Halfpenny

No, I'm not talking about cars, I'm talking about the consumables we use in our workshop.. Anyone notice recent big increases in the prices of lubricants and parts? I recently took delivery of some Aisin ATF and was staggered to see about 30%+ price increase from a few months ago. My supplier says its because its sourced from Belgium and shipping/import costs have rocketed. We also use Shell lubricants and they seem to have increased by 20%+.. I'm looking for cheaper alternatives... Another issue is parts. We sometimes ordered genuine BMW and Mercedes parts from a supplier in Germany (typically half the price of our local dealers) - usually 24 hour delivery with DPD. Now it takes three days and we are being hit with stupid additional charges - not just VAT but also a 'customs charge' and a 'collection charge' - effectively making it no longer worth doing.

The bearing preload represents the degree of crush of the crush sleeve. This in turn sets the axial position of the pinion and hence the pinion-crownwheel tooth mesh. It is this mesh which is crucial to a quiet diff. In the old days when we were rebuilding a diff we would install a new bearing and crush sleeve and then put engineer's blue on the pinion teeth. Tighten up the pinion nut and look at the blue to gauge the mesh contact pattern. What you are looking for is a elongated oval contact patch in the centre of the teeth. If the contact is too far toward the heel or toe of the tooth then the result is a noisy diff and driveline 'clonk' due to excessive backlash. The whining noise is at the tooth contact frequency and will vary depending on whether the teeth are contacting on the front or rear face (i.e. drive or overrun). Some diffs you could play tunes on with the throttle. A noisy diff on a luxury car just ruins it. Replacing a pinion oil seal with the diff in the car is tricky because you are undoing the pinion and then when you do it up again hoping its position has not changed. This means trying to get the nut in exactly the same position. Really you should have the diff off the car, replace the crush sleeve and check tooth mesh... AFAIK pinion oil leaks have been a problem on the XFs from start of production. In my opinion its down to poor quality control. JLR suffer from lack of development and poor quality control. Some aspects of their design are just bizarre - for example the use of alloy bolts on the Evoque steering assist unit - yes, they snap!

Known problem. The pinion oil seal is easy to replace with the diff in the car but difficult to get the job spot on. There is a crush sleeve which sets the pinion preload so the position of the pinion nut must be marked so that it is returned to EXACTLY the same spot. Failure to do this will result in wrong bearing preload and possible noisy diff. To do the job properly the diff should be removed from the car and pre-load set - its sensitive. JLR use a computer-controlled machine to set this dynamically at the factory (so I've been told). I'm thinking you're a member of the general public rather than motor trade? (apologies if I'm wrong). Personally not a fan of these cars for a bunch of reasons. If you want something nice for yourself to drive about in without headaches then don't buy a JLR product, maybe go for a Lexus? I'm pretty much through with JLR shite. I read the new French boss is going big on a drive to improve quality - when did we hear that before?

Looking at how we're doing and other dealers locally it seems there is still good demand for 1-4 year old with sensible miles SUV etc. Also we had an MX5 and a GT86 that both went very quickly. City/first cars struggling now - I gather driving tests are massively backlogged which is choking off new-driver demand in this segment. We are mostly £4k and up, so I've not really researched what's going on with cheaper cars.

I agree that cheap cars means small profits. However I disagree that 'cheap greedy bastards' buy them. Most of the 'greedy bastards' I meet are not driving small cars! We are located near a big hospital and two universities and so get a lot of student nurses etc bringing in city cars for service and repair. They are generally perfectly decent customers. We treat all of our customers with respect and don't denigrate them based on their choice of car - a lot of people simply need cheap and reliable basic transport, nothing wrong with that. For a student etc the 108/C1/Aygo are a very sensible choice - solid Toyota mechanicals, Denso electrics etc - bit heavy on brakes and clutches but true of any city car. Our most difficult customers are the ones who break the bank to get into something flash but then have no cash for service and repair. Good example last week is the Evoque dragged in with bolts snapped on the rack assistance unit - JLR shite. We quoted and got authorisation to repair. Repair completed and he 'doesn't have money to pay for it this week!'. Car is immobilised in the yard until he comes up with the money. These characters are always mouthy fat balding blokes - no idea what's wrong with the car but know its not going to cost much to fix. Sometimes its difficult to stay cool and professional.

Christ!......I hadn't realised the test situation was that desperate. Explains why this 108 has be sat here two months. In normal times the 108/C1/Aygo have been fast movers for us.

Found it on this site....its in this news item. Whether its accurate or not is another matter... https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/strongest-ever-may-on-record-for-used-car-sales-and-1-7m-lost-transactions-could-fuel-demand-for-rest-of-year/226341

Bloody hell! Our customers from the NHS and the two universities are mostly pretty decent. We try to retain them by giving a discount on service on production of a staff card. We get lots of recommends and also try to accommodate shift patterns (seems that some NHS staff work 12 hr shifts so they want to drop off early and pick up late, or vice versa). On the subject of stock turnover, I think I read recently it was down to an average of 22 days - which is historically low. That's an average of course and very much depends on the vehicle and your local market. Our experience at the moment is that 1-3 year SUV/crossovers moves quickly. And a very tidy red 2014 GT86 within 5 minutes of it going live. City/first cars seem to be languishing a bit right now. Got a 108 and a Citigo both at over 2 months, which is a bit of a puzzle. Many years ago in my early days in the trade I had an Alfasud Sprint Veloce - nice car but with vivid orange paint - it took root for about 18 months.... did sell eventually but probably a record for me.

Indeed... tell me about it! We had one (motorbike copper) come to look at a Audi A4. Agreed to buy it. Comes back three days later to collect it. No drama at this point. Next day he turns up on his police bike claiming that when he first looked at the car and agreed to buy it, it had new Continentals all round. But when he checked after getting home they were 'old' tyres - accused us of swapping them! Obvious BS but he argued very aggressively for about an hour. Another one last year bought a 2012 3-series for his wife. Came back after six months because it had developed the classic F30 steering knock. I offered to repair it FoC there and then - lift home for him, valet and deliver the car back. He was very aggressive - wanting full refund on the vehicle saying he and his mates would be "looking out for us" etc etc. I did think about making a formal complaint but decided against in the end. Yet when we had our security gates broke open, attempted theft of a Focus ST - all on HD CCTV with a reg. no. captured, we couldn't even get any of them to look at the video. Bloody shambles! The local area has turned into a cesspit in the last few years - like downtown Mogadishu - there is routine open drug dealing within 500 yds of the police station. Zero enforcement...

A lot depends on location. For example we are close to a town centre. Major hospital 15 mins walk away. One university 15 mins walk. Second university about 20 mins walk. Big shopping mall 15 mins walk. We also have a police station not far away (mind you, after a number of bad experiences I don't encourage their custom!). We offer sales and service/MoT. Huge number of repeat customers on workshop side. Large proportion of walk-ups on sales. Can sneak into uni's and hospital with a handful of postcard-sized ads and pin them to the staff noticeboards - its free and surprisingly effective. Have a website. Autotrader OK, but IME Facebook is a magnet for illiterates and Borats. If you are out in the sticks then you're going to be much more reliant on online channels.

If you intend to do a proper refurb (i.e. not just a quick blow-over that lasts only 3 months) then the investment required wouldn't be worth it for the typical small dealer (unless you're thinking of expanding and offering the service to external customers). There's quite a bit of work (and a few different techniques) involved in refurbing alloys. Some years back when I had my previous business we used to have a bodyshop with ins.co. approvals etc but we closed it. With all the H&S and environmental requirements it was more trouble than it was worth. Lots of regs around paints and solvents etc.

Had high hopes for GB News but its more like a student TV station. Most of the time the 'reporters' don't know what to say. And the report about paying fruit pickers £20/hour was pure bollox. Some Eastern Euripeans have gone home but not that many...

We recently had in a Mitsi with full main dealer service history including all receipts. I drove it and noticed not much air was coming out of the vents. Pulled out the pollen filter and it was in a disgusting state. It had a date stamp several months before registration. Obviously the factory item. Why cheat the customer on something so easy to replace?

This really is a strange thread! A 16-17 year old car and all that MoT is telling us is that its rusty. No surprise really. Prob wouldn't cost more than a couple hundred maximum to get a ticket on it. If you're routinely trading in older cars (which presumably you are, since you appear to have sourced it from another trader) then surely this is all in a day's work?

I saw this and I was a bit puzzled because it appears to be a rather small skate park located quite some distance from his house and on the opposite side of the A4067.

As a former MoT inspector I can assure that's not a 'massive list'! In fact if the car is an average mass-market traffic-jammer its not too bad at all for 137k and 16-17 years old. Its basically nearing end-of-life anyway, but some of our East European comrades would take it off your hands and soon have it welded up. You are outside the time limitation for reporting it.

We've recovered several runaways - never a pretty sight.

This is a common problem but can have a couple of different causes. In your case I suspect a bad remap causing multiple failed DPF regenerations and diesel going into sump. The car should not be driven - as a minimum you will get accelerated cam wear - worse is a runaway or a rod through the block. I would suggest going back to the remapper and having your factory file loaded back.

Seems insane to me... I spend a lot of time reading the financial press, investor reports and analysis etc etc. What is clear is that at the moment there is a great deal of money floating around looking for a home. Excessive money supply. A lot of poor investment decisions are being made and it will all end it tears again. Today's US Treasury 10-year yield is 1.63%, a year ago it was 0.68% - that indicates an expectation of significant inflation on the way and increasing bank base rates.... things could get ugly.

In-depth data on the economic impact of Covid 19 are available on the UK Govt's Office of National Statistics website. UK GDP is showing the biggest contraction in the G7 by some margin - 8.6%. In Europe, Spain is the only large economy fairing worse. The money handed out by the government has been astronomical and ill-considered. Much of it has been misappropriated. £37bn to Serco just for the failed Test and Trace (£528 for every man, woman and child in the country)! Rishi didn't just find a magic money tree - he found a whole forest of them. Public debt has exploded and stands at around £28k for every man, woman and child in the country. If interest rates rise 1% it will cost the government around £30bn extra a year. A massive increase in money supply, coupled with the ill-judged Stamp Duty holiday has fuelled a classic asset price bubble - be interesting to see how that plays out. Throwing that amount of money into the economy is going to fuel inflation in a big way. In the UK we funnel increasingly ridiculous sums of money into non-productive assets such as houses, rather than productive plant, machinery and technology which could help raise GDP. My daughter is a medic in the NHS and I remember I wrote on this forum right at the start of pandemic how she'd told me they were already short of the most basic materials such as swabs even before the first Covid patients showed up. The NHS is not fit for purpose. Its a post-WWII dinosaur that was born into a world that no longer exists. It has practically ground to a halt during Covid and the UK's death rate and long term Covid outcomes are amongst the worst in the world (along with a dismal record on cancer survival etc etc). Unfortunately most British people have been indoctrinated to believe in the NHS as some form of religion and so criticism or genuine reform seems to be impossible. Many, many countries have much better public health systems - a US-style system is not the only alternative. In some ways I don't care. I've done pretty well out of the motor trade over the years and semi-retired a while back. I offshored most of my money into USD accounts and bought a couple of properties overseas. I've had some prostate problems recently and I can afford private treatment so have an alternative to the NHS - its virtually impossible to get a consultation on the NHS at the moment anyway 'due to Covid' (although, amazingly, I see the same 'NHS' consultant almost immediately when I go to the Spire hospital and give him £200!). I still have a 50% interest in a sales/service business but I don't rely on the income from it. Its been something to keep me busy over the last year. Once international travel opens up a bit more I'll be off overseas again. The gloomy weather and general aggro and difficulty of life in the UK really gets me down.

Unfortunately its a fact that the UK economy and UK business has been hit much harder than nearly any other comparable developed country. We also suffered a higher death rate. One thing that staggers me is that £37 *billion* was given to Serco to run a 'Test and Trace' system. Basically a computer system and some call centres - that didn't work. That's absolutely insane! BILLIONS must have been siphoned off. I am also very very nervous about the current direction of the economy. A hugely overstimulated property market and Rishi still pumping money into the economy. It feels like a bubble. Yes, some money has been chucked at us car dealers (and others) but at what future cost?

Your customer demographic is definitely a bit different to mine...

I was under the impression things generally are cooling down? They are for us.

A leftover roll of wallpaper from his decorating should more than cover it...

1. First remove ignition key and put somewhere safe away from the vehicle. 2. Disconnect the 12V battery - this will cause the BSM (Battery Smart Module) to isolate the HV battery outputs. 3. Put on safety gloves and remove the orange service interlock on the HV battery. 4. Wait 10 minutes. 5. Remove the inverter cover and use a digital voltmeter to confirm 0V on the HV leads. 6. We also disconnect the airbag and ABS ECU's if welding..