Friday my mate in work said he had a noise on his front end on his seat altea xl, said it had been diagnosed as ball joint, not by me. So being helpful I ordered him a set and he collected them and came round after work tonight for me to fit for him. 5.30 ish. Thought would be an hours job, or thereabouts. 9pm finish. First ball joint seized in taper, no real clearance to hit with Mr lumphammer, got some heat on it and ball joint splitter modified as the stub is massive! Eventually popped, second one wasn't so bad, quite. But in taking the wheels off have discovered the cause of noise, brake pad wear sensor on the car (passenger side) was taped up and poked into the hub, chopped off of the pads just leaving an inch of wire, and then over to the drivers side, pads worn severely to the point of metal to metal, just Luckily had a set around to replace them, discs were OK for now. Will replace the missing sensor plug on the car when get one so it hopefully doesn't get to that point again, polo had its plug missing too when did the rebuild. Moral of the story, things take longer than estimated and don't always take the diagnosis as gospel.
I bet there was copious swearing! You are right, jobs always always take significantly longer than expected. I hope your mate was suitably appreciative.
Nice one and you know he'll be waking up to day with a massive weight off his shoulders thanks to you!
Tall and long hair, I kind of look like one of those air fed wavy men at a car sales place to be honest.
Sometimes I don’t even trust myself. Going wildly off topic here but this is a good one. On the 9th June I sent two wheels via Parcel2Go and DPD to Minilite Wheels for a refurb. They spent, until today, sitting mostly in the DPD depot at Birmingham. They arrived back with me this afternoon and the box is trashed. I spent much time on various online chats trying to find out what was going to no avail. You can’t even trust DPD who up until now we’re my go to delivery company According to the tracking the parcel is still in Birmingham.
Dpd and ups haven't done me well, they have thrown a parcel over the gate and was 3 foot inside and in plain view, even sent me a photo of it saying it was in a safe place, and had a 600 quid mattress left on doorstep without them even knocking. Let's hope they came back in an OK state.
Hi Phil, I can attest the whole courier thing has gone to pot on both signs of the Atlantic. I had ordered security cameras which even though the website was Canadian, were coming from the U.S. I tracked them all the way through the U.S. into Canada and to the Calgary depot. They were then "out for delivery" but apparently even though no one called to the house, I 'refused delivery' and back they went to the U.S. In fairness to the company I ordered them from, got on the case right away and told UPS to get them back pronto which they did but it was a ridiculous situation. My wife ordered something via Fedex, was at home all day, got a text message to say that no one could sign for the package and the dude was still in the van outside the house. Needless to say he got a chewing but was adamant he did ring the doorbell - we will be able to challenge that from now on as we have a combined video camera/doorbell which was part of the order where I allegedly refused delivery from UPS. Total joke.
Trusting someone else's diagnostics... The aircon on our Octy Scout had stopped working. Diagnosis compressor. Being a tight Yorkshire man I replaced with a second hand one (£50, new are hugely expensive). Back for a refill and it still wasn't working perhaps it is the sensor. But which one. At this stage I took it to Bellman's. Error code detected meaning the outside temp inaccurate/low hence aircon not coming on. FFS, that would have been sooo much cheaper/quicker/easier than changing the compressor. Yet to fix it but suspect a ropey connection since it did briefly work when I drove it back from Bellmans!
Regarding couriers, years ago I used paisley freight to pick up a MG1300 engine off a seller on ebay (it was the old Austin 1100/1300 not the mg metro, so it had twin SU carbs on it and an 11 stud head as per a mini Cooper S ) it was strapped to a pallet with wrapping round it but you could see the top of the engine still anyway, when my package arrived at my parents, it was a piece of agricultural equipment with my delivery label stuck on top of the original one, after phone calls and emails my engine finally turned up OK after several weeks, it had apparently "been found in the corner of the warehouse" that's a courier I never used again
