Post by Joepublic on Jul 2, 2023 15:43:21 GMT 1
Saturday was hot.... i had a great pair of lads drive up from Hasting with a Triumph with a Norton crank that needed quite a bit of TLC and another guy with a 350 triumph head and barrel with very bad smoking issues. I know its difficult times at the moment..... with everything rising in costs, materials and electric, fuel costs and labour driving inflation..... our costs are also rising. One criticism people have of me is turnaround time ... well most skilled trades are incredibly busy.... we are by no means a exception.... finding people who can do this type of work is difficult and finding willing fully skilled people local and affordable is dam near impossible...
My shop at the moment is rammed full of work.... all of which is time consuming and requires a lot of patience,machine tools,measuring equipment and skill to achieve the best results, which we do.
This 350 triumph was consuming vast amounts of oil.... the exhaust ports were drenched in oil....the customer was adamant that it had only done this after cleaning the cylinder head. He was transfixed that the problem was obvious.... but with no real wear on the cylinder,no broken rings or really badly worn guides..... then as I explained it was a combination.... primary cause was a worn main bearing causing it to have too much oil in the sump...
With glazed bores, guides loose enough for gas to get up and into the rocker boxes... a exhaust full of oil... all added up to higher crankcase pressure forcing oil up past the shiny bores with rings that had low wall pressure... bearing in mind I had explained this on the phone and he had agreed to bring the bottom end. .. which he hadn't done so... he proceeded to discount and argue all these points. I even showed him another bottom end which had just been done by another engineering firm which had exactly the same symptoms as his..after less than 1k miles. I could lift the crank nearly 10 thou... which allowed too much oil to spill into the crankcase, causing it to smoke.....
But when he asked how long, I said you see all this other work.... that has to be done before yours... we could recon the bottom end ,checking for crank and conrod alignment, new mains bush etc... hone the bores ( he had genuine old stock std pistons/rings etc.... very nice too) and a quick overhaul on the head.... but I hadn't seen the bottom end so I put a estimate of 3 months on it....
To which he replied.....that's a very long time.....I don't want to go to all that bother.
I answered but I will guarantee that the bike will be transformed and this will be a very long term repair.
My patience was wearing thin.. it was a hot day and I could have done other stuff... but I kept smiling.
Then he said " in the three months you may go bankrupt or loose it and I never get my stuff back"
I said "did it look like I was short of work? And likely to go bankrupt after 35 years "
And if all my customers were like him I would be bankrupt, I reminded him of the good advise I gave him and cleared his job card on the computer. .. picked up his parts and showed him the door.
He then said " I think I've waisted your time " to which I replied " yes you have"
So the moral of this story is.....if you want a job done see a busy man.....don't waste his time because if you ain't busy you are not very good at your job!
