daughters car service. What are they going to find

[timwilky]

So what is the betting.

She took it into the local tyre/exhaust centre last week for a pair of tyres and at the time enquired after a service/mot. So it has been back in today.

They have already phoned her advising the front disks are scored and showing signs of heat. In the end she put them on to me.

Are they an MOT fail, I do not know as we haven't tested the brakes yet.

So I have checked my local factor and a pair are in stock £36.

So what is he going to come back with, a fail, an advisory or an estimate of how much.

She had problems with a main dealer a couple years ago who failed her discs (8 months after they fitted them) and then forced her to sign a disclaimer that she was removing a vehicle in a dangerous condition. It flew through at a different garage with no faults detected.

I hate so called car repairers who seem to see women drivers as an easy touch.

Although I do know of one tester who doing his own car, gave himself an advisory.

[_Stretchie_]

I've got 23p on the fact that they'll fail it and try to charge you £180 (based on THICKFIT charges) to change disks and pads.

[Fallout]

Find a good garage and stick with it! Much easier said than done. I've been unsure about every garage I've ever used with the exception of two. One was a Nissan Skyline specialist, and would rather be modifying cars and making their money that way than getting cash from 'false problems'. Car always flew through the MOT, sometimes with them giving me little bits of advice of what might need doing in the future, but never failing it. The other is a local garage where they are friendly and the mechanics actually come out and talk to you and give you suggestions on what you could do to solve the problems cheaply (i.e find second hand parts, or do a temporary bodge etc).

I took a car to Qwikfit once! bwahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaahhahahahaha . Might as well have given them my organs when I dropped the car off and asked them to sell them for me.

I remember he missus had her Clio MOT'd and it was summat daft like £25 with a free courtesy car as she worked nearby, i had imagined massive bill coming back, they wanted £180 to fix it themselves. What surprised me is the mechanic went to the time and effort of putting it on the ramps again and walking me through all the faults and how to fix them, even down to which bolt to remove to make taking the spring out easier etc. In the end it cost her less than £30 for a new rear spring and she got a free retest. Oh and another tenner to adust the headlight. well chuffed.

[NTECUK]

They removed the advisory from the options menu for disc scoring .
Its ok to add a manual advise but tbh discs can look very bad but perform fine.
If they fail it just ask for an appeal form and see if they squirm.

[Haircut]

I always take the Mrs car to a testing station that only does MOT's not services and not repairs.

I find they are more honest about the condition of the car as they have no vested interest in finding fault and they are still very good at pointing out things that we should look out for in the future (condition of discs tyres etc).

Now places like Halfords . . . . we have been there for a services and some of the stuff they brought up was down right dishonest.

"Disc brakes showing signs of heat" No $#@! sherlock. Thats how brakes work. They transfer kinetic energy (moveing) to Thermal energy (heat). The scoring is not a problem either, I had an advisory of rusty and pitted discs once. (to be fair it was a 15yr old golf and they said they had to put at least one advisory otherwise the inspectors would be round for them being too soft)

Agree its a PITA that some mechanics take women for a ride. Thats why I am on the insurance for a couple of my female friends, so I can take their car to the garage. Its worse for my friend with the new shape 3 series.

[NTECUK]

Its life tbh.
You get ripped off by allsorsts if your not confident.
Be it buying a lap top ,mobile ,house.plumbing etc.
Find a good one by recommendations .

[johnnyrod]

OOOOO brakes, you must pay immediately or you will explode. Morons. Seen this with my SO too. Also Toyota in S****horpe tried to tell me that, to reaplce a £20 diff input shaft oil seal it would cost £800 as the whole diff has to be stripped. Funny, Haynes says to disconnect the prop shaft, take off the flange and swap the seals. The stupider thing was, it was an ancient truck so no-one is going to pay it, if they quoted me half an hour's labour I might have taken it up.

[maviczap]

I learned the hard way, I paid for a new clutch & rear brake cylinder on my old Cav

I got a bit fed up when they wanted to change the brake pads at the next service, so I got an independent garage to change them. He showed me & there was loads of life left in them.

Lesson learnt, no more main dealer servicing.

Both the garages I take my car to now charge a fair price & warn me about stuff, but I still do my own oil changes.

Also I just had an incident with my car door needing some work by the body repair shop. Initially I went through the insurance company, but the guy advised me it would cost less than my insurance excess payment, so cheaper for me to pay for the work rather than get the insurance to pay for it. He could have made more money by getting my insurance to pay for the work, which would have then affected my NCB.