November 2019

I love a good bang, don’t you? 5 November is one of my favourite nights of the year. Remember, remember, the fifth of November and all that. There’s no plotting at our garage, but plenty of fireworks, bonfires, and a surge in community spirit. If you know where to go you even get torch-lit parades with masses of people in many costumes. The explosions and the colours are really something, though aren’t they? It makes up for the nights drawing in, and really brings people together. Not all bangs are so good though. What I’m less keen on is the bang you get when a car backfires. It’s not that I can’t deal with the problem. I know what the likely causes might be, and how to address this. Unlike a lot of problems we see now, this issue goes back a long way, like me. That means for once I am well-placed to deal with it, without the need for extensive re-training. No, the problem of backfiring cars is not the problem itself, or the solution, the problem is just the noise when I don’t know we have one in! Like most successful business owners (hey, less of the laughter at the back!) I am increasingly required to delegate responsibility and delineate roles. What all these very responsible-sounding words mean is that some of the time, I don’t know everything that is going on. If someone books a car in and we have a slot I am not immediately informed, I won’t know if a Vauxhall Corsa that’s got more in common with a firecracker than a Pontiac Firebird is about to pop its way into Parkit Motors. When that happened last week, and the damn thing went “bang” I was so surprised I dropped my tea. Luckily this happened years ago so we got those kinds of camping mugs that are made of metal. I lost the contents but still have my favourite cup for a cuppa. It’s fair to say that our noisy visitor had my attention. I decided to jump in and take a look. It turned out to be pretty easy to identify the problem – cracked exhaust. I spotted it before I got into doing a full examination. Did a pretty thorough look-through anyway, spotted a couple of other issues, advisory at this point so we had another happy customer. We fixed the backfire, and alerted him to things that will need to be addressed later. You know, after that Corsa, I’m just not in the mood for fireworks this year. I think I will stay in with my technical manuals. Nice and quiet, just as long as there is nothing in there about backfires. Oh I hate those horrible bangs! MORE BANGS FOR YOUR BUCK 66 AFTERMARKET NOVEMBER 2019 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net