater motor and the vent assemblies. No ring, not even in the connecting pipework. I then had to uninstall the sound system I'd got for Adrian's wedding present to get to the back of the console so that could come out. Still nothing. All I wanted was a little glimmer in the dark to give me some clue.

By the time I'd finished, there was virtually no dashboard left. Pipes were hung over the steering wheel to keep them out of the way, miles of wiring was neatly bundled up in each foot well and I'd lost about four stone in perspiration, even though I'd been taking regular breaks in the fridges! And still no ring. I couldn't phone Adrian and tell him that I hadn't found it, I couldn't do that to a friend. I had even dropped bent nails attached to string through the remaining vents to try and hook the ring back up.

So I decided to leave it until morning, perhaps sleep-rested eyes would be able to spot it. I knew that it would be perfectly safe, as all of our vehicles are stored inside secured premises over night.

Standing wearily in the office, I was enjoying a final cuppa of the afternoon, when one of our young apprentices came in.

"Kev, I was just moving that 406 back a bit for the night and I found this." He held out his open hand - with Adrian's ring on it! "It was just sitting on the steering column, so I thought I'd bring it in to store with the rest of the found valuables."

I almost couldn't speak! The ring must have been wedged in a pipe and slipped out unnoticed when I put the pipe over the steering wheel! As you can imagine, Adrian was overjoyed when I gave him the good news, and all marital harmony is now restored apparently!

It just goes to show how something so simple can cause so many problems - and should be a lesson to you all not to put small valuables near air vents or other small entrances into a car's internals!

I'm going to try and cool off a bit. Until next week, please don't send me any more lost wedding rings!

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 27/05/03

2003-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I know that certain places in the world have different seasons for violent natural events. You’ve got typhoon season (not Typhoo…), monsoon season, even bush fire season. But is there an earthquake season? And if there is, it surely must be worldwide. There’s a whole lot of shaking going on globally - Japan has just been hit, Turkey shook not so long back – I wonder where the next event will be? The pictures on the news are truly horrible and my heart goes out to all of those involved. I hope that lessons in safe building can be properly learnt, so that the next time this happens, the casualty toll won’t be so high.

Talking of shaking, rattling and things rolling about, there is something that I feel that I must tell you regular reader. I may have alluded to it once or twice in the years of writing this column, but I don’t believe that I have ever said it outright. Of course, half of the problem is the Internet and the ease of accessing information. It’s just to easy to buy things, learn things and find out more stuff about one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. As I feel that I’ve known you forever, I think it is only right that I square up – I am the world’s biggest Elvis fan. Ever. I could challenge anyone to find a fact that I don’t know about the King, or a song I haven’t heard. There, I’ve said it; I don’t have to worry about it no more.

As usual, we were working right over the Bank Holiday weekend, albeit with a skeleton staff. And we’ve been absolutely swamped with jobs, ranging from fitting new sets of tyres (I think we must be the busiest Stunner sellers in the country, judging by how many are flying off the shelves each day!) to the usual round of tricky problems. The good news is that it looks like we’re coming to the end of our timing belt run, I’ve only got eight on the books so far this week…

Our first awkward car arrived bright and early Tuesday morning. We’d recently seen Mr Frank Young (a real name for a change this week!) when he brought his daughter’s car into the workshop for its annual service, but this time he had come in with his pride and joy, an Alfa 156 Twin Spark in a lovely shade that I can only describe as a little bit of green.

“I’ve got a problem with the brakes, Kev”, he said, leaning on the reception counter. “I replaced the front discs and pads last week, and did it really carefully, but it just isn’t right. I’ve checked everything twice over and can’t find the problem. Can you get it sorted?”

“No worries, Mr Young,” I replied. “I’ll give you a call as soon as we’ve identified what has gone wrong.”

A brief roadtest confirmed that the front brakes weren’t, well, braking. I returned to the workshop a minute later but a year older, thankful that I’d only gone down the road at 10mph. What’s more, the whole car was dragging to the left every time I touched the brake pedal. Definitely t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Up on the ramps, I whipped the alloys off and had a good look at the system. Everything seemed in order, the callipers were in good condition, the pistons moved freely and the alignment of the discs was spot on. Not anything glaringly obvious then.

Naturally, the next thing I had to do was check the specifications on our superb computer system, to ensure that Mr Young had used the correct parts. And herein lay the problem. I had noted that the discs weren’t of the same high quality that we would have installed had we done the job, but I hadn’t spotted something else. Our computer system gave me the correct widths of the discs – and when I got the measuring gear out, it all became obvious. The front left disc was three millimetres wider than the right – just a little bit but enough to cause the disc to catch on the pad and tug at the wheel when it got warm.

After a bit of shoppin’ around, I located some high quality replacement parts, which I installed after checking with Mr Young. A lengthy roadtest later and a session on the brake rollers back in the workshop confirmed that the brakes were now in tip-top condition. It’s easy when you know how…

When Mr Young picked the Alfa up, he took the chance to book in his wife’s car for a full service and (free) MoT – and while he did, one of his neighbours came in as well! Far from being a small world, this sort of thing is pretty common as most of our work comes either from recommendation or customers’ family connections. So it’s not unusual for the reception area to look more like a family reunion than the entrance to a workshop!

I’ll be back next week regular readers, so until then, I got a lot o’ working to do!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 20/05/03

2003-05-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I had a great day on Saturday. Having arranged time off from the workshop, I was able to go and see my lad – Josh – play in a charity football match. How much better can a father’s Saturday get? As you’d expect, Josh played a blinder, excelling even what I thought he was capable of. Fantastic.

After the game, it was time for some father-son bonding, so off to Skeggy beach we went. By the time we got there, the clouds had arrived and so had the rains. Typical! No beach footy for us then… And of course, the afternoon was completed by watching the FA Cup Final – now that is what I call a perfect Saturday!

There’s much excitement throughout Kam at the moment, as we’re in the process of building a brand new website. It’s all a little hush-hush – in fact I’ll probably take a rapping for letting the feline this far out of the bag – but I just had to tell someone. More details will arrive as soon as I’m allowed to spill the beans, so for the moment, keep it just between you and I, OK?

All restful weekends must come to an end, and as usual, this one did on Monday morning. Mr Sawston (name changed to protect his innocence) had left his D-reg Land Rover with us for some minor remedial work to the rear lights, as well as having an electric towbar hook-up installed. A fairly straight-forward job, I thought, so budgeted about two to three hours from start to finish.

Six and a half hours later, I was still at it. Within twenty minutes of starting the job, it had become apparent that the situation was really rather critical. You see, Mr Sawston had noticed that the rear lights were flickering on and off as he drove along, so assumed that he had a loose wire somewhere in the system. This assumption was deemed to be largely correct by all and sundry – including myself – until the moment that I undid the first screw holding the rear light cluster in. As I delicately rotated the screw in its hole, a quantity of rust flakes spewed forth (and fifth, and sixth for that matter – they just kept on coming) as did a small amount of water that had obviously been sitting somewhere inside the bodywork. As you can imagine, my heart sank.

Once the cluster cover was removed, the state of things became apparent. Water had obviously made its way through the outer casing and had sat on top of the wires, causing them to decay. As I looked at some of them, they crumbled into dust and swirled off in the gust that emanated from Glynn’s latest 'walk-past', during which he uttered something particularly useful.

“That looks nasty. It’ll be quite a job.” Thanks Glynn – spot on as always…
Obviously I had to call Mr Sawston to appraise him of the situation.

“To be honest,” I said, trying to put a brave face on things, “it is all repairable. But I don’t quite know how long it is going to take. The wires might only need tracing back a little way, or perhaps I’m going to have to go all the way to the fuse box to put things right. At the moment I just can’t tell, and so can’t really tell you how long it is going to take.”

“Oh” was the best Mr Sawston could manage. “What caused all this to go wrong?”

“Probably just age, Mr Sawston. A crack in the light casing would be all that was needed to let water in. It’s amazing how much water can get in through a tiny gap – especially in the recent rains.”

“Well, Kev, I really want you to get the car back to perfect condition. I’ve had it since new and it is probably the best Landy I’ve ever owned. You’ve really got no idea how long it might take?”

I thought hard, but couldn’t come up with a time figure as I really didn’t know the extent of the damage. “I could give you an estimate, but it would only be very rough. Somewhere around eight hours possibly, maybe more, maybe less. What I can do for you Mr Sawston, to help you out, is to chop our labour rate in half for the job.”

“That would be great Kev, thank you, I really appreciate that.”

So it was back to work, tracing the wires back through the body work to find a portion that wasn’t corroded so that I could patch new lengths in. If you’ve ever had to track wires back through a Land Rover, you’ll know that it isn’t the easiest job in the world – but eventually I had everything in perfect order (a predictable end to the tale, I hear you cry). Ironically, it was actually easier to install the towbar hook-up while I was rewiring the rest of the lighting system than it would have been to just attach it to the original wiring loom. So there is a silver lining on every cloud…

So far this week, I’ve already had another three broken timing belts arrive in the workshop, all of which required extensive rebuilds. Will motorists ever learn, I wonder (not you, regular reader, I know that you know how important it is to have your belt replaced…)? It has also been a good week for Stunner tyres – a set of which we fitted to Mr Sawston’s Land Rover a year ago incidentally. So while the 4x4 was having all the wiring work done, I checked the tyres – and even on this 4x4 they are still going strong after a year. From sports cars to 4x4s and all points in between, I’m still being amazed just how durable Stunners are…

That’s the end of another tale for this week. Until the next time, look after the car that carries you!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 13/05/03

2003-05-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Have you seen the latest Tory proposals for University education? Watching the news this morning nearly had me choking on my Weetabix. Iain Duncan-Smith has come up with the laudable idea of scrapping university tuition fees (great, I think, as I’d like my kids to choose that path). So far so good. But, there is a bombshell – the number of university places would be reduced!

How this is meant to be for the good of society I will never know – are they going to only take the top percentage of school leavers, and leave the rest - who want to learn – without the chance? Or are they going to means test it? Or worse, will they introduce a quota system so that they have a certain percentage from each ethnic group or socio-economic class? Even better, let’s just go back to a Victorian system and only allow the upper classes university education to keep the class system nicely separate. I tell you, regular reader, IDS really gets my goat…

I don’t even want to think about the other story that seems to have had most media coverage over the past week. I’m sure you spotted the story about the climber who had to amputate one hand to free himself from an American mountain side. To tell you the truth, I shudder to even think about it. Combine this with the latest Tory schemes and it’s a wonder that I could even face my Weetabix!

This week’s tale of automotive antics concerns Mr Stavley’s Peugeot 306 Tdi (Mr Stavley’s name has, naturally, been altered to protect his innocence). He bought the car from a local private sale and, within a few days, had lent it to his brother in law, Jerry, while his car was in another garage for repair (this other garage didn’t provide courtesy cars, unlike yours truly).

Apparently, all was hunky dory for a few miles, and then the Tdi overheated – badly. Water boiled up through the radiator, sent steam pouring out of the bonnet and into the cabin and forced Jerry to come to a halt on the side of a deserted B-road at about 11pm. Not what you want when you’re already late for a surprise 40th birthday celebration – especially when it is your own (of course he didn’t know anything about it, hence the surprise)!
First thing yesterday morning, Mr Stavley was on the phone.

“Kev, it’s got to be head gasket, hasn’t it? I mean, you can’t get a diesel to over heat that badly without it being head gasket, can you?” I could hear the panic.

“Well, Mr Stavley, I’m not going to lie to you. It could be the gasket – but that is only a worst case scenario. Let us have a look at the car for you and we will soon know what the situation is.”

Once the car was in the workshop, the first job was obviously to perform a head gasket check – which we do by looking for the presence of hydrocarbons in the cooling system. But there was a problem – the water in the radiator was the colour of the deepest darkest mud from the top of the Congo. I have never, ever, seen water this colour in a car – and in fact you could even see brown sludge where the radiator had boiled over and gushed down the engine bay. Nice.

In theory, it should have been easy enough to get this water out and refill it with nice fresh water. But no – there evidently was a blockage somewhere and every time we put new water in, it would turn brown in seconds. The only thing to do was to attach the ‘in’ side of the radiator to a flowing fresh water source, and allow the system to vent lower down and leave the car running until all the sludge was gone.

Before we could do this however, we had to work out why the fan wasn’t coming on. I left Shaun with the fiddly job of checking all the wiring and he very quickly discovered that there was no feed going into the fan motor. Once that was fixed, it was time to hook the car up and let it run.

It took two hours, regular reader, to have the water in the cooling system running clear. Two whole hours – in which time my lovely forecourt became covered with brown, rusty and horrible water. But eventually it did run clear, so it was time to perform the head gasket check.

I’m delighted to report that the gasket showed no signs of leaking – the system looked to be in perfect condition. And, at the end of a lengthy road test, the 306 remained cool, calm and collected.

The problem was caused by a complete neglect of the cooling system, which after the timing belt is probably the most important part of the engine. At Kam, we flush cooling systems on every service (if necessary) to ensure that this situation never occurs with any of our cars – especially as it can cause head gaskets to go and a lot of money to be lost…
Until next week, steer clear of murky waters by asking us to check your cooling system for you!

Dr Kev.

Kam’s Column - 06/05/03

2003-05-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

All of my neighbours have been celebrating in the past few days, delighted that Forest have made the play-offs. As the friendly rivals to my favourites - Derby if you need to ask! - I do wish them all the best and that they may go through to great things... But I still wish it was my team though!

And of course, there was great jubilation that Manchester United won the Championship on a technicality - the technicality that they were simply better than anyone else! Apparently Mandy couldn't get any sense out of me for a while after the win - I can't imagine why that would be. It isn't as though I'm madly passionate about the beautiful game or anything, is it? While I'm on the subject of the Manchester boys, what about all of these rumours surrounding Becks? Is he staying? Is he heading to sunnier climes? Will his next child be called Costa or Valencia? I don't know about the rest of it, and I'm not a betting man, but I am quietly confident that Becks will be heading to Spain. Let's wait and see what the next few months bring.

The first job of the Bank Holiday weekend (which we worked through, as always) was actually to fix our own recovery truck! We've been so busy recently that we hadn't had time to inspect the seals around the rams that power the lift. Typically, on Monday morning, the seals all failed and the ram stopped working! Once we had stripped everything down, rebuilt the rams and replaced all of the seals, it was all perfect. Which was handy as, just half an hour after finishing the work, the phone rang (not that the phone itself has anything to do with the job, it's just a bit part in the main story... Bear with me and all will be revealed.).

"Kev, it's John Dawson - again!" The voice on the line did indeed belong to one of our regular visitors, John Dawson (name changed to protect his innocence). He had been in and out of the workshop over the last three months with his three year old Astra which had a particularly annoying habit of cutting out intermittently. Of course, each time the car had crossed the workshop threshold, it performed perfectly and we couldn't find any fault. Just in case you are wondering, we hadn't charged for any of these visits, since we couldn't find any faults and don't believe in charging money for not fixing anything. The local Vauxhall garage had also had the car in, and the story was the same - no fault could be found.

"The car's stopped again Kev, and this time it really won't start. Can you come and pick it up?" So off went the freshly repaired recovery truck with a courtesy car loaded up and ready for action.

Once the Astra was back in our workshop, I set Scott on the task of diagnosing the problems as he was the only guy who hadn't worked on it before! Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can do wonders. The first task was to hook it up to our fantastic diagnostic system that I had 'borrowed' from Heanor while they were having a brew earlier that morning.

You'll never guess what happened. Once Scott had all of the leads in place, he turned the ignition on to try and locate the problem, and the car started! However, within ten seconds, something very good happened - it cut out again and refused to restart! At least this time we had a problem that we could see and actually start to diagnose.

It didn't take long for Scott to check all of the main things. The battery feed was fine, the distributor was working perfectly, current was getting in and out of the ignition coil. It was all a bit of a mystery.
Leaning on the side of the car, Scott was outlining the current situation to me, when he stopped in mid sentence.

"Kev, this car's had a front end shunt at sometime."

"Has it?" I looked closely, but couldn't see anything on the exterior that would indicate previous damage.

"Yes, look here. Well, feel here." Scott put my hand under the engine bay lip. "Feel the slight buckle there? It has been well repaired, but it obviously has been damaged."

"So, how does this help?"

"Because one of the ignition wires runs right over the repaired section - and I'll bet you that the rough edges have worn the lead back to the metal and so the car keeps earthing through the body!"

Well, what do you know - he was bang on. You couldn't see the problem unless you looked for it in exactly the right spot, but it was there all right! With the offending piece of wire replaced, and a new module installed in the ignition itself (the old one had blown) the car started perfectly first time!
While the car was in the workshop, I took the chance to check on the Stunner tyres that we fitted two years ago. After 36,000 miles they are still perfect! Mr Dawson also told me how happy he is with them when he picked the car up.

"Wet or dry, Kev, I couldn't ask for better!"

I'm going to leave you with (another) cautionary note about timing belts. Looking at the books for today (Tuesday) alone, I've got six in the workshop - one of which came in on the back of a recovery lorry. When did you last check yours? And if you can't remember, bring it in and we will do it for you!
Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 29/04/03

2003-04-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It has been a mixed bag of news in the past few days. I don’t think that I alluded to the death of that wonderful singer Nina Simone in last week’s column. With a lifetime of musical achievement behind her, Nina will surely remain on of the greatest singers – male or female – of all time. And you know what they say about legends – they never truly die so long as their back catalogue is still available from EMI…

Then we’re got the SARS virus doing the rounds of the world. I was thinking about the naming of the illness the other day, and concluded that they had to include Serious as well as Acute (two very similar things) as if you take the Serious out, you get an acronym that is surely to be more ridiculed than feared… Well, almost!

Still, it is good news on the football front, with Man U having sewn things up nicely. Flicking through the channels at the weekend yielded some good games, nothing truly great, but at least the standards are still high. And what about all of these rumours about Becks going to Real? Now that his gaunt other half has dropped a few choice comments to the media, the hacks are doing their collective fruits in an effort to be the first with the tale. We’ll wait and see.

And then we’ve got that audacious art theft in Manchester that saw three paintings vanish without trace, only to be discovered around the back of a public convenience. It might not have been ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ but it still has the police perplexed.

Anyway, on with this week’s tale which involves a haemorrhaging Vauxhall Omega belonging to Mr Cassidy (name changed to protect his innocence) – a long term pal of my father.

The 3.0-litre V6 monster was dripping oil at quite an alarming rate when Mr Cassidy brought it into the workshop. One look at the state of the engine bay revealed just how bad the situation was – oil covered everything! So, the first thing to do was to give it a good steam clean and then a test run; that way we could see where the oil was coming from as it dripped down the clean engine bay.

Once the cleaned Omega had been left on idle for a few moments, the oil leak become obvious – the rocker cover seals were definitely perished. So, off came the covers and on went new seals. This should have cleared the problem up, but when the engine was restarted, another oil leak appeared – this time from the sump gasket.

It’s a lovely job changing the sump gasket as you have to empty all of the engine oil, while trying not to drop the sump nut into the vat of brown sludge that is collecting in the can. But it was accomplished with worrying ease, and on went the engine again.

Looking at the car from underneath, I breathed a sigh of relief. No oil spurts, squirts or drips – job done! But, when I popped my head over the radiator to check out the inside, there was a thin stream of black oil trickling tantalisingly down the side of the engine bay. The breather pipes were now leaking! If it wasn’t one thing then it was another with this car! By now, I was praying that this would be the last leak I would find – if the car still dripped then the only choices left would be crankshaft seal or head gasket – neither of which any of us wanted to think about on a car of this size! Believe me, you really don’t want to have to remove an Omega’s gearbox to do the crankshaft seals unless you can possibly avoid it!

This is one of the reasons that I hate having to tackle oil leaks. Basically, as I replaced old, worn out parts with new, the system pressure increased to what it should have been. This then put strain on the other old, worn out gaskets and pipes, which in turn split, leaked or oozed as the oil found weak points. Still, it all makes sense, when you think about it. And the good news was that once the breather pipes had been replaced, the engine stopped dripping (which is a good thing as the constant drip-drip-drip was beginning to sound like some form of torture!). Just to make sure, Shaun took it for one of his extended test drives (using our own petrol of course!) and it still didn’t leak! Victory was indeed mine!

While I was ferreting about looking for the sources of the leaks, I took the chance to inspect Mr Cassidy’s timing belt – which was in a pretty poor state of repair I have to say. After checking with him, the belt, rollers, bearings and tensioners were all replaced to ensure that he didn’t suffer any head-aches of the V6 kind…

Naturally, once all of this work was completed, the Omega went like a rocket. Mr Cassidy, delighted that his pride and joy was once more returned to A1 condition, grinned like a schoolboy when he came to pick it up, pumping my hand enthusiastically in thanks. That’s why I love this job so much – the looks on people’s faces when it all goes right.

That’s it for another week. Hopefully I won’t get any more oil leaks to fix, I’ve had quite enough of them with just this one!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 22/04/03

2003-04-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

(Cover your eyes all other die-hard Derby devotees) I'm really looking forward to seeing the forthcoming match between Man U and Real Madrid almost more than I am anticipating the next Derby game, so much so in fact that I'm marking off the calendar at home as the days roll down! With the title challenge fast approaching, it will be good to see how Man U's prospects are shaping up. Even the kids are getting excited, swept along no doubt by my bounding enthusiasm! Derby may still be saved from league relegation and our friendly neighbours Forest are still going strong. So, as you can imagine, it's been an exciting week!

It has been no less emotionally taxing in the workshops. Not only have we been up to our eyeballs with jobs (the most popular of which have been our free MoTs with every major service), but we've had the inevitable league of electrical problems as well. Foremost of these was Mr Foster's four year old imported and modified BMW 530.

"Kev, my BMW won't start! I've tried to jump start it, but to no avail! Can you come down and have a look at it for me?" Mr Foster (name changed to protect his innocence) was sounding really dejected on the other end of the phone.

Quicker than quick, our Kam Rescue Team arrived at Mr Foster's house to retrieve the stricken BMW, taking a courtesy car along for him as well. While we were at the scene, Mr Foster showed us what he had tried to jump the BMW's flat battery with - his neighbour's boost pack. Shaun and I exchanged concerned looks...

Once back in the workshop, we hooked the BMW up to our superb diagnostic computer and our fears were confirmed. Because the boost pack wasn't supplying the correct power to the battery, a surge had, well, surged into the system and damaged the ECU. No wonder the car wouldn't start! The obvious thing was to remove the ECU and send it away for testing.

Fortunately, our electrical experts aren't slouches, and the repaired ECU arrived back in the workshop within a matter of days, along with a report of exactly how extensive the damage was. Once it was hooked back up to the rest of the BMW's wiring, it was time to try the starting.

It should have gone smoothly. But, no. The car still wouldn't fire. With his head under the bonnet, Shaun's voice was a little muffled, but I could just make out the word 'Diesel'. Diesel? This was a petrol model, and just to make sure I wasn't going mad, I checked inside the fuel filler cap. Definitely good old 97 octane petrol.

"What are you saying about diesel, Shaun?"

"Well, put your nose near this injector. Doesn't it smell like diesel?" Shaun was right. This didn't look good (or smell good either for that matter).

So after talking to Mr Foster, we had to remove the injectors and injector rails to see what was going on - and surprise surprise, they were full of diesel. So we flushed the engine and the fuel tank, replaced every single filter and ensured that every drop of diesel was exorcised from the system. While I was finishing off the job, Shaun spotted a receipt on the passenger seat, from the local fuel forecourt. It was a computerised receipt for... yes, you've guessed it, diesel.

Another set of spark plugs later and it was time to try the engine. One the first turn of the key it leapt into life, roaring in only the way that a modified BMW 5-series can! When Mr Foster came to collect it, I took a few minutes to remind him which pumps are which on the forecourt, so that he doesn't make that mistake again! Plus I advised him not to jump start his car again in case he blows another ECU!

As well as all of this, and the servicing jobs, the lads have been kept busy fitting sets of Stunner tyres to all sorts of different cars and carrying out our comprehensive - and free - brake inspections. It's enough to make a chap wish for a holiday - but I love it too much!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 15/04/03

2003-04-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

It’s Dr Raj here with you for this week – Dr Kev was last seen going out to a Datsun in distress and I haven’t seen him since! In fact I am surprised that I’ve seen him at all, we’ve been that busy.

Of course, this week’s news has been dominated by the end-stage of the war. Well, I hope it is the end stage as it really is time that it all got wrapped up. In the midst of all the battles, bullets and bravado there was one cause for amusement – the Iraqi Information Agency. Apparently, they believed all of the news that their front line generals were sending back to their HQ.

‘Yes Minister, the Americans are being driven back.’ ‘Yes Minister, the Americans are shooting themselves at the gates of our great city.’ I would love to have seen the look on the Information Minister’s face when the coalition forces started to roll through Baghdad and he realised that he’d been duped – a shock of the rudest sort. It was actually a very clever move by the Iraqi generals; had they surrendered they would have been seen as traitors, but by sabotaging the intelligence in this manner, they assisted the coalition forces while still remaining true to their troops. Well, that is my view anyway…

Back to Heanor and this week’s tale of head scratching mechanics. Mr Fowler (name changed to protect his identity) brought his Escort in to the workshop on Monday morning, after having spent the weekend trailing around tuning shops. The problem sounded simple enough – the Escort was running (or should that be stumbling) like an obese three legged Dachshund. I rubbed my hands in glee once I’d put the phone down – something straight forward after a week of pure problem cars.

When the Escort arrived, I could see that it wasn’t going to be that simple. Whereas I had optimistically hoped for a 1996 1.4, Mr Fowler had an RS Turbo. But not just any RS Turbo – oh no. This one sat a full three inches nearer the floor than you’d expect and had been severely modified. He’d done everything possible to make this RS fly, and it was rewarding him with poor running, lethargic acceleration and a frightening array of pops and bangs.

“I had the timing belt done about five weeks ago, Raj” he said, “the car was in for a few more modifications so I thought that it would be a good idea.” At least this wasn’t going to turn into a belt story.

Mr Fowler then went on to list all of the modifications that he had carried out on the car (which took quite some time and a few pages of my notepad), complete with dates and even some costs! Once I’d built up the case history, I dispatched him in one of our fine courtesy cars and rolled my sleeves up in preparation.

Obviously the first thing to do was to hook it up to our superb new diagnostic computer and have a look at the resulting engine data. One problem became immediately apparent – the RS was having difficulties breathing. Plus it looked like it was over fuelling and the timing was slightly out as well!

The air flow was sorted out in a few moments. Basically, the sensor inside the air can had been squashed behind the new high-flow filter that Mr Fowler had put in. he had mentioned the new filter to me, and that the problems seemed to start when he installed it – but they didn’t go away when he put the original filter back in. This was because, while putting the new filter in, he had managed to detach one of the wires that fed into the sensor. Two minutes with a soldering iron and all was hunky dory.

Then onto the over fuelling. The uprated fuel pump was pushing the go-juice through at an astonishing rate – but no more than you would have expected from that particular unit. The injectors were oversized items and appeared to be working fine, letting fuel through in the proscribed amounts for the application. After checking everything I could think of, I was stumped – everything was working perfectly. Time to move onto the timing – and all that required was readjustment and the tightening of a few bolts. Once this was done, the Escort purred as it sat in the workshop; no more pops or bangs.

So, back to the over fuelling and a nice hot tea amazingly provided the answer in a blinding flash. Have you ever noticed that a stationary mug doesn’t seem to steam as much as when you’re walking around with it? Well, the principle is sort of the same with fuel injectors – they behave differently at idle to how they do under high load when you’re moving. Hooking the RS back up to the computer, I gradually increased the revs to a figure well above idle – and the problem was suddenly self evident. Injector number three was being held open for longer than needed – and that was courtesy of a tiny piece of corroded wire connecting it to the ECU not letting the signal through properly! No wonder it was over fuelling and running so poorly!
Once I’d given the car a thorough road test, I called Mr Fowler to say that it was ready. You should have seen the look on his face when he returned from a trip around the block – “She’s not been that sparky in ages Raj – thanks!” He beamed broadly like a kid in the candy store.

It just goes to show that sometimes, a tiny little piece of wire nestling under the air intakes can cause plenty of expensive looking problems that can’t be tuned away!

Until next week, when Dr Kev may have returned from his Datsun rescue,

Dr Raj

Kam’s Column - 01/04/03

2003-04-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

After last week’s struggle not to mention the war, I’ve given up on that particular battle. Seeing as I have the radio on while I’m working, it was rather difficult to avoid mentions of the escalating conflict – and I’m told that I was going purple at times in efforts not to shout at the presenters… But it has been another week of conflicting reports, and I’ve got the nasty feeling that it is all going to go horribly wrong. The Americans were talking about a quick strike, about the Iraqis welcoming them with open arms, and being home in time for tea. That hasn’t happened, and more reinforcements are going in. I guess we probably need more troops out there – after all, how many have we killed with ‘friendly fire’?

What gets me is how astonished the Americans were that they met resistance outside of Baghdad – surely they can’t have thought that the Iraqis would welcome them with open arms every step of the way?

Regardless of the effects of the UN sanctions on the country (which I do believe even included banning lead pencils), the propaganda of the Hussain Regime will have indoctrinated a large proportion of the population – especially the young ones who have never known anything different. Talking of propaganda, we’re getting fed with it from every side and I don’t trust any of it.

Away from the war, there was another battle being unsuccessfully fought recently. Yes, I’m talking about England’s match against Liechtenstein. What an appallingly lacklustre performance – I can’t believe that these people are paid so highly to produce that. No one was talking to each other or if they were, they weren’t saying anything meaningful (much like Iraq). There was just no value for money in that match. I despair.

Of course, correct communication is vital in any business, but more so than most in our workshops. If we don’t talk to each other, or don’t listen to the answers, then we could essentially be playing with your lives. Does that sound particularly dramatic? I don’t think so, especially when you hear this week’s tale.

Three months ago, Mr Shaw brought his ‘F’ reg Ford Escort into our workshops to get the timing belt done. While it was in, we did a free brake check (as requested) and advised that the rear brake shoes needed replacing, as did the brake fluid (although my memory is good regular reader, it isn’t this good – I confess that I’ve looked all these details up on our computerised records system!). So, you can imagine that I was shocked to get a phone call yesterday morning.

“Kev, it’s Pete Shaw. The brakes have gone on my Escort!” (Mr Shaw’s name has been changed to protect his innocence).

“Don’t drive it anywhere Mr Shaw – I’ll come down personally to pick it up with the rescue team.” I was shocked, to say the least. You know as well as I do that we pride ourselves on the quality of our work and of the parts that we use. Sometimes though, a bad part does get supplied or a tiny degree of human error does creep in (no-one is perfect. Apart from Mandy perhaps.) This looked like our problem, and we were going to fix it.

It transpired that it was in fact the front near-side brake was locking up (so it wasn’t anything that we’d done, regular reader, as the front brakes had been in A1 condition where we fixed the rears – big relief all round) after a few miles driving. I wouldn’t let Shaun take it out for a test drive – I thought that the risk was too great.

When the Escort was up on the ramps, Shaun and I stripped the front brakes down, and were surprised to find that they were almost new. We checked the pad widths, the disc widths, the range of motion on the pistons, the condition of the callipers – in other words everything. The wheels spun freely, and we couldn’t find the problem.

Then, another of the near-legendary ‘Glynn Walkpasts’ occurred. And, as usual, he had the answer.

“This Escort needs vented brake discs – someone has fitted solids to this one!”

So I checked up on our fantastic computer system, and yes, Glynn was right. I think I can see where the mistake occurred though – the part numbers for the vented and solid discs aren’t that different. If whoever fitted them hadn’t listened to what number his colleague was giving him, or had looked too quickly, then it would be easy to pick up the wrong box. The net result of this was that when the brakes become warm, the pad was slipping and jamming the calliper. Time to call Mr Shaw.

“To be honest, Mr Shaw, this is an unacceptable mistake – mainly because it involves the braking system. If I were you, I’d call whoever fitted these discs and demand your money back!”

An hour later, the phone rang – it was the garage in Scotland who had fitted the incorrect parts! Their service manager wanted to apologise and also promised that he would personally refund Mr Shaw his money. I have to say that I did remind him of the seriousness of this situation – just imagine if the brakes had locked in the outside lane of the M1, at night and in the pouring rain…

Once we’d fitted the correct discs and pads, the Escort performed perfectly, and with Mr Shaw’s permission, we gave it an extended test drive just to make doubly sure. Perfect.

We do accept that sometimes, human error can creep in. But just a little proper communication can avoid mistakes as serious as this one. That’s why we’re always talking to each other here at Kam. Sometimes, I despair as I can be told the same piece of information three times – but I’d rather that than missing just one piece of important information (like the correct part number for a vented brake disc on an ‘F’ reg Escort for example…).

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 25/03/03

2003-03-25T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

As I’m sure that you can all imagine, I wasn’t in the best of spirits after the last Derby game. In case you missed it, our boys came up against the (friendly) local rivals Forest and didn’t do so well. Four-something was the score – I’m not going to go any deeper into it than that. Of course, on one side it’s quite good, as it means at an East Midlands team will be fighting in the Premiership, but it would be better if it was our boys!

I’m certain that you’ve all had weeks like the one I’m currently enjoying(?) here. You know the ones – where every job comes in and is awkward and you spend ages fixing it, only for another to come along within moments of you downing tools. In fact, it’s all rather like decorating. You start with the walls. Then the ceiling looks like it needs a new coat of paint. Then the gloss work starts to look drab. Yes, regular reader, its been one of those weeks – but far from the simplicity of gloss paint. We’ve had pretty much every noise that you can imagine a vehicle making coming into the workshop. And, in true Kam style, these aren’t noises that are evident when the car is purring away to itself in the car park or sitting pretty on the ramps. Mrs Negris’ (name changed to protect her innocence!) Vauxhall Tigra is a case in point.
Now, Mrs Negris is a long standing customer of ours who works as a rep for a local company. As she has to travel all over the country on a regular basis, often at short notice, she needs to know that her car is up to the task. And the news was that the Tigra seemed to be performing nicely, apart from one thing – a clanging noise from underneath. Scott and I took it out for a test drive, and both came back with different opinions.

“It’s the exhaust,” said Scott confidently. “Either part of the pipe has rusted through and its flexing or one of the mountings is loose.”

“I’m sure it’s the suspension,” I countered. “We had the same noise of a Cosworth a few weeks back – and at the same speed too.”

“if it was the suspension then surely once you hit 30mph – where the noise starts – you’d feel a change in the handling. Plus it wouldn’t go away once you’ve got over 40mph.” It was a good parry.

“But if it was a loose bolt, then it could be the vibrations that are only present at those speeds. And of course, it would be regardless of the gear you’d selected at the time.” A foil to Scott’s parry, which went down fairly well I have to say. Not quite game, set, match Kev Allen, but close!
Instead of further discussing the causes of the problem, Scott and I got down to work. The first thing obviously was to check the exhaust and the emissions. Good healthy emissions and a lack of holes looked to disprove Scott’s ideas. So it was on to the suspension.

Annoyingly, that checked out perfectly as well. There were no loose components, the struts were unbent and everything was generally as it was when the Tigra rolled out of the factory.

Then, something that is getting depressingly routine occurred – the ‘Glynn Walk-past’ (see, we’ve even had to name this phenomenon). With his presence announced by the steam from a fresh mug of tea, Glynn sauntered up to the ramp from which the Tigra was displaying its belly.

“You see that Kev?” Glynn pointed to the front pipe. “It’s almost brand new.”

“Yes, I saw that. But it’s fixed perfectly and there aren’t any holes.”

“Ahh,” said Glynn – and rapped a knuckle firmly onto the catalytic converter. ‘Clong’

“Did you hear that?” He tapped the cat again. “I’ll bet that there is a little exhaust putty that has dropped into the cat. I’d suggest getting the cat off and having a look inside.”

Well, regular reader, Glynn was right (again). Once we’d removed the cat and put it on the bench we could quite clearly discern a little bit of baked putty rattling about in there. Unfortunately, putty and cat honeycomb don’t go well together. It was time to ring Mrs Negris.

“I’m afraid that we’ll need to put a new catalytic converter on,” I said once I’d explained the situation.

“OK Kev. Let me ring around and see if anyone can beat your price first.”
You won’t be surprised to learn that Mrs Negris was back on the phone an hour or so later. “I can’t better it Kev – you’ve out-priced everyone else!”
Once we’d finished the job, I was updating Mrs Negris’ service history when I noticed something a little odd. Two years ago, we’d fitted a new set of Stunner tyres to the Tigra. She’d been back at the correct intervals to have the tyres inspect for warranty purposes (don’t forget that Stunners are covered by an accidental damage guarantee for two years as well as having cover against vandalism) – and it didn’t look like she’d had a new set put on since! I checked with her when she picked the car up.

“You’re right Kev – these tyres are two years and 36,000 miles old! And they are still going strong. The handling is fantastic in all conditions, in fact they’ve got to be one of the best buys I’ve ever made!”

Of course, we can’t promise that all cars will return this sort of mileage on one set of tyres – but if you check your pressures daily (as Mrs Negris did), keep them properly inflated and bring them back for their warranty inspections, you’ll find that they go on and on and on!

That’s the end of another tale from Kam for this week – and I can tell that you’re impressed that I’ve avoided mentioning the war. The boys had a wager on that I’d get it into the piece somehow. But I haven’t. You won’t find any reference to the bombing of Baghdad or the tragedy of the casualties of war. Not a word about it…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 18/03/03

2003-03-18T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

I’m going to try to avoid talking about the war this week. I imagine it will be a little like that superb Fawlty Towers episode where Basil has to avoid mentioning WW2 to a group of guests. It’s just always on my mind right now, especially with the news coverage – and now that the politicians are revolting as well you really can’t get away from it. Sorry – that’s a donation to the ‘Don’t Mention The War’ box then…

Of course, I think that my mind will be taken off things a little by the pending grudge match between our best boys and our rivals Nottingham Forest. By the time you read this however, the match will almost certainly be over (unless there is an unprecedented amount of injury time I suppose). I predict that, naturally, Derby will win after a hard fought battle – plenty of sweat and tears will be shed (but not too much blood I hope as that always makes me feel a little queasy). As for scores… Hmm. My crystal wheel bearings suggest 3-2, or could be 1-2? And which way round? That’s the problem with crystal bearings – they are a little small to see the future in…

On to this week’s tale of woe corrected. Mr Jefferson (no, not of Jefferson Airplane) is the Managing Director of a local company who we do quite a bit of work for. Thanks to the success of his business, he recently bought a superb two year old 4.6-litre V8 Range Rover to take him from A to B, crossing via C as he went. Recently we had it in for a major service and, as it was in the workshop, Mr Jefferson asked us to install his sound system (no wonder they knocked Wembley down – stick Simply Red in the plush leather seats and you’ve got a mobile grand stadium arena complete with sound system) as well as remote central locking and an immobiliser. This time though, there was a problem to be fixed.

“Kev, the ride is absolutely appalling,” Mr Jefferson said, once he’d found a parking space big enough to accommodate the vehicle’s girth. “It’s pulling to the left, the ride is lumpy and it just doesn’t feel right. Will you take a look?”
“No problems,” I replied. “I see that you have fitted new wheels since we’ve last had it in.” These new wheels were gigantic.

“Yes. I decided that the standard 18-inchers just didn’t have It, so I upgraded. Those are 22s,” he looked pretty pleased with himself.

Once we’d shoehorned the behemoth into the workshop, the most obvious thing to check was the wheel alignment. So, we hooked it up to the lasers and found that everything was spot on, the wheels lined up perfectly. The tread and pressure was fine on all of the tyres and all of the lower suspension arms were in perfect condition (amazing really as I know that this Range Rover has seen plenty of off-road action even in its short life).
Curiouser and curiouser. The steering box was just like new, the steering arms worked smoothly and correctly – so it couldn’t be that. I even swapped all of the wheels round several times (side to side, front to back and corner to corner), taking it out for test drives in between – still no improvement.
While I was sitting there scratching my head, Scott came up with a cracking idea.

“If this has been off-road Kev, could the top of the suspension mounts be bent?”

Excitedly I hurled myself into the task with abandon. Only to find a minute later that the entire suspension assembly was perfect.

In desperation, I stripped the brakes down, on the off chance that one of the discs was locking up – still nothing. There was only one thing left to do.
“Mr Jefferson, do you still have the original wheels and tyres?”

“Sure I do Kev. I think that they are downstairs right now. I’ll just go down to check.” I waited, listening to the phone line’s tinny crackle. “Yup, found them. Do you want me to drop them in to you?”

Once we’d received the original alloys, I refitted them to the Range Rover and took it out for a spin. It felt, regular reader, like a new car. The steering was positive and direct, the ride smooth and it was definitely quicker out of the blocks. It was obviously something to do with those massive 22-inch alloys – and to be honest, I have no idea what. Once we’d established that the car was perfect on the original wheels, I tested the replacements for bends or any other kind of defect and found nothing.

Sometimes, I think that it is best to leave a car with its original wheels. If the engineer thinks that 18s will do the job, then he’s probably right. In this case, the addition of the 22-inchers obviously threw some integral part of the car’s geometry right out – without damaging any of the components. Now Mr Jefferson is stuck with about £4000 worth of useless wheels and tyres…

That’s a wrap for this week regular reader – and look, I made it to the end of the editorial without voicing my opinions on this war! But I will say this; I don’t… Actually, no, best not – otherwise the ‘Don’t Mention The War’ box will get rather full!

Until next time,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 11/03/03

2003-03-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It’s been another hectic week here at Kam. Quite apart from anything else, it’s been bitterly cold and I’ve now got quite a large snuffle, which I’m sure is starting to annoy the guys in the workshops! Still, that will teach me not to lie on my back, in the wet mud, trying to fix a customer’s car by the roadside. Next time I’ll take a waterproof sheet for my back!

The news has still been dominated by the indecision of the UN, and the fact that there is an impending Labour revolution if a second Security Council resolution is not achieved. Therefore, we’re looking at a split right down the centre of our government and of the UN itself. Come to think of it, Europe is pretty divided over the issue when you consider that Tony is girding his loins for war and the French are trying to persuade everyone to drop their weapons. I’m reminded of a line from a song that appeared in the charts some years ago – and forgive me if I paraphrase wrongly, I haven’t heard this in years. ‘Put down your weapons, or else we’ll all be gone’ was the rough gist. Alternatively, there is the memorable line from one of the most active political singers of the 60s, Phil Ochs – “Look at what we’ve won with the sabre and the gun – tell me, is it worth it all?”

Of course, with the papers so full of war, the tragic loss of Barry Sheen almost went unnoticed. He lost his battle against cancer, and it’s a bitter irony that he lost his life to something within himself after all the near-misses on the track. I saw him race at Castle Donnington a few years ago – and that was an amazing experience. He had a truly exceptional talent that somehow kept in from crossing the line into outright danger, no matter what situation he was in. He will be sorely missed.

Anyway, on to this week’s story. Mr Davies (name changed to protect his innocence) brought his rather lovely turbo-charged Nissan 200SX into the workshop. I say rather lovely, but it was actually a non-runner. Only two cylinders were firing and there was this almighty noise coming from under the bonnet. It sounded like a con-rod had been propelled from the case, which would mean almost certain death for the engine.

As soon as it arrived in the workshop, I dispatched it down to the technical bay under Scott’s care. Obviously, the first thing that needed to be done was a compression test, to ascertain if any terrible fury had been wrought inside. Impressively, all of the cylinders checked out OK on the test, meaning that the problems should be fairly straight forward.

A few minutes later, I heard Scott utter a loud ‘Eww’ and he quickly emerged from the tech bay looking a little green about the gills.

“Kev, come and have a look at this.”

I cautiously poked my head into the bay, and spotted the problem. The oil in the hundy (as 200 SXs are affectionately called) was literally as thick as treacle. Come to think of it, even Mandy’s treacle tart has more fluid motion than this black gunk. It must have been years since this car was serviced.
“Actually Kev, it’s about two and a half years,” said Mr Davies when I phoned to advise him on the progress of the job.

“Two and a half?” I spluttered. “Are you being serious?”

“’Fraid so. I bought the car from my dad and he’d not used it that much.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Some people just don’t seem to think about the on-going maintenance of their vehicles.

Scott meanwhile was having a fine time flushing all of the oil out of the engine case. It took two attempts before the engine was clean enough to even consider adding new oil and filters too. While we were at it, we replaced the spark plugs with new NGK items and were horrified at the state of the old plugs.

Once we’d flushed everything through, it was time for a quick test drive. The good news was that all four cylinders were firing properly. The bad news was that the horrible noise was still there. As soon as it was back in the workshop, the problem became self-evident. The turbo was an oil-cooled example and because the old fluids were so horrible, it hadn’t received the proper cooling. This caused the bearings to self-destruct.

Now, regular reader, I’m not going to tell you how much we were quoted for a new turbo. Suffice to say that after checking out all of our trusted suppliers on the Internet, we found a fully guaranteed and reconditioned one for a fraction of the previous quotes.

Had Mr Davies (junior or senior) attended to the regular maintenance of the hundy, they would never have had this really rather large bill. A few pounds a year, which you really should budget for, go a long way in ensuring the longevity of your ride.

Now that we’ve got Mr Davies’ car in pristine form, we’ve arranged to send him two reminders for every service and MoT. Then there is no excuse!
So many of you have commented on the stunning Stunners on the Rover courtesy car this week. I’ve had 20,000 miles out of them and they are still going strong – in fact, I never had this many out of my previous premium branded items (I’m not allowed to say which ones they were!). The handling is still spot on perfect and I think we’ll get many more miles out of them yet… In fact, I can’t recommend them highly enough!

Until next week, remember your servicing (with free MoT if it is a major service)!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam's column - 04/03/03

2003-03-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It has been another depressing week in the news, when you think about all the time that has been dedicated to preparing for a war that still might never happen. Might never happen? OK, I know I'm being overly optimistic - after all the US and UK Governments have spent so much that to not have a war would be counter productive - but there is still time for the Iraqis to disarm and for America to stop being so paranoid. However, I am genuinely worried that this will turn into a case of 'Now we're here...' - and that is no good for anyone. I'm also concerned for the future of the UN. Deeply divided, it looks as though the US is going to go it alone (with the UK Government as its European lapdog) and there isn't much that the UN can do to stop it. Is that a soapbox I see before me or a crate of air filters?

On a brighter note, Derby drew against Leicester at the weekend, proving that all isn't yet lost. I also went to see the Man U v. Liverpool match in the local hall with my son and daughter - what an experience that was! With my daughter supporting United and son following Liverpool, the match was doubly tense. Plenty of teasing was going on I can tell you!

And, as I'm sitting here writing this (yes, regular reader, I do get a minute a week to actually sit) I've just heard that the runaway policeman and 15-year old girl have been found safe and well. Good news all round then (almost).
This week's tale of mechanical daring-do concerns Mr Reid's (name changed to protect his innocence - although if you live in this area you might know him by the sound his car made...) imported Mitsubishi Shogun Special Edition - of which only about 30 were made. The problem concerned a squeaking coming from under the front of the car - but, in typical Kam style, it wasn't a constant noise. Oh no. It only appeared after six miles of driving and went away once the car had been left for half an hour.

Naturally, the first thing to do was to take it out on a test drive, which Shaun duly did. Ten minutes later, he returned to the depot with the Shogun emitting (what sounded like) a perfect G-flat at ear-shattering decibels. Nice. So, the Shogun soon found itself feet up in the air on our ramp, wheels off and ready for a full inspection.

Mr Reid had obviously spent vast amounts of money on trying to cure the squeaking - which was undeniably coming from the front brakes. He'd installed new discs, pads, callipers and even hoses - all brand new items and all very expensive original Mitsubishi parts. And still the huge 4x4 howled at him.

Thankfully, Kam had the answer (don't we always?). We've got a highly specialist piece of kit that can analyse every part of the braking system to find any fault - no matter how small. As we've come to expect, everything checked out perfectly, except that the near-side brake disc was 1.5mm thinner than the off-side. Undetectable to the human eye, this could have indicated some kind of braking imbalance that put the load on that disc more than on the other one. Could it be the ABS sensor playing up? Both discs had similar wear on them and neither were warped. It was all very odd.

Since our equipment was telling us that everything other than this disc was in perfect condition, it was time to turn to the second level of our arsenal. I think I mentioned a few weeks back that we had invested in a computer program that holds the records of every single component in every single car built within the last decade or so (perhaps more). It even has the specifications for imported cars. So, I fired in the details of the Shogun - and got a very unexpected result.

It turns out that the thinner brake disc was in fact perfect - it was the other that was the problem! At some point, someone had fitted the incorrect brake disc to the offside and, under load, it was expanding and catching against the brake pad. One new disc and pad set later and the noise had gone. To be certain that it wasn't a temporary fix, Shaun gave the Shogun a lengthy road test and came back reporting peace and quiet!

This squeaking Shogun was only the latest in a long line of horrible rattles and squeaks that have beset the region's motorists - please, no more! We're all dreaming of squeaking Superminis and clicking people carriers - a mechanic can only take so much!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 18/02/03

2003-02-18T11:49:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

I still can’t get over the pictures of the London Peace March last weekend. The footage of all those people was just incredible, and some estimates put the number of people attending as high as 1.5million. I think the official figure from the police was around 750,000 and the organisers claimed the full 1.5million, so if you take a mid point you still get over 1million people. That’s about 2% of the population of this country in one place at one time. And its surely a fraction of all those with anti-war sentiments who couldn’t make the rally. I wonder if the government will take notice? Then again, they might ignore it like a troublesome spark plug and we all know what happens if you do that…

No doubt you’ll have noticed that it has been really rather chilly recently. Just a little fresh of course, but it has been killing off batteries around the county like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve replaced enough to build a new customer reception area with – and still they keep pouring in! I don’t think I’ve ever known a battery-death frenzy like it…

This week’s story revolves around a rather nice new shape VW Golf brought into us by Mr Hubbard (name changed to protect his innocence). He had recently purchased it for his wife from an auction and, while it had a lot of miles on it for a two year old car, it was in pretty good overall condition.
“It hasn’t got any Go, Kev” he complained. “It doesn’t feel breathless or over worked, but it is just running really poorly. Plus, the central locking in the boot dones’t work and the passenger’s electric window don’t wind down!”
“No problem Mr Hubbard. We’ll have a look at it and see what we can do for you.”

Well, I have to say that the window and locking problems were easily fixed – the boot hatch locking motor and window retract motor were both missing! Someone had obviously had a problem with them, taken them out and just never got around to putting them back! After checking with Mr Hubbard, we ordered the relevant motors from one of our suppliers who gave us a price so low that even we were surprised!

Under the bonnet, the tale was a little more difficult. The car had received a new distributor cap, new ignition leads and spark plugs fairly recently. Shaun checked the plugs and discovered that they weren’t the correct ones. Had we cracked it?

“No, Kev” was the dejected reply when Shaun returned from a test drive. “It isn’t much better. It seems like the Golf is running on a really weak mixture. Someone has also put a new exhaust and cat on it – it looks like they’ve spend some real money trying to get this sorted!”

It was now time to wheel out the latest addition to the Kam arsenal – a brand new engine diagnostic code checker. Once we had the Golf hooked up, the new machine hummed to itself for a minute, and gave what appeared to be a thoughtful reply.

“Is it likely to be the timing?” Shaun asked.

“Possibly,” I replied. “Although it is fairly unlikely in a car this young. Having said that, it has done quite a few miles…” According to my handbook, it was also time to change the cam belt over, so we deciced to remove the belt covers and have a look under there.

Then it hit us (not literally, regular reader) – the Golf had previously received a new timing belt, but it was the wrong one! In addition one of the tensioning bolts had stripped, so the net result was that the belt had jumped two teeth, throwing the timing right out!

Once we had replaced the belt and tensioner (making sure all of the timing marks lined up this time), Shaun took it for another test drive.
“It goes like a rocket Kev! Are you sure its just the 1.6-litre in there and not a VR6?”

Amazingly, the main problems with the car had boiled down to a poorly fitted timing belt, so the previous owner had spent all of that money unneccessarily. Of course Mr Hubbard wasn’t complaing!

If you come down to the workshops in the next few days, you’ll notice that we are slightly thinner on the ground than usual. This is because there are a number of invaluable courses that some of the guys are going on to improve their knowledge and skills yet further. It’s important to keep up to date with the latest advances in automotive technology, and so the guys have taken the opportunity of going to a nice, warm lecture theatre to better themselves. I wouldn’t mind somewhere warm and out of the wind right now, but I’ve already been on the courses!
Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 11/02/03

2003-02-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

Yes, it’s Dr Raj with you once again this week as the estimable Dr Kev is currently involved in rebuilding an engine after the timing belt snapped (yes, I know, I raised by eyes too). The last time any one saw him, he was so far into the engine bay that just his feet could be seen waggling over the radiator grille…

As some of you already know, my sporting predilection lies more with the beautiful game of cricket rather than football, so as you can imagine I’m getting increasingly concerned about the ongoing situation in Zimbabwe. I really don’t think that the matches should go ahead, thanks to all the safety and security issues. Wonderful as the game is, surely it isn’t worth putting teams in danger for (would Dr Kev say the same about Derby I wonder?)?
The other two items that have been dominating the news this week have been Lord Irvine’s pay-rise and the war on Iraq – and both look to be on shaky ground. Lord Irvine said that he’d give his pay-rise back – at least, that’s what he said early on, maybe he’s changed his mind – and now that France, Germany and Russia have come out against war with Iraq, maybe that won’t happen either. It’s all rather saddening.

Anyway, onto some good news, because that’s what we like at Kam. Mr Bannister (name changed to protect his innocence) gave me a call on Monday morning.

“Raj, my car won’t start! It’s been in the garage all night, so I doubt that it is waterlogged. And I know the battery is A-OK as all the lights are working perfectly. It just won’t catch! I’m worried that I might have broken the timing belt.”

“No worries Mr Bannister,” I replied. “We’ll be down with the truck in a few minutes.”

Once we had arrived chez-Bannister it was pouring with rain once again – so you can imagine how glad I was that his M-reg Mondeo was in a garage! Peering into the engine bay, everything seemed to be in order. After pushing it out of the garage we loaded it onto the truck and left the courtesy car for Mr Bannister to use.

I wish more jobs were like this. Once we had it back in the workshop, we ran through the basic tests. Battery, good. Timing belt, in one piece. Distributor cap and rotor arm, perfect. Spark plug- coated with soot and in severe need of renewal. At the same time I had a look at the oil and recoiled quickly in case ‘The Thing from the Black Lagoon’ should come out of its murky depths.
“When was the last time that you had your car serviced?” I asked Mr Bannister a few minutes later.

“Erm…” The phone line crackled while he thought about it. “Erm… 18 months ago. I think. Maybe 19…”

“Well, that’s the cause of your problems. Basically, your oil is well overdue for a change, your spark plugs are worn out and the car is in desperate need of TLC. One the plus side, your timing belt is intact.”

“That’s great, Raj. As you’ve got the car, can you put it in for a full service and do the timing belt while you’re at it – it’s due for a change I think.”
I quickly checked my reference book and confirmed that the Mondeo had reached its belt change interval.

“No worries Mr Bannister. I’ll call you once it is done.”

Sometimes jobs can really be this simple and it is great to finish up with no bruised knuckles, skinned forearms or cricked necks – regular readers of this column will know just what I mean!

When he came to collect the car, Mr Bannister was obviously delighted to find his pride and joy restored to tip-top condition. I promise you I’ve never seen such a big grin on a test drive! Once we got back to the depot, he produced his cheque book and asked the immortal question:

“How much?”

I doubled checked his invoice and passed it across the desk to him. His eyes widened slightly, he looked briefly up at me, scrawled a cheque and then bolted out of the office before I could even wish him good day. ‘How very odd’ I thought.

I was talking to Kev later in the day (he’d emerged from the bowels of his engine rebuild – well either that or they took the phone to him!) and happened to mention Mr Bannister’s reaction. Amazingly, people have been doing exactly the same thing in each of our depots!

“It’s because of the price, Raj. People assume we’ve forgotten something and so want to pay before we’ve noticed!” Kev was right (naturally) – our new servicing price structure starts at just £59.95 plus VAT with a free MoT (if required) so the final cost comes in lower than people expect!

That’s it for this week. Remember that Friday is Valentine’s Day – so don’t forget to book your loved one in for a full service and MoT to show that you really care. No, wait, that doesn’t sound right…

Until the next time,

Dr Raj

Kam’s Column - 04/02/03

2003-02-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

This has been a real week of extremes (and I’m not talking just about the weather!). There was the elation of Derby winning another match (and yes, our friendly neighbours Forest did as well, so congratulations to them). It looks like our boys are just hitting their stride – better late than never I suppose.

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that it continues and our new-found form holds ready for next season – you’d better watch out Forest!

On Saturday there was the terrible news about the Columbia shuttle disaster. Everyone in the company sends their condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who died in the accident. They were very brave people, driven to explore beyond the confines of this planet in the furtherance of scientific knowledge. I just hope that NASA and space programs around the world will learn from this tragedy and prevent it from ever happening again. Simply watching the newscasts reminded me of the Challenger disaster – it may have been 17 years ago, but it feels like yesterday…

And of course, there has been the weather – a topic of even more conversation that usual. Even the most happy-go-lucky of us have bee staring at the skies, muttering about the causal effects of wind chill, windspeed relative to cloud speed and predicting the likelihood of yet more snow. Michael Fish stand aside…

It was the weather that accounted for our first troublesome job of the week. Mr Ridgeway’s VW Golf VR5 had slithered on a patch of ice and thumped its rather nice 17-inch alloyed into the kerb. Hard. Mr Ridgeway (name changed to protect his innocence!) had already taken the vehicle into a tyre depot to have the wheels balanced – but it didn’t make the shaking or pulling any better. So he brought it into us.

Knowing that it would be a long, difficult and dirty job, I nominated Shaun for the task (I had what I thought was a nice timing belt to attend to – more on that later). The first thing that he noticed was that the alloy was cracked right through, so he swapped it for the spare alloy wheel in the hope that the problem really could be that simple (is it ever?).

After the test drive, it was apparent that the situation was no better. After further investigation, Shaun discovered that there was quite extensive damage on the whole suspension set-up on the driver’s side. The top of the shock absorber had been bent, the spring was broken, and the ball joint was also bent, as was the top of the strut assembly. Naturally we let Mr Ridgeway know what the situation was before we did any work – and he was quite happy for the parts to be replaced. You should have seen his face when we showed him the broken bits!

Once the car was put back together, we laser-tracked the wheels and fitted a new set of Stunners all-round as requested (yes you can even get Stunners to fit 17-inch alloys!) and the car drove perfectly. Another success.

Now, that timing belt… It’s obvious that some people have taken heed of this column and my rantings about timing belts! Mr Armstrong (also with his name changed) had brought his Audi A6 2.5 V6 Tdi into us with a belt that needed renewing as it was just nearing the end of its life and he didn’t want to run the risk of destroying his engine. It should be, I thought, a nice simple job which seeing as I had a mountain of paperwork to attend to, was no bad thing.

How wrong can I be? The A6 is a true beast of a car, and to get to the timing belt assembly you have to go through the front of the car –literally. I’m not talking about getting underneath and getting your knuckles scraped by the radiator – oh no. Off came the front bumper, radiator, fans; in fact by the time I’d managed to expose the timing belt assembly, the A6 was looking like half a car. There just isn’t another way… To make matters worse, every bolt had seized solid and so needed some ‘careful attention’ to loosen them enough to be unscrewed.

‘I love this job’ I kept muttering to myself. ‘I love it.’

Do you remember a story from a few weeks ago about the cars stricken in the floods? Well, there is only one left in the workshop after all of the others have been completely rebuilt. And of course, it’s one of the biggest ones – a 4.2-litre Jaguar. The head gasket needs replacing on it (among other things) and it is a mammoth job. Still, we’re getting there and very soon the cat will be back on the prowl with its owner. There’s just one thing I’d like to say about these jobs – if you think that a puddle looks a bit deep (or more like a lake) then please, please, drive around it! I’ve had enough flood damaged engines to last me a lifetime – and that’s only in the last fortnight!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 21/01/03

2003-01-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It has been a fast paced week in the news, but the dominant story here in the workshops has been a local one. I am, naturally, referring to Derby’s 3-1 victory at the weekend – maybe this season won’t be such a write-off after all. Perhaps it is the start of the great team’s re-emergence to claim their rightful place at the top of the tables – better late than never I suppose!
Slightly further away from home, 30,000 British troops are now to be deployed in the run up to a war with Iraq, but even as they are getting their webbing and packs sorted, the Iraqi officials seem to be co-operating to a greater degree. I suspect that our troops will go out there, but I hope that they’ll do little more than pick up suntans and run some drills in the unfamiliar heat of the Middle East. It’s all enough to make a grown man reach for his security blanket…

Down at Heanor this week, sparks of a different sort were flying. Mr Holmes’ (name changed to protect his innocence) imported Toyota MR2 was blowing fuses like you or I would blow bubbles. He’d taken it to other garages and received new fuses, new batteries and even a brand new alternator (fitted because the old unit was, apparently, over-charging…) which as you can imagine had cost him an arm, a leg and part of his sanity as well. Desperate, he brought it to Kam after seeing our last article in the Trader (which incidentally has been solely responsible for a rush of troublesome electrical jobs).

“Kev, I can’t even work out why the fuses keep blowing, but when they do, the rear sidelights and the dash board illumination goes. The only factor seems to be Beethoven.”

“Beethoven?” I’m certain that this was the first time that a long dead composer has been blamed for blown fuses.

“Yes Kev, Beethoven’s Ninth in fact – you know, the one featured in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Just as it reaches crescendo, boom and all the lights go out. It’s really starting to bug me…”

That had to be a co-incidence, surely? I promised that we’d give Mr Holmes a call once we’d had a sleuth about.

Scott and I got straight down to the job, and very quickly we discovered the first problem – a direct battery feed down to the back of the car. This was a time bomb just waiting to go off, so that got disconnected pretty sharpish! Everything else looked OK, the connections were good, the battery was the correct one and the fuse box was in perfect condition. The only thing that looked different was the stereo CD player.

A quick call verified that the in-car entertainment was a retro-fit item that had been installed by a reputable firm. So that didn’t yield any direct answers. Just to check the problem, I popped Beethoven in.
Nothing. Well, actually, I lie. A glorious swell of sound, but no fuses blowing. I put the lights on – and still nothing. There was no problem.

“Actually Kev,” piped up Scott, “you’ve missed the rear speakers.” Gently turning a knob produced a deep rumble from the rear and then – pop! The fuses went again.

It took an hour and a half to get the stereo out of the car. It was a mega, gigantic system quite capable of filling the Albert Hall, let alone an MR2. Still, whatever you like I suppose… Once the system was removed, the problem was instantly apparent. The people who had installed the stereo had done a very bad thing – they took a direct feed from the battery, tapped it through the rear lights/dash board fuses and on into the stereo.

So why didn’t the fuses blow every time the stereo was used? The answer is simple – when only the front speakers were in use, the load on the system could be managed by the fuses. Turn the huge rear subs on as well and – boom! The load was just too great.

Once Scott and I had rewired the system safely, Beethoven and his Ninth sounded better than ever before. In fact, just about everybody downed tools to come and have a listen!

I have to admit, regular reader, that after the success of restoring Beethoven’s symphony, I had a near catastrophe. As I was going to pick up a customer’s car, I kerbed the Rover and caused the Stunner tyre to blow out! Not a nice experience, however I am consoling myself with the knowledge that the black cat who ran out in front of me lived to fight another day (and I thought that they were meant to be lucky)! As I saw the cat, I swerved to avoid it, hit a big puddle and clipped the kerb.

However, since the tyre was still under the manufacturers’ warranty, it is getting replaced free of charge! That’s why I choose Stunners for all of our courtesy vehicles – not only are they superb tyres, but they keep the cost of minor mishaps to the absolute minimum. I’d hope by now that you know that I would never recommend something this highly unless it really was the best…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 14/01/03

2003-01-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It’s been a very mediocre season on the football fields, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The one-all draw against Gillingham confirmed my feelings that this season really is best forgotten. I know that it hasn’t been particularly bad, but it really hasn’t been that distinguished either. I’m certain that next season will be our best yet – and our friendly rivals Forest will have to watch their backs…

One item that has dominated the news recently is the soaring gun crime, culminating in that appalling US-style 15-day siege. To tell you the truth, I’ve seen it all played out before in the cinema, and that is what is worrying me. Actually, I tell a lie – what is really concerning me is the possibility that all of the reports, white papers and politician’s talk will come to nothing. It seems increasingly that the taxpayers fork out for thousands of meetings, tonnes of paperwork and everything else, but don’t see any return for the investment. Am I being cynical – and getting more so with age – or realistic? Sometimes the line seems very blurred… Anyway, enough of seeing the world from the top of a soap box, there’s a tale to be told!

When the brakes lock up on your car, it can be a terrifying experience especially if you’re travelling on wet roads or at speed. And of course, if you have only pressed the brake gently to trim a few miles-an-hour from your speed, a lock-up is totally unexpected and even more frightening. Mr Taylor (name changed to protect his innocence) was having just this problem on the Ford Fiesta that he had only bought three weeks before. He’d taken the car to two other garages and had most of the brake system completely replaced, but this didn’t cure the problem. In desperation, he brought it to Kam.

“What has the previous owner got to say about all of this?” I asked after hearing Mr Taylor’s sorry tale.

“I don’t know Kev,” he replied. “He has gone travelling for six months.”
I raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“No, really, he has. I saw his itinerary when I when to see the car. He hasn’t pulled a fast one on me.”

“Hmm.” This didn’t make matters any easier, still, I was certain that Kam would prevail. After all, how hard could it be – it’s only a braking system…
“Oh Kev, one more thing. I can’t remember if I mentioned this or not – the problem only occurs after you’ve been driving for six miles.” On that bombshell, he took the courtesy car and vanished in a blast of Radio One.

“Six miles?”

Of course, the first thing to do was strip the system down, inspect all the parts and look for anything out of the ordinary. We took measurements of everything, tightened bolts, oiled mechanisms and pressure tested the system – nothing was wrong.

As it was Shaun’s lucky day (he had found a whole ten pence piece on the pavement outside), he took the car out for a test run. After a few minutes, he was on the phone.

“Kev – get the truck out here now! Those brakes have just locked up on me, sending me into a skid!”

“OK Shaun,” I said. “We’ll be there soon.” So we brought the car back and inspected the (now cool) brake system. Still nothing was wrong.
This time, I went out with Shaun for another test run, followed by the rescue truck and all of the tools that we could lay our hands on. Six miles into the journey – screech! On to the side of the road, car up on jacks and stands, wheels off – still nothing apart from two gently steaming disks! This was getting very peculiar. We decided to drive the Fiesta back to base and phoned ahead to get everyone waiting for our arrival.

On the way back, the brakes locked up just as we reached the entrance to our Heanor depot – and the boys were ready, waiting, like an F1 team. Within seconds, the car was up on jacks again, the wheels were removed and the braking system disassembled while we searched for the problem on the hot system.

Just at that moment, Glynn sauntered past with a fresh mug of tea. “I know what the problem is,” he said, somewhat smugly. At this point, just about everyone jumped on him…

“It’s this pipe just here” Glynn pointed to the servo pipe and pulled it loose. Amazingly, the brakes all unlocked! “In fact,” he continued, “I’m so confident that this is the problem that you can take the same pipe from my Fiesta, install it here and take this car back out.”

Since we had tried almost everything else, I didn’t think that we had anything to lose. Six miles into the latest test run and Shaun braced his hands against the dashboard after muttering a fervent prayer. (I was driving by the way…) He kept his eyes closed until we’d passed the 28-mile mark…
After all of that, the problem lay in a tiny, defective, valve located in the servo pipe. Once we’d received a new one from Ford and fitted a new set of brake disks (the old ones were completely warped), we could release the car to Mr Taylor, confident that everything was in perfect order.

It’s jobs like this that remind me why I went into the mechanics business in the first place. The grovelling by the roadside, problems that appear and then vanish – but you know that I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 07/01/03

2003-01-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It’s a miracle! As I’m sitting here writing this I can see – are you sitting down – a fragment of blue sky and an actual, real, bona fide sunbeam! (No, I’m not talking about the motor car…) After weeks of rain, flooding, freezing conditions and arctic winds, the sight of sunshine reminds me that the shortest day is past and summer is nearly here! Of course, now I’ve said that, the rain clouds have rolled back in and I’ve probably cursed the Midlands to another six months of terrible weather. Sorry.

It was a very good job that we were open over New Year as there were many people who called us out for emergency rescues. As many of you will know, the area around our Sawley depot is prone to flooding, and this year was no different. In total, we pulled five cars out of the lake that formed up by the motorway – all of which then needed our attention. Three of them couldn’t be saved, they were old anyway but the water had been drawn up into the engine and really played havoc. The other two – an Escort van and a Ford Fiesta, are currently sitting in the workshop awaiting the insurance assessor.

There was another car stranded over the New Year period, but one that we couldn’t recover ourselves. The new shaped Ford Scorpio had been driven in to a puddle even deeper than most of the others and had stalled. The owner (who shall remain nameless!) then tried to restart the engine, but of course it wouldn’t play. That’s bad enough in itself, but just at that moment, the heavens opened once again and the nearby field, already full to the brim, overflowed. By the time the Kam Rescue Truck got there, the water was too high even for us to get through. We couldn’t leave the car there – the water would soon get into the cabin, but we couldn’t actually risk our truck getting stranded too. There was only one thing for it.

“Pete, it’s Kev.” Pete (name changed to protect his anonymity), is an old friend of mine and owns a recovery business. But this isn’t your usual recovery company – if the vehicle is less than 2.5-tonnes Pete doesn’t touch it! Since his speciality lies with large trucks, you can be sure that Pete’s recovery rig was a big one – just what we needed to get through the rising waters!

Once Pete arrived with his biggest truck, we drew straws to see who would be the lucky one to go out to the car and attach the winch hook. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be too bad – but don’t forget the deep freezing waters! And guess who drew the short straw… Yes, yours truly. The boys in our truck gave me a reassuring thumbs up as Pete’s vehicle struggled its way through the flood – very encouraging of them…

Still, once you’d been immersed in the water for thirty seconds, you don’t feel the cold so much. It wasn’t easy finding a suitable location to attach the hook to, but I got there in the end and very slowly, the soggy Scorpio mounted the lorry. Once it was clear of the waters, we loaded it onto our truck, thanked Pete and headed back to the workshop, my teeth chattering all the way.

Once I was back in dry clothes, it was time to inspect how much damage had been wrought. The news wasn’t good. Not only had the engine ingested a quantity of water, but it had also suffered quite a bit of electrical damage. This wasn’t going to be a cheap job – so we called the owner and waited for the insurance assessor.

In fact, as I speak, all three vehicles are sitting there with their heads off waiting for the man with the clipboard. And, naturally, when we removed the heads, we found more problems – namely bent conrods. Thankfully each owner had their car insured fully comprehensively so they won't lose everything – but it is still going to take their no claims bonus away! And the ironic thing is that each of them got stuck on a road which had the “Danger – Flood” signs put up!

The moral of that story is that you shouldn’t try to be a hero and drive on (or through) water – it could cost you a lot of money…

One last thing before I sign off: all of our courtesy cars have been working flat out over the last few days and our four sodden motorists have all got one. So we are running a little low at the moment – but you know who to blame, don’t you?

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s New Year Column

2002-12-19T11:16:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

I don’t know about you, but I think that I’ve eaten enough to see me through until next Christmas! Why is it that you can never say “No” at Christmas?

“Just one more mince pie?”

“Well, I really shouldn’t… but it’s Christmas… Pass some of that whipped cream while you are there, oh and a slice of cake too.” See what I mean?

We have had a skeleton staff on over the Christmas period (well fed skeleton’s admittedly) and thankfully haven’t been swamped with jobs – perhaps it is because all the cars are staying nicely tucked up in their warm garages while you all get on with your partying. Nevertheless, the workshop Santa didn’t forget us and delivered a perplexing problem in the shape of a ‘52’ registered Peugeot 406 TDI.

“Raj, I’ve had a noise from my front wheels ever since you put that new set of Stunner tyres on last month. It is really starting to drive me batty!” Mr Simms (name naturally changed!) reinforced the point by jabbing one finger into each temple. “Would you have a look at it for me and make it go away!”

“No worries Mr Simms,” I replied. “If you take one of our courtesy vehicles I’ll give you a call just as soon as we’ve diagnosed the problem.”

Now, you and I know that we here at Kam think very highly of Stunners and that a tyre change isn’t a difficult job. So why there should be a strange noise was initially beyond me.

A swift road test confirmed a scraping, thudding, thumping noise that only appeared between 40 and 50 miles per hour. Curious as to what it might be, I took the wheels off and inspected the braking system (including the ABS). Nothing to report back, so I checked the suspension. Still nicely sprung.

Even the wheel bearings were fine. Getting slightly perplexed I even checked the wheels, to make sure that the hubs were still perfectly round – and they were (if Mr Simms had curbed the vehicle then it is possible, although unlikely, that he might have deformed one of the rims). This wasn’t making any sense.

Scott chimed in with a helpful comment at this point – “Why not swap the wheels from Mr Simms’ car with our 406 courtesy car? At least then you’ll know if the problem lies with the wheels or something in the car itself.”

A stunner of an idea indeed – especially as our courtesy car had a new set of Stunners on as well. Once the wheels where changed around I took Mr Simms’ car out on the road again – and this time there was no noise!

That meant the problem lay with the actual wheels themselves. But as they were still perfectly round I couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be. Shaun was kind enough to help me put the right set of wheels back on the right car (it was getting nippy by this time) and we were discussing the problem while rolling Mr Simms’ wheels over to his vehicle.

As we all know, wheels have a habit of doing just what they want to do when you are trying to hand roll them from A to B, one of them decided to take a dip in one of the large, icy puddles in the car park. As I hauled it out, Shaun noticed something very odd – a little bead of white just where the tyre met the rim. You couldn’t see it before as it was covered with black road film.

“It looks like this tyre’s had a puncture,” Shaun said. “And,” he said, scratching at this white bead with his nail, “it looks like Mr Simms has used one of those foam-injection tyre repairers on it!”

Sure enough, once we had removed the tyre, we discovered a large, hard ball of foam rattling around inside! I called Mr Simms to give him the good news.

“Of course, if you had brought your tyre back to us, then you would have had a brand new one fitted free of charge under your guarantee!” I thought I’d better remind him.

“Oh, erm, yes… Well, I was very busy and erm…” How many times have I heard that?

That’s one of the great things about Stunners, they are covered for accidental damage, meaning that you can claim a free replacement for 12 months and a 50% reduction in price after a puncture for a further 12 months. If only Mr Simms had listened when we told him the first time!
The clock is now ticking towards 2003, so I’m going to get my party shoes on and prepare to dance the night away. The workshops are closed on New Year’s Day but we are back on the 2nd January for all of your motoring needs.

Until next year then!

Dr Raj

Kam’s Christmas Column

2002-12-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

Yes, ‘tis I, Dr Raj here to see you through the Christmas period and on into 2003 (I’ve got next week’s column too!) – our Dr Kev is away at the moment, exchanging the excitement, drama and skinned knuckles of the workshop for some home comforts.

I thought that this year I’d be a lot more organised than the rest of the lads and get all of my Christmas shopping done early. Well, that was the intention! Here I am, only one shopping day left until Christmas and there are still a number of gaps under the tree… I’m sure I can think of something in time! Of course, had we decided to close right over Christmas (apart from just on the day itself, Boxing Day and New Year’s day) I would have got everything sorted – but then you’re cars would have had to wait until 2003 and that just wouldn’t be fair!

A (seemingly) classic case of Winter Blues came into the workshop this morning. Mrs Grainger is one of our most senior – and longest-term – customers (name changed to protect her innocence of course!) and owns a really rather nice two year old VW Polo.

The thing was, this Polo had a penchant for going through batteries at a rate of knots. We’d been out three times to jump start it, and each time recommended that she bring the car in so that we could check it over. But, this being Christmas, Mrs Grainger had seasonal duties to fulfil and couldn’t spare the time. I also know that two other companies had been out to the vehicle to jump-start it and one of them had supplied a new battery.

So, it was on the fourth call out (i.e. this morning) that I finally persuaded Mrs Grainger to leave ‘Bertie’ with us. It surely couldn’t be that hard to find out why the battery was running down so quickly, could it?

The first thing to do was to check the battery itself, make sure that it wasn’t defective and to see how high the drain was. Being brand new, the battery was still perfect, so that couldn’t be the culprit. The drain was pretty severe, so it looked like there was a major problem somewhere in the system. Shaun checked the alternator too, just to make sure that was OK (which thankfully it was).

Next came the really fun job of following all of the wires, switches and relays to find out if one was broken anywhere. All of the wires checked out OK, their coverings intact and connections good. The relays also performed perfectly. That just left the switches. Now, regular reader, I don’t know if you’ve ever counted the switches in a VW Polo – but let me tell you that there are a lot! And of course, if one is broken anywhere then it can drain the battery by not turning off when it should do.

Typically, everything was in perfect working order. This left Shaun, and myself, in a bit of a quandary. Everything was perfect, but the battery was still leaking power. It obviously wasn’t any of the interior lights because we would see them staying on. It wasn’t through a broken wire or relay – so where on earth could the drain be coming from?

The answer came from an unlikely corner. While checking out the rear passenger door light switch, Shaun suddenly spotted a chink of light coming from the boot. Quickly, he pulled down the rear seat and spotted it – the boot light was remaining on, even though the boot was firmly closed!

“Got it!” He shouted, then banged his head into the grab-handle above the door.

On opening the boot, the scale of the problem became clear. Mrs Grainger had obviously been to a party sometime recently and on the way home either had been rear-ended by Santa’s Sleigh Team on a pre-Christmas training run or had thrown one of those novelty reindeer antler hats into the boot. Pushed under the boot mat by tonnes of shopping, only the antler’s tip was left poking out – but this was enough to jam under the boot lid and stop the boot light switch from turning off even though the hatch was slammed fast!

Once the offending antler was removed and the battery charged, Mrs Grainger was able to return and collect her beloved Bertie – although she allowed us to keep the novelty antler!

Of course, I was thinking about the next job and so left the antler on the front desk. A minute later, I heard a wailing and so rushed back to reception – to find a small girl in tears, her lower lips trembling.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking around for her parents.

“You’ve got one of Rudolph’s antlers,” she wailed. “He’ll never find my house now!”

Well, regular reader, what could I do? I picked up the phone and jabbed one of the speed dials.

“Santa, yes, it’s Dr Raj. I’ve got that antler you were looking for. Yes, it was in Mrs Grainger’s car. You’ve fixed Rudolph’s contact lenses? Good. I’ll meet you at my house in twenty minutes.” You should have seen the look on the little girl’s face!

That’s it for this week regular reader. I hope that you have a fantastic Christmas with every joy of the season. I’ll see you again next week!

Dr Raj

PS Don’t forget that we are back in the workshops on Thursday!

Kam’s Column - 17/12/02

2002-12-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It has been quite a week for poor old Cherie Blair. Just like any mother, I’m sure she only wanted the best for her university going child, but she happened to choose the wrong person to go into dealings with. Cheriegate – as it has become known – has apparently dented the popularity of the Government itself. Now, regular reader, I ask you this – why should the actions of the Prime Minister’s wife have any effect on the Government? Is she elected? Has she ever stood for election to Government? Have her actions influenced major policy? Can she ever have a flattering photo taken?
Of course, poor Cherie didn’t choose her business associate wisely, given his well publicised history. But we all make mistakes –many people have fallen victim to smooth con-men in the past and none of them are pilloried. To be honest, the Cheriegate story is really rather small fry in comparison to the rest of the depressing world news, but I suppose it serves a purpose as a diversion… Saddam who?

If you had been in our Sawley depot on Monday morning, you would have been forgiven for thinking that every local child had been herded in there with a violin and told to get on with a rendition of ELP’s ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ (without music, lessons or ever having heard the track). Mr Berkley (name changed to protect his innocence) had brought his 2.5-litre Ford Transit Tdi in with a perplexing million-decibel squeal.

“Kev, I’m sick of trying to get this fixed. I’ve been to three separate places, had a new starter motor, new alternator, new vacuum pump, new belts and still there’s this terrible noise.” He emphatically waved a sheaf of invoices at me. “If you can’t fix it there I swear I’ll go out of my mind – I’ve even got the neighbourhood dogs howling when I drive home!”

Thinking about it, I could recall a few nights when there was the faintest suggestion of ‘101 Dalmatians’ on the air…

“It certainly is… loud,” I said, trying to be diplomatic (which isn’t easy when you still have pieces of cotton wool earplugs obviously sitting on your overalls). “Leave it with me, I’ll get it fixed for you.”

“Thanks Kev, and while you are there, can you put a new timing belt on. I’ve read about all of your horror stories…”

Rather than start the beast up again, I decided to get the boys help in pushing it into the bay – I wasn’t going to risk another ear shattering blast! Once quietly parked up, I had a look around under the bonnet and saw that the Transit did indeed have all of the new parts that Mr Berkley had mentioned. Even the power steering belts were brand new.

That only left one thing – power steering fluid. It’s overlooked on most services yet can cause a whole host of problems if it isn’t in good order.
Well, regular reader… Have you ever seen ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’? It was like that in there – although scaled down to the point where any flesh eating monster would have been about the size of an ant (so we’re safe…). The power steering fluid was as black as freshly melted tar, and of about the same consistency.

“It can’t be just that Kev,” said a voice from my shoulder. (Talking shoulder pads – now there’s a thing!) “That wouldn’t account for the noise.”

Still impressed by vocal shoulders, I replied without looking up. “It could be, if the fluid is this thick, it could be causing the belt to slip and that would cause the squealing.” Then, slightly worried that I was indeed talking to my shoulder, I sneaked a quick glance and saw Raj standing there.

As he was standing just behind me, it seemed a shame not to put him to good use – so I asked him if he would mind flushing the system through, adding some seal conditioner and then putting in brand new fluid.
“I’m sure this will never work…” He muttered.

“Raj, I guarantee it – if the noise is still there once we’ve done this, then I will personally foot the bill for any more work” I announced, keeping my fingers firmly crossed.

Well, what do you know? On starting the Transit up, the noise was gone and the power steering worked so well that the vehicle felt tonnes lighter! It’s amazing how something this simple can make such a difference – and if Mr Berkley had come to us first, he wouldn’t have had to fork out for a new starter motor or alternator…

It was quite a good job that Mr Berkley brought the van in actually – his Stunner tyres were due their three-month inspection for the guarantee. We’ve had a rush on Stunners recently and have been getting excellent feedback. It seems that they were built for the wet and slippery British roads!

With Christmas looming, you’re all probably thinking about things other than repairing your cars. However, vehicles don’t respect the festive season – so we are open right over the Christmas period – other than Christmas day, Boxing Day and New Year’s day. However, it is worth giving your local depot a call before travelling – just in case a pipe has burst or something!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 10/12/02

2002-12-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

It has been an interesting week in the media. Cherie Booth has made an error of judgement while buying flats in Bristol, the Iraqi dossier is being rubbished by the US and there are rumours of Star Wars coming to an RAF base not too far from here… Before you get your light sabres out from the attic, I’m talking of course about the missile defence program invented by the Americans to protect themselves from attack.

I don’t know about you, but I think that George Bush (Junior) is spoiling for a fight. Perhaps it is because he was called Junior at home too often, perhaps Mummy Bush still insists on buying him underwear at Christmas and calling him on cold days to make sure that he’s wearing his thermal long-johns. Whatever the reason, I wish he wouldn’t – especially if it a war of no reason. Because, at the end of the day, there will be no winners. You can’t be victorious in a situation like this – and anyway, look at the last Iraqi war…

Talking of cold days, my Grandmother used to describe cold snaps as ‘mighty cold’ – and I think that is about the best description that you’ll ever hear.

Just the sound of those words gives you a sense just how nippy it has been in our Heanor workshops this week – winter is finally here! This of course brings with it a number of problems (not counting ice on the roads or in your water pipes), specifically battery related ones. As it gets colder, darker and generally more inhospitable to any form of life, your battery has to operate heaters, fans, demisters, engine cold-starts, lights, radios, windscreen heaters… You get the general idea. On Tuesday morning alone, Shaun and I changed eight batteries as well as carrying out full charge inspections and alternator checks.

Of course, it would have been too much to ask for to stay in the (relatively) warm workshop all day, so when Mr Guides (name changed to protect his innocence) called up asking us to attend his stricken 3.0-litre Citroen XM, we knew we’d have to wrap up warm.

“What seems to be the problem Mr Guides?”

“Well Kev, it just won’t start. I think I left the interior light on last night and the battery is flatter than a dodo’s plummage. Can you come and have a look?”

“No problems Mr Guides – we’ll be there in about half an hour.”

Once on site, there was a first, obvious problem – Mr Guides wasn’t using a surge protector on his jump leads! A lot of newer vehicles need some form of protection while being jump started as the delicate ECU (brains) and electronic gizmos aren’t always amenable to the large power draw that occurs while jumping.

Within minutes, I had fitted a surge protector and hooked the XM up to one of our specialist jumping units and the XM roared into life again. However, the interior light switch was not depressed (so it couldn’t have come on) and no other electrical systems had been left running… All in all, it was a bit of a mystery as to why the battery had run out of puff.

“Would you mind taking it in and having a look for me Kev?”

“No problems. I’ll drive it back now, and give you a call once we’ve checked it over.”

Then the next problem presented itself – a backfire so abrupt that it made the car jolt around and it was nearly undrivable. After doing a check by the roadside to ensure that nothing obvious was broken or wrong, we were a little stumped as to the cause. With fingers turning to ice, I called the Kam Rescue Team to come and recover the vehicle – after all, we didn’t know what might be lurking in the engine and to drive it in that state would be folly.

Once back in the workshop, I set Scott on the task. Surprisingly, everything was checking out OK – the fuel injection system was spot on, the plugs were fine, the distributor cap was working perfectly. Checking back through the car’s history, I noted that on its last service, nothing had cropped up out of the ordinary. Time to delve deeper…

Scott then removed the ECU and ran it over to one of our specialists for a thorough diagnostic. As I had secretly feared, the brains of the beast had been scrambled – quite probably by Mr Guides’ abortive jump-starting. Once I’d let him know the diagnosis, I hopped onto the Internet to locate a new item. Once again, our suppliers came up trumps and the brand new brain was delivered the next morning (I know days when I could use one for myself…). Once we had that installed, the car was running perfectly – now to find the reason the battery drained so fast. After much huffing and puffing, Scott discovered the root of the problem – the rear window heater switch was allowing current to bleed across it and had slowly been running the battery down! A new switch and all was well.

When we took the XM back to Mr Guides, I asked him what he had tried to jump-start the vehicle from.

“That lorry over the Kev,” he said, pointing to a handsome Ford van.
“That explains it then – that’s a 24 volt system, and your Citroen is only a 12 volt – no wonder the brain got a little scrambled!”

This is one thing that you ought to check each time you jump-start a car – just make sure that the systems are of the same voltage. If they aren’t then you are risking some damage to your own vehicle.

Well, I can’t sit here writing this all day. Since word has got out about our MoT and full service promotion (where prices start from just £59.95), our workbook has been rapidly filling. And then there are all the tyre changes as more of you convert to our Stunners… It’s a busy time!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 03/12/02

2002-12-03T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

I have to say that I’m saddened that the fire strikes are still going ahead, I honestly hoped that the Government and the Union leaders would have come to some sort of amicable arrangement by now. However, I do wonder if the tides are starting to turn – I spotted a headline that read “Unions Turn On Gilchrist”, so maybe the members are revolting against their leadership.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to read the article as I was out shopping with Mandy and following her whirlwind expenditure around Tesco's…

In addition, the football news isn’t too heartening either – for Derby at least. However, our ever-friendly neighbours Forest are residing at number three in the table which is no mean feature. But the times they are achanging, (possibly) as I’ve heard on the wiring loom that Paul Hart is being poached by another club. Whether this results in a scramble to keep him, or a boiling away of Forest’s fortune we shall have to see.

One thing that we have noticed in the last week is a large number of people coming from quite a distance away to take advantage of our Stunner tyres. Plus more people have been able to experience them since the manufacturer has just given me another set to fit to another of our courtesy cars. So far, the Mondeo and now the Rover are equipped with them – and the Mondeo has done over 30,000 miles on one set! Of course, that is possible because we check the tyre pressures daily and the tracking on a regular basis and so have the optimum conditions – but it just shows that it can be done!

I did feel sorry for Mr Davenport (name changed to protect his innocence) on Saturday, which was possibly the rainiest day since rain was invented. His Rover 220 had decided to install the latest in luxury items – the one way electric window. Except that one way meant down only! He didn’t have a garage or any way of keeping the rain out of the car, so by the time it arrived at out workshop, it was a ‘little’ damp in the cabin. Before we did anything to the car we had to park it up in the workshop and let it dry out – a process that took three days!

I managed to get in there on Monday morning, finally, and began the job of stripping the door panels down and taking the mechanism out. What had happened was that the electric motor had been slowly passing its sell-by-date and had eventually expired. And, to make matters worse, because this wasn’t dealt with in a timely manner, the switch had burnt out too! Parts from Rover would have required at least Mr Davenport’s mother-in-law to be sold into slavery, so I got out my (key)board and went for a surf (I’m talking the Internet of course, but judging by the amount of water that’s been flowing down the road recently, a surf-board might not be such a bad idea…). Within minutes I had located an as-new window motor, regulator and switch assembly at a very good price from a breaker in Liverpool so, before placing the order I checked it with Mr Davenport – who was delighted to keep his mother-in-law out of the workhouse… The entire assembly arrived the next day and went in without any problems.

The next job I craftily managed to pass to Scott – Mr Spencer’s Renault Laguna was suffering from a lack of heating! Now this isn’t usually a problem, but Renaults are so tightly put together that it is a contortionist job to actually test the heater motor – nevermind get it out! The problem turned out to be linked to the rheostat – a device that controls the heater fan operation. After a summer of inactivity, the onrush of cold winter weather had shocked it into life and caused it to burn the fan out! Plus there was a section of really rather poor wiring down there that we had to deal with as well. In this instance, the parts from an as-new supplier were only a fraction cheaper than the brand new items, so I advised Mr Spencer to go for the new units.

The last electrical job in this series belonged to Mr Davis’s new Rover 620. Well, I say new – it was new to him as he’d only just bought it. The problem here was that the alarm wasn’t working and the central locking had packed up too! Once closer inspect, it turned out that the pin switches that controlled the alarm function were broken and corroded – the unit probably hadn’t worked for sometime! Once we had replaced the switches, not only did the alarm work at deafening volume (as ably demonstration by Shaun when he went to open the door without turning the alarm off first) but the central locking came back to life as well!

There’s another list of electrical jobs sitting in front of me waiting for my attention, oh the joy… Just a quick note about Christmas, regular readers – Kam will be open right through the festive season, only closing on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s day. So for all of your vehicle needs- we’ll be here!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

PS, as I’m reading this through, a breakdown vehicle has just brought in a V6 3.0-litre Vauxhall Omega. It sounds like a timing belt job and Shaun’s looking at me quizzically

Kam’s Column - 25/11/02

2002-11-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

Hello again!

It’s been quite a week for the country, gripped by the firefighters’ walk-out. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the papers have been full-to-bursting with the latest developments and ponderings from just about everybody. I’m finding that the firefighters are saying one thing, the government another and every single paper is putting their own, different, slant on the matter – it is quite a job to know who to believe… Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, you can not deny that the fire service does a fantastic job – so roll on the end of this dispute.

Closer to home, the workshops have been buzzing this last week with a vast array of jobs – everything from our free winter and brake checks to major repair work! It’s almost as though the pre-Christmas floodgates have opened and you are all booking your jobs in now. Talking of floodgates, we have had a large number of people call up because their cars won’t start and this is often caused by the damp weather. Even some new cars are affected by it! With any luck, once we get past the driving rain and high winds, these problems should start to subside.

Terry Johnson (name changed to protect his innocence!) brought his new shape Escort into the workshop on Monday with two quite obvious problems. First of all, his tyres were only a minute fraction above the legal minimum tread depth and, secondly, his exhaust was sounding like a bi-plane. Mr Johnson had tried just about everywhere to have a new exhaust system and tyres fitted, but balked at the prices! The problem was compounded by the fact that, although the Escort was a turbo diesel, it still had a catalytic converter and it was looking like that had to be replaced.

As soon as he had given me the details of the tyres he required and I’d had a look at the state of the exhaust, I was able to give him a quote for the work. This required a lot of pen sucking, a few murmuring noises and quite a bit of scribbling on my notepad (no, dear reader, I wasn’t exaggerating the scale of the problem – how could you even think it! – rather the batteries in my calculator had just given up and I was reduced to mental maths!). Naturally, I suggested that he fitted a set of Stunner tyres to the car and a Timax exhaust system – for whom we are main stockists. And of course, we beat every other quote.

Stunner tyres come with a two-year no-quibble warranty that includes accidental or vandal damage, and are fantastically good in all conditions. Plus, they come from he land of Ferraris, Bugattis and Alfa Romeos – pure class!

If you haven’t heard of Timax exhausts before then let me tell you that they are another of the industry’s best kept secrets along with Stunners. Each exhaust system is made to the original factory specification for every manufacturer, so the unit you fit will be just as good as the old one – and doubtless less expensive! Plus they come with a full three-year warranty for your complete peace of mind.

To cut a long story short, we discovered that the exhaust system was unusable from the manifold back – in fact it is a miracle that it had lasted this long. To compound the problem yet further, two of the head-manifold bolts were snapped and when this happens, who are you going to call? Shaun! Our redrilling and tapping expert was soon back on the job once we’d lifted the engine up to remove the last of the exhaust sections. Although not as fiddly as the previous job retapping engine mountings, Shaun needed exactly the same level of precision to ensure that the exhaust would fit on perfectly.

Once this had been completed, it was time to offer the new exhaust system up to the mountings and bolt it down tight. What a difference! What had previously sounded like a WW2 bi-plane was now a jet cruiser, quietly going about its business!

While we were installing the new set of Stunner tyres, I asked the lads to conduct one of our free brake checks as well – not that I thought that there was anything wrong, but you know us down here, we like to go that extra mile! As predicted, the car’s stopping equipment passed with flying colours and we produced a check sheet for Mr Johnson to say so as well! You just can’t be too careful with the roads at the moment…

With Christmas just around the corner, we wanted to give something back to all of our loyal customers – and hopefully welcome some new ones into the fold as well. So I’ve had a chat with the guys and we are now offering cut-price servicing with prices starting from only £59.95 for cars up to 1200cc.

This is particularly good value because our full service includes new engine oil, air and oil filters, new NGK spark plugs, all levels and anti-freeze top-ups, a brake check/clean/adjust and a full engine tune. Plus, if your MoT is due, you can get a free one with every full service booked! Alternatively, if you just need the annual check, then we are knocking £10 from the cost.

Well, regular reader, that’s it for another week – back to the whirlpool of the workshops! Until the next time,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 19/11/02

2002-11-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

Hello again!

It obviously was another good weekend for the Nottingham Forest boys who took yet another victory. Evidently, Lady Luck is still in their dressing room with no intention of coming to see the Derby boys in the near future. I wonder if it because we don’t supply the right colour flowers? Seriously, Forest are really showing other teams how the game is played at the moment, so congratulations to them!

Internationally, the arms inspectors are finally getting into Iraq – although whether this will end the controversy over whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction is another thing entirely – I can see this dragging out yet further. Has anyone got any good news?

Well, actually, we do! Mrs Branch (name changed to protect her innocence) called my up in floods of tears on Monday morning.
“Kev, my engine’s fallen out!”

“It’s done what?” Now, I’ve heard many problems in the past, but never heard of an engine falling out of a car!

“My engine’s fallen out! It’s lying on the road outside my house and I’ve got to get to Lladudno for my sister’s Golden Wedding Anniversary party! And if that isn’t bad enough, I’ve got the cake!” At this point, she descended into floods of tears again.

“Mrs Branch, don’t worry. We’ll get everything sorted for you. Just tell me where the car is and we’ll take it on from there.” What I didn’t tell her was that we would be coming down with the rescue truck and one of our courtesy vehicles to ensure that she – and the cake – could get to the party on time! It evidently had been a stressful morning as when we turned up and I gave her the keys to the courtesy car, she dissolved into tears again and gave me a great big hug!

I have to tell you, regular reader, that Mrs Branch wasn’t fibbing when she said that the engine had fallen out. When the timing belt was replaced by the garage she bought the car from, the engine mounting bolts had been left loose – resulting in them shearing when she tried to start the car that morning! The engine was literally on the floor…

We got to work jacking the engine back into place and effecting a temporary repair before hoisting the Rover 414 TDI onto the rescue truck. Once back in the workshop, I held a straw-poll of the boys to see who wanted to get stuck in to fixing the Rover. Shaun stepped forward – well, jumped would be more appropriate! He’d been itching for days to get his teeth into a really meaty job, and this was the perfect one!

“Kev, I’m going to have to drill through the inner wing,” he said after inspecting the car. I was going to ask why, but thought that would spoil the moment, so, after clearing it with Mrs Branch, I gave him the go-ahead.

What follows I can only describe as incredible. Shaun’s plan was to drill a hole in the inner wing, drill out the old mounting screws, retap the threads and then remount the engine – all in situ! Virtually every other mechanic on the planet would have gone for the easier, but more time consuming, option of removing the engine entirely.

After getting through the inner wing, Shaun put three new holes in the engine block and retapped them with oversized taps. The precision required for this job was immense, let me tell you. Then he loaded the new holes with oversized bolts, hoisted the engine into position and mounted it back onto the body. (Writing it here makes it seem like no great sweat – but, once he finished, the entire workshop gave him a standing ovation) Of course, we had to plug the hole in the inner wing with a rubber grommet, but you couldn’t tell that it had ever been disturbed once we’d put some new underseal on there!

No job is complete without a road test. However, we discovered more work to be done as the engine had broken the shafts that run into the gearbox when it came crashing down! Thankfully, parts for the 414s are easy to come by and it didn’t take long before the car was running perfectly.
Now, since Mrs Branch had only bought this car six months earlier, I thought that it was a bit much for her to have to foot the bill. So I called the company that she had bought it from and suggested that, in the name of good customer service, they pay the costs of the repair. Let me just say that I can be very persuasive when I want to be!

When Mrs Branch returned from the party, she was delighted to discover that not only was her car fixed, but there was nothing to pay! It was a difficult job, of that there is no doubt, but one that Shaun relished doing!
Well, that’s it for this week. Just one thing to say before I go – please check your timing belts. We’ve had several Rovers come in this week courtesy of the AA, RAC (for who we are warranty approved repairers) and a variety of independent companies. I think we’ve got enough to last us until Christmas! Oh yes, and don’t forget the legions of flat batteries too – on new cars it requires a bit more than just a new battery as the engine management systems have to be completely reset as well!

Talking of Christmas, I know I said that I had finished all of my shopping, but I have suddenly realised that there are a few more bits to get… At this rate, I can see it being another Christmas Eve mad dash!

Until next time,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 12/11/02

2002-11-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

Hello again!

I’ve heard it said that Lady Luck is quite fickle and often stays with one football team throughout the whole season – and I think her wicked sister is in our dressing room, preventing the boys from going to the ball… Yes, it was another defeat at the weekend, this time to top-of-the-table-team Portsmouth. However, as we all know, it’s never over 'till the fat linesman says so and I’m certain that our team will continue fighting to the end!

While we’re on the subject of football, did you know that Saddam Hussain’s son beats the soles of his players’ feet every time they lose? And talking of Saddam (even I was impressed at that link!), it is good to see that the United Nations is actually united for once and is going to do something about him…

While I’m positive that all those who know me personally would say that I can be a stereotypical bloke (with the footie and cars), I can display a forward thinking side that the fairer sex never attribute to us mere males! To beat the rush, I actually got all of my Christmas shopping done on Saturday – cards, gift-wrap and everything. Before you ask, no it wasn’t all gift tokens! To make matters even more impressive, I had to get it all done in the morning so that Mandy and I could finalise the arrangements for our daughter’s fourth birthday party at JJBs on Sunday! For a man who hates shopping, I think I did pretty well!

At the end of last week, the Police were carrying out random searches and inspections on people’s cars, checking for road-worthiness, MoT condition and inspecting the drivers for signs of the dreaded drink. Out of the people stopped, three were mortified to discover that their MoTs had run out – needless to say the boys in blue weren’t too impressed. Of course, had these people come to Kam, not only would we have sent them a written reminder that their MoT was nearly due, but we are now going a stage further and giving our most valued customers (that’s all you lot out there) a telephone call as well! We all appreciate that while MoTs are vitally important, the pace of life for many of you is such that it can slip your mind or a November renewal can, in your head, become December. If you heed our reminders, not only will you keep your car in the best of health, but you can avoid getting points on your licence… Plus, when you book your vehicle in for a service at the same time as your MoT, you get the MoT free! Saving money, saving points, saving stress – that’s what we’re all about!

On Monday, new driver Paul Simon (name changed to prevent his blushes) brought his Vauxhall Cavalier into the workshop, claiming that he thought something was up with the braking system.

“I haven’t been driving that long,” he admitted with a sheepish grin. “But I just don’t feel that the brakes are all that they might be. Can you take a look?”

“No worries Paul, we’ll get it sorted” I replied with my most winning smile.

Well, regular reader, we stripped the system right back to the bare essentials and found nothing that looked wrong. The pads were in good order, the pistons were perfect and the whole mechanism moved just as it should. After a bit more searching, the only thing that any of us could find wrong was a bit of compacted brake dust partially covering the ABS connections. A quick blast with the compressed air soon sorted that out, so we rebuilt the system and tested it – all OK. Sometimes, things like a little brake dust can upset the whole system.

While we were at it, we gave Paul’s car a winter health check as well, just to make sure that he was prepared for the vicious weather that is about to hit us. After Paul had returned and tested the car – claiming it to be perfect – I passed him the sheet with our findings. He eyed it suspiciously.
“Is there something wrong Paul?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not sure Kev. First, there’s no price on this and secondly, you’ve done a winter check as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but hadn’t budgeted for the extra cost.”

I think it fair to say I was a little shocked. I’ve spent so much time promoting our free brake inspections and free winter checks that I had assumed that everyone knew about them! Evidently, Paul was one of the last few who had missed these gems…

Once I had explained that the brake check and winter inspections cost absolutely nothing, Paul blushed to the roots of his hair.
“Oh I’m sorry Kev, I wasn’t implying anything before – I’m just used to people doing extra without telling me and then charging huge amounts!”
As you and I know, regular reader, that is where Kam is different to the rest of the pack.

I’ve just had a terrible thought – in all my present buying frenzy, I forgot to get something for Mandy! Maybe I’ll have to get some vouchers for Anne Summers for her – I have heard that it is a fine lingerie shop and held in much regard…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 05/11/02

2002-11-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

The newspapers have been having a field day this week with one thing or another. First of all, there’s the foiled kidnap plot against the very thin Posh Spice – surely a terrifying prospect and my heart goes out to the Beckhams. No matter what you think of either Victoria or David – yes regular reader, we’re on first name terms – no one deserves that. However, we can all be consoled by the presence of a certain tabloid newspaper – what a good job they were at hand to record the events… Do I sound cynical at all?

And then there was the Butler, who we now know didn’t do it (sorry to all Cluedo fans). The whole trial was quite a media spectacle and the questions it has raised are now going to the highest levels. Why did the Queen intervene when she did? Why did a flimsy police case ever get this far? Do we really care enough anyway? While the trial has all of the fun of a gladiatorial combat (but without the bloodshed), there are some far more important things going on in the world… I think I had best step down from my soapbox now, before I slip!

We had two more timing belt jobs come in this week, one for Mr Davis’s Ford Escort (no, this isn’t Steve Davis – our ‘Mr Davis’ is an alias, protecting the lucky man’s anonymity!). We were quite lucky with this job – Mr Davis’s belt snapped as he started the car up one morning, but he turned the engine off before any damage could be done. He had been warned at the last service that the timing belt needed replacing, but, as ever, there was just one last run to London that needed to be completed before the car could come in! After a thorough inspection, we were relieved to give the Escort’s CVH engine a clean bill of health.

The next belt on the list wasn’t quite so straight-forward. Unfortunately, Mr Walsh hadn’t caught his belt snapping and his diesel Astra wasn’t in the best of health. Again, we had advised him to have the belt done, but an urgent job had come in, so the van hadn’t! To keep him on the road, I handed the keys to our works van over, expecting the job to be done quickly. Alas, dear reader, the cylinder head that we require isn’t always stocked at Ford, so I’m having to search on the Internet for a reconditioned one – and that can take time!

The biggest job that arrived in the workshop this week was Maureen Scanlon’s Peugeot 205. Maureen is a friend of my Dad’s and loves her car – with she has fondly christened Colin due to its CLN number plate! Anyway, on Friday, the driver’s door lock mechanism collapsed, meaning she had to climb in through the passenger door. Peugeot didn’t have the parts in stock and quoted a hefty sum for all the new components, so Maureen naturally thought of yours truly – the only garage to offer ‘Mates Rates’ to the whole world! Things turned for the worse on Monday morning, when the passenger door lock collapsed too! Maureen was left climbing in through the rear hatch – not what you want when wearing your best office togs.

Anyway, we tried to source brand new parts for the car, but the costs were exorbitant. The only other option was to try a Peugeot specialist breakers yard – and of course we cleared this with Maureen first. Within an hour we had sourced a perfect and nearly brand-new mechanism at a fraction of the new price! If only installing it was that easy! It took two of us most of the day to get all of the door panels out, cut the old lock away and remove all of the seized mechanisms. The issue wasn’t the difficulty of the job itself, just that the space is so confined and the parts so fiddly!

Once all of the old components were out of the way, everything else went smoothly. Needless to say, Maureen was delighted when I called her and let her know that she could get in and out of her car gracefully again!
Pre-owned parts aren’t something that we often use here at Kam, but in this case, it made the repair economical and allowed Maureen to keep her beloved Colin! While Colin was with us, we gave him one of your comprehensive free brake checks, and found no problems at all!

So, at the end of this week’s missive, I’ll give you a few pointers for the week ahead: timing belts, anti freeze, brakes. All are hugely important items, and all can be checked for free here at Kam!

So, I’ll be seeing all of you shortly for your freebies then?

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 29/10/02

2002-10-29T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

Let me tell you, regular reader, I’m all shopped out – and I only bought myself a pair of Levis and a copy of Car And Driver! What a week it was in New York, Mandy and I were taken around all of the sites by our good friends in The Village, caught a couple of Broadway shows and checked out the museums in the city that – literally – never sleeps. I really never knew how high Mandy’s capacity for shopping was – while I got bored finding the right pair of 501s and got lost in Borders hunting for the car magazines, Mandy was up and down 5th like a dervish, darting into this shop and that that, pausing only for a swift Iced Mocca before heading off again into credit card heaven… By the end of the day, she was even carrying one bag in her teeth to ease the downward pressure on her shoulders!

There’s only just so much city dwelling I can do in a week, and soon, the lure of the open road off-island was calling. So, my friend kindly lent me his splendid Lincoln to hit the road with. It was a real looker as well as a superb driver and within a very short period of time, I was off-island and enjoying the scenery of the ‘real’ America. However, just as I decided to turn back and head for home, the Lincoln decided to find the only nail on the road and punctured one of the rear tyres! Typical… Still, at least there was a space saver in the boot so I wasn’t totally marooned.

Back on-island, I pulled into the first large garage to get a new tyre installed. Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting in their somewhat grubby waiting room, hoping that they hadn’t forgotten me. The next garage was not much better and wouldn’t give a quote for the new tyre and labour charges. Thankfully, the next garage at least told me how much it would be and promised that the job would be done inside twenty minutes. It then took me another fifteen minutes to remove the greasy handprints left on the pristine white wing… I’ve been all over the USA and this is probably the worst service that I have ever received! You might remember that I said my friend owned a garage – so why didn’t I take it there? Simple, his joint is at the other end of the island and, while the space saver is adequate, it isn’t ideal and I was driving back in the rush hour! Better safe than sorry, especially when in someone else’s car.

When I arrived back on Monday morning, still slightly jet lagged, I saw that one of our most loyal customers had called in. It seemed that Mrs Jacobson had a rather unusual problem with her vehicle – one that would require a chainsaw to fix… In short, the thousand-mile-an-hour (or thereabouts!) winds had brought two trees down across her driveway, missing the car by inches! She had spoken to the council earlier in the day but was told that as the trees used to grow on her property, there was nothing that they could do! So Mrs Jacobson called us in the hope that we would know someone with the ability to get rid of the offending trees.

As ever at Kam, we went one better and sent our recovery vehicle down to her house along with Andy and his chainsaw! It didn’t take too long before the tress were cut into manageable pieces and the trucks were the hoisted onto the back of the truck. The chainsaw, being a noisy thing, quickly attracted attention and within minutes, several of the neighbours wanted trees shifting! By the end of the morning, our recovery vehicle was piled high with chopped trees! When I came to Kam, I would never have thought that we’d end up chopping up trees for our customers!

So what did we do with all of the wood? Well, one of the guys knows a man who is good friends with a councillor here in the Midlands and, as luck would have it, that particular council are planning a rather large fireworks party in the next few days. Needless to say, they were extremely grateful that someone else had done all the hard work for them!

You can tell that Christmas is fast approaching, I’m putting together a present list (starting with the diagnostic equipment that I’m going back to the States for shortly) and the days are really drawing in. Of course, this brings its own problems, as you need to remember to get your anti-freeze checked and your brakes fully inspected to deal with the cold, and probably icy, weather.

And while I’m on about all of the checks that we carry out here at Kam, don’t forget your timing belts. We had to recover another two vehicles (once we’d brushed the leaves off the recovery vehicle!) at the end of last week and both repairs were horribly expensive. Just avoid all of the problems, bring your car to Kam and get us to do all of the checking for you!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 22/10/02

2002-10-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It’s Dr Raj in the hot seat this week – as you’ll remember out esteemed Dr Kev is in the biggest of big Apples, New York (which he assures me is his kinda’ town!). He did voice some concerns to me before he went about the spate of sniper shootings that are currently sweeping around the Eastern seaboard (that’s the coast to you and I), but his friends told him that he’d be quite safe. I’m sure we’ll get all in the inside stories when he returns (and inside is just where most Americans are staying right now…).

As you’ll no doubt be aware, Derby and Forest drew 0-0. It was quite an exciting match and has restored my flagging hopes for the fortunes of our great team. At least it wasn’t another loss!

We had an interesting case come in on Monday. Mr Leon Jenkins (name changed to protect his innocence!) brought his Toyota Sera into the workshop with a problem that had baffled other garages. For those of you not familiar with the Toyota Sera, here’s a brief description: it’s about the size of a Nissan 100, quite low to the ground and it has an unbelievable amount of glass in the doors and the roof. However, the best feature is the door mechanism – think Lamborghini scissor doors and you aren’t too far wrong!

The main problem with the Seras is that they are only in this country via import – they were only ever intended for the Japanese market and so parts are extremely hard to find, as would become evident shortly!

Leon’s Sera was suffering from a most unnerving problem – the ABS either wasn’t working or would trigger itself at the lightest touch of the brake pedal! You can imagine what that must have been like as he drove down the street… Anyway, he had taken it to three or four other garages, but with no success. Each time the car seemed better for a day and then the problem reoccurred. So it was over to Kam…

Once we had the car up on the ramps, it was evident just how much money Leon had put into getting the problem sorted. The car had new brake pads, new callipers, new discs – basically the whole braking system had been renewed. What’s more, the other garages had fitted everything perfectly and used good quality materials – so I couldn’t even criticise them for substandard jobs!

The next step was obviously to inspect the ABS unit itself and again, this was brand new (which must have cost a bit!). Even the wiring held up to close inspection – sometimes if a wire is slightly corroded then it will send strange signals to the ABS ‘brain’ and cause the ABS to mis-fire. By this point, I was beaten I have to confess, and even when I called some of the boys over to have a look no new ideas were forthcoming.

Suddenly Scott, who was over in Heanor for the day, had a brainwave.
“Raj, there’s a tiny relay between the brake pedal and the ABS unit – I wonder if that could be broken? I’ve only seen it happen once before and that was on an imported FTO [that’s a Mitsubishi], maybe it has happened here?”

Well, it was an idea and something is always better than nothing! So it fell to me to dive back into the engine bay to trace all of the wires, tubes and pipes that constituted the braking system. After a few minutes, I had what I thought was the offending relay. Marking its position with a small scrap of masking tape, I disconnected it for closer inspection.

As with many Japanese car parts, this was obviously designed to be the tiniest thing imaginable and it was impossible to tell by eye whether it was faulty or not. However, Scott’s electrical tool kit came to the rescue and, once we’d hooked it up to a very low current we’d found our problem! The relay was sticking every so often, either not coming on at all or remaining totally stuck! I let Leon know the good news and then it was onto the Internet to search for the part. Naturally, this relay is specific to the Sera so I couldn’t swap one in from a different model… Still, when the new relay arrived, it was indeed the right one and the braking system went back to perfect condition.

It’s important to have your brakes in tip-top condition, especially at this time of year. A friend of mine spun his car the other day because he couldn’t slow up quick enough on his work discs. Come into Kam and we’ll strip your whole brake system down and check it for you – and tell the guys that Dr Raj sent you!

That’s it for this week. Dr Kev should be back in the hot seat for the next tale from the workshop, so until then, remember that no matter how weird or wonderful, Kam’s the place to go!

Dr Raj.

Kam’s Column - 15/10/02

2002-10-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

What a week this has been, with the papers full of the tragedies in Bali. I don’t know; there’s a sniper outside the Senate, bombings in Bali and a war against an invisible front-line of terror. In more reflective moments, I fear for my daughter and her generation.

Closer to home (and less important on the global scale of things, though of great interest as a diversion from everything else), Derby drew last week. Better than a loss, yes, but it stemmed from some very mediocre pay. However, as the players aren’t being paid, I am just grateful that they care enough to carry on. Thank you boys!

On Monday, I think that the luckiest man in the world came into the workshop. No, he hadn’t won the lottery, discovered buried pirate treasure nor been invited to Elvis’s re-emergence gig– something far more important that all of that! Mr Dustan (name changed to protect his innocence) brought his 2.5-litre Vauxhall Omega into the workshop, complaining that the car was backfiring with no rhyme or reason (a little like Eminem’s music then?). He wasn’t wrong – in fact, the car was making the sort of noises that would have my little girl creasing up in fits of giggles… As he had an urgent business meeting, I gave him the keys to one of the courtesy vehicles and told him that we’d call as soon as we had any information.

Scott was the lucky person assigned to the job and, naturally, started with the most obvious things first. After hooking the car up to our diagnostic computers, he found that there were no problems at all. Everything looked spot-on. Under the bonnet, the story was no more revealing – all of the plugs were brand new, as were the ignition leads and even coil packs. Mr Dustan had left a note in the glovebox detailing the work that had been done by other garages to try to cure the problems. So far, some £400 had been spent, with the car off the road for the total of five days.

By this point, Scott had exhausted the obvious items, so called on me to press the throttle while he lay under the engine. No dear reader – don’t worry, the car was safely off the ground at the time!

“Kev, hold it there!” Scott had to shout over the shotgun effect of the engine. “Keep the revs right where you have them!”

Happily sitting in the driving seat, I couldn’t hear a word, so took my foot off the accelerator and stuck my head out of the window! Scott was not amused.

“Right Kev, when I shine this torch onto that bit of wall, you keep your foot exactly where you have it on the accelerator. Right?”

I nodded and watched the wall. Then, when the revs reached 2,500, I spotted the point of light and held steady. Slowly the others gathered around the car, attracted by the irregular booming from the exhaust.

“Kev, I don’t understand this at all. If you ignore the banging, you can hear a faint popping from under here.” (By this point I’d come out of the car). “I’ve checked the timing, and it was spot on.”

“I’ve got an idea” piped up Shaun. “Take the timing belt covers off – the belt might have slipped. I’ve only seen it a few times, but it can happen.”

After wrestling with stubborn bolts for a few minutes, we had the timing belt covers off and, in the tradition of the best Sherlock Holmes mystery, it all became elementary.

As we turned the engine over (gently), it became apparent that the tensioners had worn significantly, and this allowed the timing belt to rub against the engine. As a result, the last four teeth were missing! Once the revs climbed higher, this caused every piece of engine timing to fall out of sync, hence the shotgun effects!

Once we had replaced the tensioner and jockey wheels and fitted a new timing belt, the car purred. I gave Mr Dustan a call at his conference.
“That’s incredible Kev – how much did you say it was again?” Evidently he had expected a higher bill!

So, why was Mr Dustan so lucky? Well, he must have been only a few hours away from the belt snapping and a resulting bill of thousands. We got to it just in time – and I find it incredible that the other garages couldn’t find this problem. Still, Mr Dustan went away delighted, singing the praises of Kam as he drove home, several hundred miles north.

Now, next week, you’ll be in the very capable hands of Dr Raj as I am off to the Big Apple to see some friends of mine over there. I’m looking forward to taking in the sights, some shows and I’ll be stopping by Ground Zero to pay my respects. Maybe I’ll even come back with some new ideas for our workshops to mull over!

Until the next time,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column 08/10/02

2002-10-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

You’d think that we were running a competition, that’s how many phone calls we received where the first words were “I’ve seen it! I’ve seen it!”. Of course I am referring to the vast numbers of you who called in to report the Kam Recovery vehicle broken down on the side of the road! The reason that the vehicle had to be towed was really quite simple – and not the lack of any servicing on our part!

Basically, the boys had taken a call to go and recover a stricken vehicle. Having given the customer a definite ETA, they jumped in the van and set off, the fuel gauge hovering just above empty. Now, they had a choice – either fill up just down the road and be late, or fill up at the garage near the customer’s home. They chose the latter, but the fuel ran out just too soon. As it happens, our customer saw the funny side and actually offered his spare petrol canister for use in emergencies!

Anyway, this week’s story is about a vehicle more glamorous than our humble works van. A vehicle that stopped the workshop in its tracks. A vehicle whose redness could be seen a block away. No, it wasn’t a Ferrari (common by comparison!) – but a gorgeous Porsche 996 Turbo, worth somewhere on the sunny side of £100,000. It belonged to a friend of mine who had made it big on the London IT circuit. I keep telling him that I’m good with computers, but he doesn’t seem that interested… (I’m a wizard at turning them on, and am blinding with putting disks in the drives.)

The Porsche needed a new set of brake pads and disks, as well as two tyres. Naturally, we delved into our AP Lockheed stock and sourced the braking components at prices below everything else that he’d been quoted. AP Lockheed items are perfect for this sort of car, their experience comes from making F1 braking units. And of course, we installed two Stunner tyres with their anti-vandal and curbing warranties.

Chris (my friend – name changed to protect his innocence, but in a gleaming red 998 I think you’d notice him…) was delighted and actually commented on his test drive that the Stunners were better than the previous tyres that he had fitted!

However, three days later, Chris was on the phone.

“Kev, I’ve got a problem. All of my electrics are playing up and fuses are blowing every time I take the car out!”

This didn’t sound too healthy, especially not on a £100,000 car. “Bring it in,” I said. “We’ll get on to it straight away.”

Well, when the car arrived, the ABS light was on, the interior light didn’t work, the indicators were dead and the hazards would turn themselves on and off at will. Shaun checked the work that we had done, just in case we had dislodged a connection, but nothing was apparent. Over to Scott, our resident electrical specialist.

This Porsche also came with a massive in-car-entertainment system. By massive, I mean huge – easily £10,000 worth. Scott’s eyes were out on stalks when he saw it (so I had to be careful closing the driver’s door…).
“Kev, I can’t find anything in the main car system. However, I’ve got a hunch that all the problems come from the main ICE fuse.”

I nodded wisely. Give me an engine and I’ll get it making the toast for you while singing Yellow Submarine. Show me a wiring diagram and I pale. I left Scott to it, by far the most sensible option and before long, he had the wiring system stripped back to the basics.

“Kev, I’ve found it!” Scott pointed to an ugly mass of soldering. “This car is a fire hazard – I’ve never seen such appalling installation.” He prodded various bits of solder. “Because this has been wired – and fused – incorrectly, it’s shorting out the system and blowing every fuse in the area as well! No wonder the car is feeling poorly.”

So, Scott rewired a good proportion of the entertainment system, replaced the fuses and pressed the ‘On’ switch. Suddenly, the workshop was filled with the entire London Philharmonic Orchestra giving 1812 all they had got. It was incredible (and also very loud!). In fact, the vibrations from the rather large sub in the back dislodged a particularly tricky piece of gunk that Glynn had been trying to get out of a turbo housing for some time!

Obviously, we don’t get such exotic cars in every day, but they receive exactly the same attention as your oldest Austin Maxi. Well, almost – I’ve never seen an Austin Maxi stop the whole workshop and turn them into 12 year olds again…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

PS Derby are still on the up and up, of course. More on their progress soon!

Kam’s Column - 01/10/02

2002-10-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

After recent musings over the value of supporting the local cricketers rather than the footie team, I am delighted to report that Derby won again! So did our neighbours and archrivals Forest, but that is another story – and the best of British to them (although whether that’s weather or luck I’ll leave to your imaginations!). I’ve got a feeling that the recent round of losses for my beloved team was just a ruse to lull the opposition into a false sense of security. We’re on the up again!

As you know, here at Kam, we like to get every job done swiftly. We don’t like cars hanging around for any real length of time, because it means that you are inconvenienced. I know that you all appreciate our courtesy vehicles, but there truly is nothing like driving your own vehicle. Sometimes however, cars linger for longer…

Just such a case was the 1986 Mitsubishi Starion belonging to Mr Neil Hopkins – name changed to protect his innocence. What’s a Starion you may ask – well, it is a serious sporting machine and this version, the 2.0-litre EX, was the fastest production 2.0-litre car on the road between 1982 and 1987. The Starion needed every seal in the engine replacing as the previous owner, being 89 years of age, had only covered 1,000 miles a year for well over a decade (lack of use allows gaskets to wither). Although a major job, it is a relatively straight-forward one, so I provisionally gave it a time of three to four days.

“That quick Kev?” Neil asked.

“Well, yes. I’ve already given the suppliers a call and the parts should arrive at Heanor first thing in the morning. I won’t take a huge amount of time.” How wrong can you be? The car has only just left the workshop – one month later!

As I had been promised, the parts arrived down at our Heanor depot the next morning, allowing the boys to get straight to work. Within the hour, an additional two problems reared their ugly heads.

“Neil, I’m afraid your water pump needs replacing. And your turbo is worn quite badly.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
“Do what you have to, Kev,” was the reply. “I had suspected that the turbo was a little worn, so if you think that it needs replacing, go ahead and get it done.”

So it was back on the Internet, surfing to find the best deals from our list of preferred suppliers. You’d think that it would be a simple enough job to locate parts and usually it is. However, Starions are rare beasts and no one had the bits on the shelf. At least we had the gasket set.

“Err, Kev…” Scott’s disgruntled voice echoed across the workshop.

“Yes?” I turned around to see Scott pointing at a large puddle underneath the car. “What the…?”

“I don’t know! I fitted the gaskets properly, turned the engine over and all of the water was spat out of the head! I’ll have to take the lot off again…”
Once Scott had taken the head off and removed the gaskets, none of us could see where the problem lay. The answer only became apparent when I borrowed a toy microscope from one of my neighbours’ children. Looking at the gasket under the highest magnification, I could see a line of tiny perforations! That would explain the weakness – needless to say the suppliers received an irate phone call the next morning!

In the mean time, I had ordered a turbo reconditioning kit, which I was informed would take two days to deliver. Five days later, I opened the parcel to discover a kit not for a Starion at all, but rather for a Shogun! Another phone call and another delay… At least Neil was happy enough bumbling about in our courtesy car.

To cut a lengthening story short, it seemed that every time I ordered a part or a seal, something would be delivered wrong – someone even sent a timing belt with two extra teeth! After three and a half weeks, we finally had the car back together, with all of the right parts and correct seals! When he came back to collect the Starion, Neil’s first comment was how much ‘cleaner’ the exhaust sound was and how little it now smelt! Glancing to the rear of the car, and the four-inch tailpipe, I thought I could see what he meant. However, it would have been pointless asking him to explain as a far-away look had come into his eyes as he contemplated getting back behind the wheel of his giant red beast!

The moral of this week’s story is that jobs can sometimes take longer than we anticipate and, while we do use the best parts suppliers in the country, even they sometimes send the wrong parts!

Until next week, Heanor’s now reverberating to the sound of a rejuvenated Starion!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column 24/09/02

2002-09-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I’m sure that if you asked, the guys in the workshops would tell you that I haven’t been in the best of spirits this week because, as I am sure that you are all aware, Derby conceded another defeat. In fact, I recently saw the team’s manager while I was out shopping and was all prepared to tell him just what I thought when Mandy dragged me away to look at something else. It’s been a tough few weeks and my previous optimism is being replaced by a grim sense of foreboding. Still, there’s enough time yet to turn things around – isn’t there?

This week’s stories all revolve around a subject close to my heart (no, not my rib cage) – TOWing. I keep telling you all to check your Tyres, Oil and Water levels on a regular basis but some people just don’t listen and end up having to call for a tow (yes, I liked the play on words too!). The first case was a BMW 316I owned by Mr Wilcox (name changed to protect his innocence). Now, this wasn’t just any car – the BMW had previously belonged to his great-aunt and on the sad occasion of her passing, he had inherited it.

When the brought it into the workshop, the brake warning and service lights were lit on the dashboard.

“I’m sure that it is just an electrical problem, Kev,” he said. “The car drives perfectly and I haven’t done anything with it since you’ve got it for MOT now. If you’d be so kind as to carry out an oil and filter change as well I’d be grateful.”

The first problem with the car became apparent as I drove the car onto the MOT ramp – the brakes were so soft that the BMW nearly ended up as another wall-mounted trophy! Mr Wilcox had obviously become so used to them that he hadn’t noticed how nearly non-existent they were. At least I’m quick to grab the handbrake in times of crisis!

On stripping the brake system down, we found that, courtesy of a leaky rear cylinder, there was virtually no fluid left in the system! No wonder the BMW hadn’t liked the thought of stopping… Once we had replaced the cylinder and the shoes (no, not ours – the brake shoes had become contaminated by the leaking fluid) the brake warning lamp went out and all was well.

The next job was the oil/filter change. Or should I say, oil addition and filter change. The 316 needed well over 4-litres of oil to bring it up to an acceptable level. Quite how that engine had survived is a complete mystery to us all. This also cured the service warning lamp and needless to say, Mr Wilcox was delighted with the transformation when he collected his beloved “Betsy”.

Later the same day, Mrs Alman brought in her 2.8-litre diesel Isuzu Trooper – this time with four lights flashing! In order they were the oil warning light (cured by putting almost a full engine’s worth in), the brake warning light (the pads at the front were below the MOT minimum), the service light (fixed after… wait for it… a long overdue service) and finally, a timing belt change warning light. If only all cars would let you know when the timing belts needed changing – how simple would life be then?

It is a minor miracle that these two vehicles managed to survive until MOT time with the collection of potentially damaging and lethal faults, but they did. That isn’t to say that all cars will – but problems can be so easily avoided by checking your car over regularly. Keep an eye on the oil, water and tyres – if you don’t know what to look for then ask us and we’ll show you. Of course, items like brakes aren’t so easy to monitor as you do get used to their slowly worsening condition. But you should notice over time that your stopping distances are getting longer, and this is the time for action! Again, bring your car in to us and we’ll inspect the system for you.
Well, that’s it for another week. I’m off to find another long, difficult and fiddly task to do. It helps to think about other things than the current season tally…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 17/09/02

2002-09-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

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…

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 10/09/02

2002-09-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

Well, folks, Derby’s push to the top was going superbly in the first half last Saturday. A series of well-stitched moves put us one-up against Burnley. However, in the second stint, the game unravelled like the jumpers my great-aunt used to knit for me. Two-one was the final tag line. Still, chin up lads, there’s always this coming Saturday.

I was on the phone after the game, commiserating with a friend of mine who is actually in the UN Peacekeeping force. He is on red alert over the situation in Iraq – I don’t know about you, but I find the whole idea of war (again) slightly worrying. America tried it once before and failed dismally – what will make this attempt any different (other than Dubya’s psychotic defence secretary Condolezza Rice who wants to nuke anything that moves by all accounts)? In the words of Frankie Goes To Hollywood – War – huh – what is it good for?

War of a different kind was being fought in the Heanor workshop on Tuesday. Well, you’d have thought so, judging by the immense number of smoke bombs that seemed to be going off simultaneously. Actually, the culprit was a diesel Transit belonging to Paul Taylor (and that is his real name, as requested by the party himself), an old friend of mine and the decorator who is doing up my house. He’d been round at the weekend to assess the volume of work that needed doing, and I’d noticed that the Transit was blowing smoke like you and I blow up balloons.

I had suggested that he brings the vehicle in, but as it was on contract hire, he had to check with the hire company first. Since they had tried three other garages already, they decided to let Kam try to succeed where others had failed.

Since Paul was decorating my house, I figured that the easiest thing would be to have him bring the van to my place, swap his tools into the works van that I was going to lend him and I would bring his smoker back to the depot. As a plan, it was flawless – except that I had to pull over less than three miles into the trip since there was so much smoke that I couldn’t see the road in the rear view mirror (I was expecting the environmentalists to hijack me at any second as well!). I didn’t even have to tell the Kam Rescue Team where I was- Shaun simply followed his nose…

Once back at HQ, I set our diesel specialist Glynn on the job – after all, he does all the work on his boat’s diesel unit himself so is well versed in the art (I’ll say no more…). His first thought was that the fuel pump might be faulty, but after an inspection, it proved to be perfect. As Paul had said, the previous garages had replaced every filter and seal, so it couldn’t be that. The van had even received new injectors…

“There’s only one more thing that it could be, Kev,” he said. “It has to be the tappets. One of the valves must be jammed.”

I would have thought that the other garages would have already checked this, but I didn’t say anything.

A moment later, I happened to walk past and caught Glynn beaming away to himself. “Success?”

“Of course Kev! I was right, there is a loose nut on the rocker shaft which prevents the rocker from working and that jammed a valve open!”
This of course allowed oil to seep into the air intake and be burnt with the air/fuel mixture. Plus, it prevented cylinder three from firing properly – hence a lack of power that I’d noticed on my short drive.

Once Glynn had applied loctite to all of the nuts and reset the tappets, the engine was purring like a cat with milk and mice on tap. Paul was delighted of course – and even more so since we made no charge for him using our van. It’s important to any businessperson to stay mobile, and our works van allowed him to carry on with all of his daily jobs.

While we were on the job, the contract hire company also authorised us to change the timing belt. You know what I’m going to say next don’t you – so there is no need to use up more ink at the printers. Suffice to say, four broken timing belts came into the workshop – and three vehicles required open-heart surgery. It isn’t pretty (or cheap)…

Until next week, check make sure you’re properly belted up (and give us a ring if you aren’t sure!) …

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 03/09/02

2002-09-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It’s been a week of coincidences. First of all, the greatest team took Stoke City to the cleaner’s for a 2-0 victory. Then one of my tyres got two nails in it. And, to cap it all off, I found out that an old school friend had just given birth, unexpectedly, to twins. (No – she did know she was pregnant – it was the fact that it was twins that was so unexpected!) The number two was obviously the marker for the week, as the stories I’m about to outline will tell.

Sometimes, you can bring a car into a garage with one problem, only to be told that it has one or more additional faults. Now, in many cases, I wouldn’t blame you for being suspicious, but you should know that here at Kam, we don’t just make problems up for the joy of it. Anyway, on with the tale.

On Monday, my cousin Paul (name changed to protect my family’s innocence and honour) brought his recently acquired Rover 214Sli into the workshop for its MoT. He’d only had the car a couple of weeks and had already booked it in for a timing belt job at the end of next month – which was still apparently at least 9,000 miles before the job was due. It flew through the MoT and there wasn’t a problem until I tried to start it up to get it off the ramp.

It turned over once and then said ‘Click’. Nothing else happened. I tried the engine again and was rewarded with a further ‘Click’. Due to the volume of work on, I had to get the boys to push it off the ramp and then set Scott on the task. All of the obvious things – electrics, fuel system and ignition – all checked out perfectly. Then Scott had a brainwave and removed the timing belt cover. Yes, you’ve guessed it – broken! The chances of it happening in our workshop, just after the MoT must be a million to one, but these coincidences do happen.

Fortunately, a new belt put the car right again and no damage was done. I’m sure other garages get similar coincidences, and in Paul’s case, it was lucky that the belt broke here and not on the motorway!

Another regular customer came into us with one problem that multiplied itself within hours. Mr Singh (name changed to protect the innocent) came in with his Turbo Diesel Escort, who clutch had finally waved the white flag.
I shook my head – we’d warned him about this on the last two services.
“I know Kev – I’ve just been so busy! The car just won’t go over forty miles an hour now – it really does need doing!”

A quick test-drive confirmed this – the Ford refused to go above 40mph and it was revving away – but not very high. That is usually the symptom of two different problems, but the first thing to do was fit a brand new (not reconditioned) three piece Borg and Beck clutch. Andy – our clutch specialist – did the honours and then test-drove it.

“Kev, it still won’t go over 40mph!” He said on his return. “You took it out last time, take it out again and see for yourself.”

He was right, it really wouldn’t go over 40mph and it seemed that there was no backpressure from the exhaust. I gave Mr Singh a call.

“Well, Kev, I’ve only been pottering about since I bought the car. Do you think that could make a difference?”

“It could well do, Mr Singh,” I replied. “You’re more than welcome to come down and check the weak exhaust pressure for yourself before we do anymore work on it.” (After all, we’ve got nothing to hide.)

“No Kev, it’s OK. If you say it isn’t right, that’s good enough for me.”
The only thing I could think of that would produce such weak exhaust pressure would be either a hole (and we’d hear the exhaust blowing) or a blocked catalytic converter – yes, even diesels have them! So we took the cat off and heated it up – and you would not believe the amount of soot and crud that came tumbling out! Once the guys were happy that it was clear, we bolted the exhaust system back into place and the car turned from a 40mph wheezer into a 100mph rocket!

It isn’t very often that a car has two problems that only present as one, but it does happen. You know that we only do the work that is strictly necessary and if we say that another problem has appeared, I hope you know that we’ll keep you informed at all times.

One last thing before I sign off for this week – make sure that you check your oil and water properly! I discovered that my wife can do it without even opening the bonnet (the catch was disconnected…). Now that is clever… Or not as the case may be when your temperature gauge rockets and your oil pressure plummets…

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen.

Kams Column - 27/08/02

2002-08-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

I’ve had quite a few people tell me in the past few days that my columns aren’t as funny as they used to be. Well, I’m flattered that they were ever objects of merriment – I’m not a comedien despite what the boys in the workshops might tell you! I try to stick to what I’m good at, but it’s nice to think that you’re chuckling into your cornflakes at the Kam antics…

I know I usually make some passing reference to the week’s football, but as I said, I’m not a comedien and that really isn’t funny… The last week has been otherwise uneventful, apart from the story that I’m about to relate.

As you all know, Kam is known as the fixer of all things rattling, squeeking and buzzing – especially if they only happen at 35.34mph down a deserted backroad at night in second gear. Still, we aim to please, but this job was a little different to the usual rounds of automotive poltergeists. Mrs Dorothy Samson (name changed to protect the innocent) brought her rather fine six year old Toyota Corrola into the workshop first thing on Tuesday morning.
“I want to speak to the man from the paper,” she announced when she arrived at reception. For a second, Shaun had the temerity to look blank..

“You know, young man, the one who writes every week. Trev Allen.”
“Ahh” light dawned with Shaun. “You mean Kev.”

“Yes – that’s what I said. Trev.” She fixed Shaun with a beady stare (make a note of this fact, regular reader, because it holds the key to the story. The mistake with my name that is, not the beady stare…). I was duly summoned.

“There’s this noise, Trev” she gestured towards the car. “It’s a very loud crackling that starts everytime I turn the ignition on. And if I should happen to turn the wireless on too… Well Trev, I can bearly hear the girls on the way to bingo.”

“We’ll take a look at it for you,” I replied.

“Good Trev. I’ll pop back tomorrow afternoon and see how you’re doing. I understand that you’re good at fixing things.” Before I could reply, she was gone (her details were already logged with Shaun). True to form, I sent one of the boys out just after lunch to give the car a trial run.

“I ca’t hear anything, Trev… erm Kev” said Glynn on his return. “The exhaust might be blowing a touch, but other than that it is quiet as a night on my boat…”

I neglected to ask Glynn how quiet nights on his boat were, especially when I knew that he enjoyed mooring up in some of the busiest ports this side of the Suez Canal. Strangely, Elliot had exactly the same experience later on when he took it around the block. As did Shaun – and he took the car back to Leicester with him!

When Mrs Samson returned the next day, she walked through the car park with a look of horror on her face.

“Trev, have you left my car running?”

“No, Mrs Samson, why?”

“That noise – it’s worse than ever! What have you done to Kitty?”
Kitty???

“We can’t find anything wrong with it Mrs Samson. We’ve done every test we can think of and can’t hear anything.” Well, the look that crossed her face had to be seen to be believed. She turned to look out at the car and that is when I saw – or, more accurately, heard it. There was a slight whine coming from her left ear – which had a hearing aid in. But how to broach the subject?

“Mrs Samson,” I said, delicately. “I think I know what is wrong.” I tapped my left ear. “When did you have your battery replaced?”

Mrs Samson blushed to the roots of her blue rinse. “Oh Trev, I feel so silly!”
“That’s not a problem, the wiring in your car would have caused you to hear those noises as your battery wore down.”

Yes Trev, now that I think about it, my husband’s microwave pizza was making a very funny noise the other night…”

Fortunately, she did see the funny side and was quite happy once she had a new battery. Talking of funny, the AA have brought two people in this week with timing belt failures – and their owners were in a decidely bad humour. Some people evidently don’t read this column… Plus there has been more than one MoT done this week where the oil and water levels have been found to be only just high enough…

Until next week, don’t be scared of things that go crackle in the traffic – Kam’ll sort them out!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 20/08/02

2002-08-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I hold my hands up – I made a mistake last week (gasp). As many of you have reminded me, Derby didn’t win against Sheffield – the glorious victory was in fact against Reading! It was a mere moment of madness, brought on by the large influx of work that had landed in my lap (at least we know that plenty of people are reading the column!). So far this season, Derby have beaten Reading, lost to Gillingham and snatched victory from the jaws of the Grimsby team last week. As for Forest, I’ll update you in the next column!

On a more serious note, you can’t have missed the fact that police have now found the bodies of Holly and Jessica in Soham. As a parent myself, I can only imagine the grief that those girls’ families are experiencing. I know what I would like to do to the murderer –but I think my strong and controversial views would be seen as an incitement to riot! Terrible as this discovery is, at least the families now have an answer and can begin to grieve properly. My heart goes out to them.

On Monday, the team here finally solved a mystery that has been rumbling for some weeks. To begin, as they say, at the beginning - Mrs Pauline Walker (name changed to protect the innocent) brought her Vauxhall Tigra into the workshop about two weeks ago.

“Kev, do you remember changing the timing belt and water pump on my car?”
“I sure do Mrs Walker,” I replied. “What seems to be the problem with it?”
“Well, it’s losing water quite rapidly. I’m having to refill the water bottle several times each week. I have to confess, I don’t know much about cars, but I have been looking around for any drips or water splashes. Haven’t found any though.”

“Let us take a look for you.” Mrs Walker borrowed a courtesy car as I thought we’d need the Tigra in for a few hours.

I asked Andy to hook the car up to a pressuriser, which mimics the pressure of the engine while running. After four hours, there were no obvious signs of water loss. So, I whipped the timing belt and water pump covers off, just to check that there were no gremlins lurking down there. Everything was just as we had left it six months ago – in perfect working order. As we couldn’t see any problem – or evidence of one – we let Mrs Walker take the car away.

She returned a week later. “Kev, it’s still losing water.” Again, we took the car in and hooked it up to the pressuriser – and still nothing. Mrs Walker had asked us to give her Dad, an aircraft engineer, a call to let him know what we discovered.

“Well Kev, if you can’t find anything, then leave the car with us. I’ll take it out a few times and live with it for a few days, see what I can discover.”
On Monday morning, the unmistakable purr of the Tigra appeared at the end of the road. “Still losing water?”

Mrs Walker nodded. I looked over to her Dad, who just shrugged.
“Can you leave it with us for a few days this time? That way we can do even more tests on it.”

“No problem Kev, give me a call once you know some more.” After I’d waved Mrs Walker off in a courtesy car, I called Andy over.

“Andy, you’re the Vauxhall expert – the job’s yours!” The first thing Andy did was to fill the water bottle with antifreeze and reconnect the pressuriser. After an hour, there were a few small drips from under the car, where a water hose had perished.

“Is that it?”

“I don’t think so Kev,” he replied. “Have you noticed that each time I’ve moved it in and out of the workshop, there’s been a little smoke from the exhaust? I think that the head gasket is leaking.”

Sure enough, Andy was right. There was a slight leak between the water system and the cylinder head, which came off and was crack tested (it passed superbly) before being reskimmed. Once the heads were back on and a new timing belt fitted, I asked Shaun to take the car home for a few nights.

Three hundred miles of testing later, the car was still running absolutely perfectly. I’d bet my house that there won’t be any more leaking through those cylinder heads (just don’t tell Mandy I said that)!

Well, story time is over for another week – I’ve got three timing belt and pulley changes to carry out on a trio of Land Rover Discoveries belonging to a local farmer. Lovely fiddly jobs – just right for a Tuesday!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 13/08/02

2002-08-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

What a weekend! Derby victorious in the first home game of the season! Sheffield conquered, vanquished by our boys who will, I am certain, go further than ever before this season. The atmosphere in the staduim was electric, any more charged and I’m sure everyone’s hair would have been standing on end! What a stunning game!

Talking about electricity reminds me – if you’ve got an older car with electric windows, you might find that they are starting to judder. This can be caused by the grease starting to congeal, so bring your car into Kam before the motors seize! (This happened to a friend of mine last week, which is why I’m mentioning it now – he was not best pleased!)

This week has also seen the 25th anniversary of the death of the King. Uh huh, I’m talking about the one and only Elvis Aaron Presley. I’m rumoured to be somewhat of a fan, and I challenge anyone to find out a fact that I haven’t come across…

On the dowside to this week, the police are still searching for those two girls who have gone missing. As a parent myself, I can only imagine the anguish their parents must be experiencing. I, and all here in the workshops, fervently hope that the police find them, and soon.

Anyway, this week’s story concerns Mr Denson’s new shape BMW which, after only four years, had clocked up near intergalactic mileage.

“The problem Kev,” he said gravely, “is the gearbox. Once it gets warm, third gear howls – literally. I’ve tried two garages and two gearbox specialists and all have said that I’ll need a whole new gearbox. Would you take a look at it for me and give it your expert opinion?”

“No problem, Mr Denson,” I replied. “There’s a slot this afternoon with your name on it. Would you like a courtesy car to tide you over?”

“No thanks Kev – the wife’s been trying to get me into town to buy some new stuff for the house for weeks. She’s sitting in the car outside right now…”

Later that day, Shaun took the BMW out for a quick test drive.
“It seems fine,” he reported. “The gear shift is OK, and there isn’t any noise.”

I thought it best to give Mr Denson a call, and he reminded me that the gearbox needed to be realy warm before the noise would start. Here, I had two options. I could either send Shaun back out now – in workshop time – for a longer test run or get him to take the vehicle back home to Leicester tonight, bringing it back in the morning. Apart from the fact that I needed the extra hands in the workshop, it made better sense to have Shaun take the car home (we are all insured to drive every car that comes in) as we wouldn’t then have to charge for the time involved and so keep Mr Denson’s bill low.

“Kev,it’s Shaun.” I was just sitting down to a good Chow Mein when my mobile rang that evening. “That BMW, it sounds terrible!”

“Mmph” I replied through a mouthful of noodles.

“I’ll put it up on the ramp as soon as I get in,” continued Shaun. “It does literally howl like a hound-dog at you though!”

Sure enough, when I arrived at the workshop the next morning, I found Shaun there eager to start on the howling ‘box. Once it was up on the ramp, he drained all of the oil and found a rather large number of metal filings within it. Obviously, the lubrication level had got too low at some point causing immense gearwear. Usually this would signal the need for a new gearbox, but I had a cunning plan.

“Try this,” I suggested, passing Shaun a selection of Forte bottles containing gearbox treatment, oil conditioner and a seal conditioner. Once these were added to the regular high-grade oil, the noise ceased completely! It wasn’t a new ‘box job after all, the existing one needed a little TLC!

Mr Denson was delighted. “Do you realise that your bill is only about 10% of what I’ve been quoted before? That’s brilliant!” In fact, he was so pleased that he called us from Truro, where he had a business conference two days later!

It just shows that sometimes, a problem isn’t all that it can be made out to be. The Forte treatments that we use are the best on the market, and they produce a range suitable for every aspect of your car. So no matter what your needs, we’ve got something to do the job!

Until next week,

Dr Kev Allen. Uh huh.

Kam's Column - 06/08/02

2002-08-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

You all know that I am an avid sports fanatic, but I have a confession to make this week – I barely saw any of the Commonwealth Games! In fact, I had to get daily updates on Britain’s medal haul from Mandy when I finally arrived home at varying hours of night. No, I haven’t been up to no-good, but since the guys did such an excellent job on that Mini Cooper’s bodywork last week, our body shop has passed a tide of work our way! Just as well the heatwave is nearly over then…

It’s another Stunner Story this week, and the party in question was a ‘T’ plated Vauxhall Vectra belonging to a Mr Samuelson (name changed to protect the innocent!). Mr Samuelson was a rep for a furniture company and spent his working life on the road – which is how he had managed to clock up an amazing 30,000 miles on the Stunner tyres we fitted only 11 months ago! (Not every car will do this sort of mileage on a single set of Stunners of course as cars all wear tyres at different rates)

“Kev,” he said when he brought the car in, “I need a new set of Stunners” (at this the other customers in the reception raised their eyebrows, obviously thinking that Kam now did even more than just timing belts, welding, servicing, repairs and MoTs…). “Plus, the car keeps veering to the left. A garage in Wales reset the tracking, but it hasn’t made any difference…”

“Not a problem Mr Samuelson,” I replied. “Are your tyres wearing unevenly as well?”

At this he looked a bit blank.

“I haven’t thought to check. I keep an eye to the pressure, and so long as it looks like there is some tread left, I tend to leave it at that…”
I have to admit I was surprised, most high mileage drivers take daily inspections of their cars (which is how it should be for everyone in an ideal world).

“No problems” I said, handing him the keys to one of our Kam Courtesy Cars. “We’ll give you a call once we’ve fixed the problem.”
Just one look at the Vectra’s tyres confirmed the problem – the left hand front tyre had virtually no tread left, while the right was just about legal (1.6mm in fact so bang on the borderline!).

Once the car was high on the ramps and the wheels were off, the problem became clear – the track rod ends were totally and utterly seized up. To add insult to the injury, the tracking had never been realigned in Wales or anywhere else in the last year. It took Scott a good hour with degreasent, spanners and hammers before the rods were moving correctly. Once he aligned them properly and fitted the brand new Stunners, the Vectra was driving straight and true once more!

That was the last I thought of Stunners for a few days until, on Wednesday, someone came furtively up to the counter and asked for a full set.
“What size would you like?”

The gentleman’s eyes grew wider. “You mean I get to choose the size?”
“Well, yes… Since they are built for precision handling, especially in the wet, we’ve got to match them not only to your radius but also to the type of car you’re using. If you want low profile sports models, we can get those too.”
Had his eyes got any wider, I think even Botox couldn’t have saved his forehead from disappearing. “Erm, I…”

Suddenly the light dawned on me. “No Sir, I’m talking about tyres called Stunners!” Whoever named these particular tyres obviously was thinking about something else at the time – so no wonder I’d been getting strange looks in the street as word got round that Kam were supplying Stunners!
The gentleman in question blushed to the roots of his hair. “Yes, I knew that…” He hurriedly snatched up a leaflet and scarpered out of the reception, much to the amusement of the guys behind me.

“Good job you didn’t start going on about the traction-improving groove, the larger models for heavy duty work or the two-year no-nonsense guarantee.” Chimed in Shaun.

“Not to mention the fact that we need to see the Stunners every three months to keep the warranty up-to-date!” I think that was Raj, but I couldn’t quite tell above the noise of the MiG welding…

To set the record straight, Stunners are high quality tyres that share the same patterns as many of their more expensive brethren. Whether you drive a 1.0-litre runabout or a high powered sports car, the Italian manufacturer has a set of tyres for you. Each tyre is protected by a 2-year guarantee to guard against accidental damage, kerbing, slashing and vandalism. The first year has a no-quibble replacement policy and the second year features a 50% contribution to your next set of tyres if the originals are damaged.
Well, now that’s sorted, it’s time for more welding work… Sometimes, I wish we weren’t so good – then I remember why I joined up!

Until next week, check those tyres!

Dr Kev Allen

Kam’s Column - 30/07/02

2002-07-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

It seems that the British summer has finally arrived. Hot and sticky, with no wind blowing the worst of the heat away. As I’m sure you can imagine, it isn’t too much fun in the workshops right now – not only do we not get a tan, but the airflow around the buildings isn’t brilliant. Safe to say by the end of each day, everyone has lost about a stone in sweat alone… It’s a great way to diet! Glynn’s doing OK for himself at the moment – he’s on his boat for a fortnight, lucky devil!

It has been a busy period for our bodyshop, hence we had to bring one of their jobs into our workshop. Mr Smith (name changed to protect the innocent) had owned his gorgeous original Mini Cooper since new and had given it every conceivable luxury. However, as old cars are wont to do, it had rewarded his efforts by letting the demon tin-worm get its teeth into the shell and now both sills needed rewelding. You can imagine that I wasn’t the most popular person when I handed the long, hot and laborious job to Andy and Shaun. I thought that they were going to barricade me into the office (which would have prompted a major rescue operation a la the American miners when I didn’t show up for the special meal Mandy had planned!), but I got away lightly with a few dirty looks!

The actual fitting of the new sills wasn’t a difficult job in itself, but to do it properly, the guys had to take the old sills right out, prepare the bodywork and then line the new ones up perfectly before MiG welding them into place. Needless to say, once completed, Andy and Shaun were happy with the end result. The bodyshop were greatly impressed with our efforts, and hinted that they’d be putting more work our way… Just let the weather cool down a bit first!

The second job to roll through the door on Monday was a really fiddly one. My long-time friend Rob Palmer (no, not the singer!) had just bought a ‘T’ plated Ford Mondeo at auction, the only catch being that it had no service history and, once he drove it away from the auction house, Rob found that it wheezed its way to 50mph and would go no faster.

Having dispatched him in a courtesy vehicle, I let Scott loose on the Mondeo, which looked clean enough on the outside and under the bonnet. It had had new plugs and leads fitted, and someone had obviously given it a quick once over just prior to sale. The problem was that the fault could be almost anywhere in the engine, so Scott started with the easy stuff. The electrical system checked out OK, as did the fuel injection system.

The emissions test gave us a little more information. The Mondeo was running very lean. One issue with this particular model is that it requires a specialist synthetic oil, otherwise the valve lifters can stick. Sure enough, the wrong oil had been used before, so Scott flushed the system and put the correct grade in.

A quick road test revealed an improvement, but the Mondeo still wasn’t in the best of health, so this was another head scratcher. The answer came in the form of a cat, which strolled into the workshop, sat down just next to a puddle of oil and promptly coughed up a hair-ball.

“Of course!” Scott leapt up, punching the air. “The cat’s blocked, that has to be it!” After removing the catalytic converter, Scott took the Mondeo for a quick test drive. It sounded like a tank and scared most of the animals in the Midlands, but we’d found the problem! Since the cat had become blocked, it was causing high back pressure through the system and that was the root of the problems! Once a new unit was fitted, I gave Rob a ring.
“Never mind Ferrari Modena,” he said after he’d given his car a run, “this is more like Ferrari Mondeo! I’ve never known a car with so much punch!”

Spare a thought for your car in the coming days – while you can enjoy a chilled drink on the patio to help you cool down, your car can’t help itself from the fridge! Keep an eye on all of your coolant levels or give us a ring and we’ll do all the necessary for you! Overheated cars aren’t happy cars…

Until next week, keep cool!

Dr Kev Allen.

Kam’s Column - 19/07/02

2002-07-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!

I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to know that 94 out of the 96 boxes involved in our house move are now unpacked! I never realised quite how much stuff Mandy and I possessed – and how much of it neither of us have used in the last five years! Still, it all fits in neatly and at least we can sit down in comfort.

This week, one of our regular customers came back to us for the first time in a little while. No – he hadn’t defected to another garage (how could you even think that), he’d been in London working at Canary Wharf. Now back in Nottingham, Mr Kev Carrington (and this is his real name, by request) had a problem that two other garages had failed to fix.

“Kev,” said Kev (yes it did get confusing!), “I’ve got a problem. My car is holding off badly between 30 and 35mph, but ONLY in either 3rd or 4th gear. It’s been getting worse and no-one seems to know what to do with it!”

“No problem,” I replied. “Bring your car in and we’ll get it sorted for you.”
While Mr Carrington was bringing his car in, I took a minute to check back through our computer records. Before he left for London, we had changed his timing belt and given him a farewell service. Until that point, the ‘P’ plated Rover 220 turbo diesel had only needed to come in for the regular services.

“The first garage I took it to fitted a new fuel and air filter, and that made things a little better for about a week,” Mr Carrington explained, when he arrived. “So I tried a second garage. They fitted new fuel injectors and again, the problem was only a little better. The last set of people I explained this to thought I’d need a new fuel pump – but as I knew I was coming back here I decided to give it to the experts.”

“I’m certain we’ll sort it, if you take one of our courtesy vehicles I’ll give you a call in a few hours to let you know the progress.”

Even though we’d seen the car come in, I dispatched Shaun to give it a proper roadtest. He returned ashen faced.

“It’s terrible Kev, absolutely appalling. I have never seen anything like it at all…” So up went the bonnet and Shaun started ferreting about underneath. The injectors and filters had indeed been changed, however the fuel filter was of the wrong type for that car! In addition, the fuel pump was a little loose. Ten seconds with a spanner and that was tight as a nut. Time for another test drive.

I don’t even think Shaun got to the end of the road before he stopped and reversed gingerly back. “Still no good. I’ve checked the obvious things, Kev, that only leaves the awkward stuff!”

“Have you checked the timing belt out?” I know we had only replaced it two years before, but sometimes belts can stretch a little and cause the engine to misfire. Once the belt covers were off, it was obvious that the belt wasn’t the cause – it looked like new. A fine job we did, if I do say so myself!
While Shaun was revving the engine experimentally to see if anything was leaking, sucking air or wobbling, Glynn sauntered past with a steaming cup of tea.

“Shaun, if I tell you that I know what the problem is, you won’t hit me, will you?” Glynn knew that the worst thing possible after you’d spent ages on a problem was to have some smarty come up and fix it in a second!
“Go for it Glynn, this one’s got me at the moment.”

“Well, your fuel injector pump is loose. As the engine revs, it is moving ever so slightly, and that would be enough to throw the timing completely out!”
Glynn and Shaun swapped places and Shaun agreed with the diagnosis. The difficulty was that not only are fuel injector pumps relatively buried in the engine, but that one of the bracket bolts was sheared and two of the others were missing.

With a look of determination, Shaun set to, drilling and tapping out the sheared bolt before reaffixing the mounting, including Loctite to ensure that the bolts couldn’t work loose again.

Once everything was back together and the timing was reset, I called Mr Carrington, who was able to come down a few minutes later.
“Take it for a test drive,” urged Shaun. “I’d like to check that you can notice the difference…”

He was only gone ten minutes and reappeared on the forecourt with his wheels spinning. “Have you put a supercharger in there?” He laughed. “I’ve never known it have so much power!”

The fault on the car wasn’t caused by anyone, bolts can work loose over a period time. However, as to why the problem only presented itself between 30 and 35mph and solely in either 3rd or 4th gear is still a mystery. Doubtless the laws of physics have an answer, but I’ve got more cars to fix! What I do know however is that the problem won’t return again in a hurry!

Until next week, happy motoring!

Dr Kev Allen