Should I go to Kwik Fit?

That's what I thought you would have to pay for a Cavileer brake cable. We had ours replaced about 6 months ago at a nothing special back street garage. Came to £85! I thought we were being ripped off then,, now I know that we were!

The correct way is to measure the thickness. All disks will have scoring after some miles, but this doesn't on its own effect the efficiency.

No guarantee they'll be any better.

In my limited use of KwikFit I've found them ok. In fact a better track record with me personally than my BMW main dealer.

I've also had the "you need new shocks sir" treatment at the Luton KackFit. Also showed me oil on shock. I declined their offer of overpriced noddy-make shocks, and 6 months later I replaced myself them with decent brand ones, to find nothing wrong with the old ones, no leaks, and no real ride improvement after replacement. Just a poor sales tactic....

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You have to laugh!

Me too, I had 3 shocks leaking oil. I only went in for two new front tyres. I told them it had gas filled shocks and they were taking the piss.

I demanded to see the manager and told him these tactics were resembling the old Charlie Browns chain where they came out and gave you a list of faults on a bog roll and then mentioned that the trading standards office is just round the corner. He apologised saying it was a new fitter and he would have words with him, he gave me £30 off the total for my tyres and a 10% off voucher for future visits which went in the bin.

I now only use my local National tyres centre, they just do the job you ask them to do, no hassle, well from my local one anyway.

Dave

National Tyres and Autocare have always been pretty good for me. When I had the Astra I spent around £400 on the brakes at Kwik-fit (to be fair they were in a pretty bad way, and probably did require most of what they did), and then sold the van on to a friend. Less than 2 years and 20,000 miles later, one of the rear cylinders failed and cost him £30 to get a new one fitted. Ok, so £30 is no massive problem, but it just goes to show that their products are shit and don't last. And their "lifetime guarantee" on pads and shoes is bollocks, as you only get it if you get everything they recommend replaced by them each and every time you go in. I also needed the tracking doing on the van, and took it into Kwik-fit in Guildford (Walnut Tree Close) who told me that track rod ends were seized on, and that I'd need to un-seize them myself and bring it back in. I then phoned up National, who said no problems, we'll see what we can do. Liberal application of heat saw them free up, and tracking sorted. It happened to need a new track rod end, which they did for about £16 fitted (only £6 to buy from partco around the corner but that's not too bad for labour, even though it is only a 5-minute job).

I'd go back to National. I definitely wouldn't go back to Kwik-fit. Except

*maybe* for tyres, as there's not much you can f*ck up there. Actually, there is. They could get the balancing all wrong and not put the valve in properly (like someone else mentioned).

Peter

-- "The truth is working in television is not very glamorous at all. I just go home on my own at night and sit alone and eat crisps."

Perhaps their reply when you pointed out their mistake would be equally as interesting?

I'm not sure I do trust all these common stories, though.

Light scoring is OK. They'll possibly also check to see if the disk is warped.

The other thing to check is the thickness. If it's below limit then they should be replaced..they could fracture otherwise.

I hope that I would have the presence of mind to carry that on and ask them to show me the spark plugs after they'd changed them. Stick around while they did it, of course, pointing and laughing.

"Um...yeah...we meant glow plugs mate".

Si

Perhaps you would just like to go ahead and start calling people liars?

But sure you meant that some of the stories may be apocryphal?

Disturbing thing is that the release oil is a common trick that have personally experienced and spoken to others who have had the same experience.Find it difficult to believe that all these less than honest fitters came up with idea all on their own.

Never amused when someone invents fault, corroded brake pipes, and misses major fault, leaking wheel cylinder.

This shows that whatever Kwik Fits training is in , it is not in proper vehicle maintenance, extracting the maximum amount of cash, from easily scared and naive punters, appears to be more the order of the day down at at least 2 Kwik Fits that I have personally experienced in Edinburgh.

Adam

Something along the lines of, "Oh, er, yer, is that your car mate? Thought yours was the Escort" (which was a bit of a shed and on the next set of ramps, and did appear to be a 1.6 petrol)

YMMV this is Usenet after all.

I went elsewhere. National seem to be reasonably competent, leastways the one in Harrogate that does my tyres now is.

So called 'gas filled shocks' still have oil in them. And can leak.

Without getting personal in any way, are you saying everyone always tells the actual truth here?

Indeed.

What do you mean by release oil? If the shock absorbers are said to be leaking oil, you could ask to be shown this. And it's an MOT failure (with pretty well all cars) so they'd be failing in their duty not to inform you if they noticed this.

Again, you could ask to be shown these things. And a leaking brake cylinder might well not show until the brake was stripped.

I personally have had more experience of them *not* charging for work done than the reverse. YMMV, of course.

The message from "Rebelrouser" contains these words:

Gas filled shocks still have oil in them, and can still leak.

But did your car have a smoke problem? If not, and the other one did, perhaps it *was* a genuine case of mistaken identity?

Although just how new plugs are going to help a smoky engine, I'm not sure.

Yeah, but will Kwik-Fit bother to look up the thickness for that particular car? and will their book be accurate?

When I've had new tyres put on the guy asked what pressure they should be because his book said it should be 32psi and he thought it seemed wrong. The correct pressures for my tyres are 30psi front, 35psi rear.

Personally I've never had any problems with (my limited encounters at) Kwik-Fit. And they've even done all my tyre repairs for free. I think, as others have said, there's good and bad out there...

The guy had walked out to my car, poked underneath, walked straight back in and that was all. I'm convinced he was trying it on.

Exactly.