Finally got my Tracer working after 18 months or so off the road with the help of our Mr Liddy.
When I took it for the MOT I noticed the bars weren’t straight compared to the forks, I thought that maybe they’d got pulled when the bike was on the trailer to the mechanic and back.
Rewind to last year when Flitwick Yamaha had my bike to try and get the old engine running and couldn’t.
At the same time they were supposed to deal with an official recall on the handlebar clamp where it bolts into the top yoke. Apparently there were cases of paint overspray on the bolt threads.
It seems while they were fixing that, they put one of the bar clamps on backwards and the other one was loose enough to spin by hand. That’ll be why the bars weren’t straight then.
Well there’s a thing, having worked in the motor trade I’ve seen all that and then some. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if you want it doing proper do it yourself.
It’s not just the motor trade. We had large work done in our flat a few years ago, by the so-called professionals. I could write a book about the problems. Only recently we had a small dripping leak below one of the Wash Hand Basins. On closer examination the flexi pipe couplings below the mixer tap were only hand-tight and weeping, so I set off around the flat checking the others and sure enough, they were all only hand done. God knows what horrors are closed up behind the walls.
That only works if you know what you’re doing in the first place… Or at least have an aptitude to pick it up or follow (sometimes) obscure instructions in manuals, be they Haynes or manufacturers’.
If you want it done right, find a mechanic you trust that you can use when you fuck it up… And then accept that even they can screw things up from time to time
Correct me if I’m wrong but if it’s OFFICIAL RECALL then it can only be done by an OFFICIALLY TRAINED Yamaha technician. Therefore finding someone I could trust doesn’t really work does it?
@Serrisan Having been brought up in and around the motor trade, father had a Honda franchise back in the day before Japanese dealer networks, I find you counter illogical. Horses for courses I guess, I’m lost on anything beyond 3.11
@me_groovy Almost correct. I’d let the dealer do what dealers do and you already know my take on that, THEN check what they’ve done and remedy their short comings.
@Michael748 They call that snagging in the trade, it’s not so much the tradesmen their income is dictated by how fast a job appears to be completed. Its a problem of the tendering process. The real culprit being the Project Manager and there’s no need for him to be cutting corners because his is a salaried position.
Agreed. Last time I had my brakes done at Chiswick Honda the rear brake lever fell off on the way home. The whole point of a dealer is they are supposed to be someone I trust, I know how to ride my bike, but am only slowly learning how to work on it. And to be honest I shouldn’t need to work on it (apart from oil chain) as that is why you pay professionals in the first place.
You don’t pay your accountant to do your taxes and then go home and redo them from scratch yourself.
A couple months ago I had a dealer service on my bike, which included sorting out my left fork seal as it was leaking. They charged me for it, but it is still leaking.
Unfortunately my dad has been quite ill so I have not been able to go back to them yet as most of my time the past two months has been spent riding to, from, or within Lincolnshire.
Now he is out of hospital I am missing the regular ride between the coast and Boston, I have become fond of the bit of A16 and A158 to Orby. Tractors and mud notwithstanding.
But with the bike about to hit 40k I think that was my last time using a dealer.
I never meant to imply it was acceptable to have to check a dealerships work, it’s just the way it is with dealerships. The proof of the pudding here is in your own experience and inline with trade practices since the dinosaurs pulled Fred’s charabang.
I’m sure many of us have had a horror story or two at the hands of main dealers, bodger mechanics and dodgy tradesmen.
If you aren’t a diyer or mechanically adept all you can do is give the bike a once over when you pick it up, check for obvious loose stuff and damage. I had the fork seals done at a main dealer and they didn’t volunteer the fact that they dinged the radiator removing the forks
(crushed an inch diameter of fins - no leak) I missed it at the time but it would have been hard to prove anyway, unless you do what hire car dealerships do and have a damage tick box the main dealer will sign off on - good luck with that.
Partner bought a 20 yr old converted flat (you know the kind of thing, 1930’s semi split into top and bottom flats) bodgers at work on that one - dodgy electrics and plumbing and the heating system flows backwards!
There is an electrician on YouTube that turns down jobs because he doesn’t want to work on anything that shoddy. Some of the work he shows when he’s doing estimates is beyond shoddy. A monkey with a pair of pliers could do a better job. Then he has to inform the client that the entire kitchen has to come out which never goes down well.
The poor quality of work and the lack of supervision is simply unbelievable. On my refurbishment the young lad doing the electrics asked me why the kitchen downlights came with transformers. I told him because they need transformers, the manufacturer wouldn’t have included them if not needed. He wouldn’t believe me.
You can imagine what happened when someone else from his company came to certify the installation. When the kitchen lights were switched on there was the most enormous bang. And yes, they had to replace them all; which was not a small sum. The young lad lost his job (it wasn’t the only stuff up he did).
Straight out of school, no supervision, this stuff is going to happen.
Not sure how many garages use apprentices but when I did a C&G course at Merton Tech they farmed us out towards the end of the course for a bit of work experience - we uncrated a bunch of FS1E’s and PDI’d them - hope someone checked afterwards - there were some very strange people on that course (and that was just the tutors!)
