Vehicle servicing and MOTs are part of the daily workload for the team at Pugsley and Lewis as you can imagine, but even for such everyday activities as these, we take a very customer-centric approach to the whole process. Here's an example for you. A DB9 was recently booked in for a service. So we arranged for one of the team to take the train into london, collect the car from its garage in central London and drive it to our workshop in Beckenham (incidentally, this is not only very handy for the owner - it gives us an excellent opportunity to assess the car's driving performance pre-service). Once we'd serviced this particular vehicle and cleaned it we made the journey in reverse and delivered it back to one very happy customer.
We take a similar approach to MOTs - actually, we take it a step further. If we're taking care of the MOT for a customer, we attend while the testing is being carried out. Anything that requires the person carrying out the MOT to sit in the vehicle is done by Pugsley and Lewis's very own chaperone, Winston. This isn't only so he can be a clean pair of hands flipping switches and depressing pedals, Winston provides a lot of inside information about any quirks and idiosynchrasies a particular car might have which can be really helpful to the person undertaking the work.
This chaperone service for car owners is another important element of the excellent customer care we strive to provide. It's an approach that takes all the stress and friction out of the process from start to finish - and we know our customers really appreciate it.
We've been following the story of an olive green car that was taped and papered last time we wrote. All the paper is now off, the underseal we put on has been inspected and it's almost ready to go. During the time it spends with us while we carry out the final stages in its transformation, it's also allowing the new paint to cure nicely. We're delighted with the results and we know the owner will be too.
We have a beautiful light blue Oscar India car that we've featured previously that's now had its "long road test". We took it on the motorway and drove it in the town to put it through its paces - the return journey was made at night to test the lights and instrument lighting in the car. During the test we made sure the radio, aircon and so on was all working smoothly. We take a car up to a reasonable speed on these long drives to make sure the wheels are all balanced and there are no vibrations. It's now ready for a final last minute detail - from the leatherwork and interior surfaces to polishing it up ready for the customer to pick up and drive away.
We're looking into a couple of issues with an early DB7i6 that's on the ramp at the moment. It has a couple of problems that really can't be ignored - the alarm keeps going off and it's running very fast. It's currently doing 2000rpm at tickover when it should ideally being doing around 900rpm. It's a car that does drive quite nicely so once we've eliminated these issues the owner will be able to enjoy a more dependable and less noisy drive!
A car we're working on at the moment has driveshaft issues. One of the hubs had completely broken off - so Tim went to Germany to collect it! This involved putting a temporary (old style) hub on it order to drive it back so we could carry out a modern upgrade to both hubs.
This is actually an issue caused by metal fatigue, in fact, this happens to be the second car we've had in the last 9 months that's had issues with the hubs. Many cars from the 70s that are now considered classics are getting quite a lot of use which is great but it wouldn't be unusual for them to have done 70, 80 or even 90,000 miles - so they've lived quite a life! The work we do means they can get a new lease on life and continue to provide the driving pleasure they were made for.
Keeping up with the story of the Prince of Wales spec V8 Volante that had been damaged, well, we're now in the process of putting it back together and at the same time we're taking care of some of the things the owner has prioritised from the list of issues we prepared for him.
That's all for this instalment. We look forward to sharing more stories from the Workshop with you next time!
