Cars, and why Farnham Carriage Company suck(ed) the big one…

Another Update (November 20 2011):

It must be said that the responses to the blog that I originally wrote were mainly people having trouble with Max Emmerson-Fish. I don’t think anyone else had trouble with Glenbourne Motor Company apart from me. Both of these companies/people were operating under the umbrella of Farnham Carriage Company at the time, but have since moved on.

My last update (October 2011… below) was due to Martin Dawes from FCC contacting me. Within it I wrote that:

If Glenbournes fancy a bit of a shoulder pat for customer satisfaction, then they could buy our Fiesta back…

Well…. I received a call the other night from the owner, and he offered that very deal (or some other arrangement if we wanted). Now this does nod in Glenbournes favour, as even though this problem has gone on for a couple of years, they have not just brushed it under the table.

They have now followed it up to give me, the customer, the satisfaction I require. We have yet to discuss the finer points, but I want to get this blog updated to at least show they have stepped up to the mark, and to separate them from the Max Emmerson-Fish fiasco that a lot of my blog readers commented with.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I will go back to a company time and again if they offer good service. If they make a mistake, or something goes wrong, I won’t automatically walk away and never use them again IF they deal with the situation calmly, honestly and politely. If they ignore me, or blank me… or tell me to piss off…. then sure, I’ll not recommend them and I’ll spread the word around…. but if they do all they can to help, then that’ll gain my favour.

Faulty products happen. Sometimes they can’t be helped, sometimes wires cross, sometimes a company might just try to get away with something and get caught out…. but as long as they front up and DEAL WITH THE SITUATION, then I’d rather go to them, than go to someone with a better product and NO customer service.

Windows offer sod all customer service – or at least a customer service that is near impossible to deal with… yet the pricier Apple have customer service that is second to none. Honestly, they bend over backwards to delight the customer – even if it is the customers stupid ass mistake if something went wrong in the first place. They KNOW that any money lost in this type of event will come back in multiples if they give a good follow up service. I know this first hand – See HERE for details.

 

UPDATE (October 11 2011):

Okay – A strange thing happened tonight. I step out of the shower, throw some clothes on and the doorbell chimes.

The man on the doorstep is Martin Dawes of Farnham Carriage Company.

This is the company that in 2009 caused me a lot of problems (on going), and prompted me to write a blog entry. The blog entry gained momentum….

I was half expecting the visit at some point – and was in fact planning to call him up regarding this blog. I had a feeling that changes were in motion after receiving a response over the original write up (Aug 2009 – below). – THE RESPONSE

You see, this blog entry about his company has had so many hits that it ranked higher than the company itself.

I

This gave me a warm feeling inside – a victory for the man on the street…

…but as Martin Dawes of Farnham Carriage Company now explained from my doorstep, not only has Max Emmerson-Fish left the Farnham Carriage Company site, but so has Glenbourne Motors.

This means that Farnham Carriage Company has removed these tumours from site – and Farnham Carriage Company themselves would like to distance themselves from the past problems caused by the other people they shared the site with.

The thing is, I don’t want to remove this blog entry, and explained to Martin that, seeing as I have been getting more hits than Farnham Carriage Company itself, that as a gesture of good faith I would write this new introduction. After all, people searching for FCC will still land here, and from here they can click the link below to Farnham Carriage Company itself, happy in the knowledge that things have moved on, and that the people who caused my problems have been removed…..

As Martin said in a comment response in September this year:

Farnham Carriage Company would like to thank Max Emmerson Fish and Glenbournes for leaving the Farnham site. Please feel free to use this blog if you have any complaints regarding FCC and we will try our best to resolve any issues you may have, or telephone us on 01252 711900 anytime.

… oh yeah, they’ve gone all right…. but just in case you want to contact them… Just in case you have outstanding issues with them… Martin included their company details too. After all, free advertising cuts both ways.

So… Click link for the Farnham Carriage Company (now with 100% less Emmerson-Fish and Glenbournes):

Now with 100% less Emmerson-Fish and Purdy

If you have outstanding questions (etc, etc….) with either Glenbournes or Max Emmerson-Fish (Auriga), then I am sure that they’d be more than happy to hear from you at their new sites…….

Glenbourne Motor Company – Twelve London Road, Bagshot, Surrey, GU19 5HN

Glenbournes…. Just so you know

Max Emmerson-Fish can be found at Auriga Autos, Bowenhurst Golf Centre (apparently).

Oddly enough Auriga Autos only has a phone number, with no address. A car dealership who won’t say where they are? Am I the only one that thinks that is a bit odd…. It seems like someone is trying to stop their past catching up with them… but that’s probably just my strange way of thinking, and might not mean anything….

Address…. yeah…. erm….

If Glenbournes fancy a bit of a shoulder pat for customer satisfaction, then they could buy our Fiesta back for, lets say £995. It still drives poorly, the engine still misbehaves and we have to keep nursing it due to intermittent faults (which we are still trying to fix). Yes, that would be a turn around for the books – a phoenix from the ashes…. a fat chance of ever happening….

Hell…. whilst I’m dreaming… they could really get huge kudos from me if they gave me an old Discovery or Land Rover in exchange for the continuing nightmare of the purple Fiesta! As if….

That original blog:

Remember, Farnham Carriage Company are mentioned below in the original blog, but the group within FCC that caused all of the problems in the blog & the comments after the blog, have moved on (Glenbournes/Auriga). As far as I am aware, FCC are now a good company to deal with. Credit to Martin Dawes for coming over to see me to explain the recent history.

So… step back in time…

Cars, and why Farnham Carriage Company suck the big one…

Allegedly….

August 23rd, 2009

The Purple Fiesta died again…. due to a mistake that could only have been made by a mechanic used by a Farnham car dealership.

Lets start at the beginning…. Due to some unobservant idiot driving into our Citroen Berlingo and sending it to the car graveyard we were forced into buying a replacement car in a very limited time.

Death of a work horse

We found a Purple Ford Fiesta with low mileage and in superb condition at Farnham Carriage Company.

It was purchased with 3 months warranty and a service. I had looked over the car and found the handbrake a bit slack, and a spark plug hanging out. Not to worry, Farnham Carriage Company said it would be serviced before I picked it up.

I picked it up… got home… spark plug still loose… handbrake on end of adjustment.

Mechanic said spark plugs in Fiestas have a tendency to do that (can you smell that? can you?)

60 miles later it blew its guts out on the M3…. head gasket had blown…

They

Oh yeah, they’ll do that if the temp gauge doesn’t work – a known issue – Missed at service.

So they fix it – In the meantime I chuck money on top of the purchase price as I have to get a hire car for a week – which Farnham Carriage Company don’t pay for.

We get the car back and it doesn’t sound right. The sales ‘robot’ says I’m being over sensitive and just picking out faults. He says it sounds fine for a car of that age. I say it may sound fine for a car of that age, but it sounds bad compared to how it was when I brought it… 60 miles earlier.

Getting fed up of trying to get the smug numpty to even admit there may be a fault, I accepted to drive away and give it a go.

Less than 8 weeks pass and it blows its guts out again. It turns out that the mechanic hadn’t fixed a pipe back properly and it had worn through on a drive shaft. Water emptied everywhere. Car had to go back to the warranty garage at Farnham Carriage Company… and I had to get a hire car again…. yet more money!

The mechanic tries to use sticky tape to do a temporary repair…..it chucks water out again… funny that.

I tell him I’ll leave the car there until he gets the parts in.

We have to pay half of the bill under warranty conditions, even though it’s the fault of the repair THEY carried out last time. Bloody cowboy criminals. Half the £100 bill…. which doesn’t cover the £200 hire car…. Their £50 is no way half of the costs these repairs have cost me. Thieves, if you ask me.

Farnham Carriage Company yesterday?

They even tried to say the pipe might have been like that all along! That’s a bunch of arse – No way a rubber pipe would last 60,000 miles bouncing on a drive shaft! Maybe 1000… which is what I had done since the head gasket repair was carried out…. what a coincidence… Yeeee haw!!! COWBOY! You don’t need to be ‘engineeringly minded’ to realise this doesn’t add up.

So they fix it… ahem. Chris drives it home. The thing is filthy orange from all the rusty water that has sprayed all over it… and they didn’t even bother cleaning it. Chris then notices a big scratch where something has rubbed hard against the wing whilst at the garage.. bloody shoddy workmanship, and no care for the customer vehicles.

Where

She then pops the bonnet up and sees…. NO WATER in the car again! She calls the garage and they say that sometimes after a repair like that, the water needs time to settle and get the air out of the system! Once more the flaming cowboy alarm goes off! I have done car and aircraft maintenance, and I know that after topping up reservoirs and systems you BLEED them.

You don’t give an unfinished job to the customer and try to fob them off with some half arsed lame tale, because according to other technicians I know, and general engineering common sense, that’s exactly what it was – an excuse.

I did double check with a couple of well trusted auto technicians I know…. and they said that you would never return a car like that. One even said that he would bleed the system fully, but also tell the customer to check the level once they got home just in case there had been an air block. The Farnham guy mentioned nothing.

There you go – If you are looking for a car or mechanic, then stay clear of Farnham Carriage Company if this is anything to go by. Seriously.

I am honestly thinking of legal action, as the car fails to meet SSG act limitations.

LATEST NEWS: Farnham Carriage Company and the AA FAIL – It goes on – Still haunted by FCC

On the plus side, I was forced into getting a second car sooner than I had envisaged.

We always needed the two cars as I need one for work, and Chris needs one for here weekly tasks. I had a list of things to look for in a car, and number one was it had to have the VW TDi engine…. so that meant a VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat….

I had been looking for some time, but no cars matched my criteria – and if they did they were in Scotland or some other far flung location. The day the Fiesta blew its pipe I was desperate to find a car as I needed reliable transportation to do my 110 mile round trip to work each day.

My luck was in this day… Whilst waiting to pick up the hire car I carried out an Autotrader.co.uk search… and there was a ’96 Audi A4 only 7 miles away… in my price range…. with a service history that was so anal it was untrue! This car has been so well looked after! It appeared to be owned by a person who would replace a whole engine if an air filter needed changing! A quick test drive and a look through the records and I was off!

Mr Audi

The only problem was a mismatched alloy wheel – but £30 later and eBay got me 5 second hand A3 alloys with good (nearly new) Pirelli P6000 tyres… only 5 miles from my place of work! A little bit of luck was due our way!

The fan belt was on the way out though – but one chat to my auto technician friend, a Haynes manual later, and a trip to Camberley Autofactors and I was elbow deep in the engine bay.

Haynes said remove the front bumper and associated parts, and jack the car up, use axle stands, two people etc….. I managed with opening the bonnet and cranking a 15mm spanner to swap the belt over! (with a third hand from Chris to keep tension on as I fed the new belt in). This was thanks to advice from the technician I use – and can’t rate highly enough!

I took the new Audi (or Mr Audi, as Alex calls it) to T.J Services – who I trust. I wanted to get a service done to make sure it is all up together. He looked over the history and was taken back by the work the previous owner had carried out. Most of the expensive bits that haunt any car… all of them had been replaced already! I had spotted a gem of a car! Trevor (T.J) simply said he’d see me at the next MoT, as no work was needed yet. Hurrah for honest tradesmen!

Cars, and why Farnham Carriage Company suck(ed) the big one…

Another Update (November 20 2011):

It must be said that the responses to the blog that I originally wrote were mainly people having trouble with Max Emmerson-Fish. I don’t think anyone else had trouble with Glenbourne Motor Company apart from me. Both of these companies/people were operating under the umbrella of Farnham Carriage Company at the time, but have since moved on.

My last update (October 2011… below) was due to Martin Dawes from FCC contacting me. Within it I wrote that:

If Glenbournes fancy a bit of a shoulder pat for customer satisfaction, then they could buy our Fiesta back…

Well…. I received a call the other night from the owner, and he offered that very deal (or some other arrangement if we wanted). Now this does nod in Glenbournes favour, as even though this problem has gone on for a couple of years, they have not just brushed it under the table.

They have now followed it up to give me, the customer, the satisfaction I require. We have yet to discuss the finer points, but I want to get this blog updated to at least show they have stepped up to the mark, and to separate them from the Max Emmerson-Fish fiasco that a lot of my blog readers commented with.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I will go back to a company time and again if they offer good service. If they make a mistake, or something goes wrong, I won’t automatically walk away and never use them again IF they deal with the situation calmly, honestly and politely. If they ignore me, or blank me… or tell me to piss off…. then sure, I’ll not recommend them and I’ll spread the word around…. but if they do all they can to help, then that’ll gain my favour.

Faulty products happen. Sometimes they can’t be helped, sometimes wires cross, sometimes a company might just try to get away with something and get caught out…. but as long as they front up and DEAL WITH THE SITUATION, then I’d rather go to them, than go to someone with a better product and NO customer service.

Windows offer sod all customer service – or at least a customer service that is near impossible to deal with… yet the pricier Apple have customer service that is second to none. Honestly, they bend over backwards to delight the customer – even if it is the customers stupid ass mistake if something went wrong in the first place. They KNOW that any money lost in this type of event will come back in multiples if they give a good follow up service. I know this first hand – See HERE for details.

 

UPDATE (October 11 2011):

Okay – A strange thing happened tonight. I step out of the shower, throw some clothes on and the doorbell chimes.

The man on the doorstep is Martin Dawes of Farnham Carriage Company.

This is the company that in 2009 caused me a lot of problems (on going), and prompted me to write a blog entry. The blog entry gained momentum….

I was half expecting the visit at some point – and was in fact planning to call him up regarding this blog. I had a feeling that changes were in motion after receiving a response over the original write up (Aug 2009 – below). – THE RESPONSE

You see, this blog entry about his company has had so many hits that it ranked higher than the company itself.

I

This gave me a warm feeling inside – a victory for the man on the street…

…but as Martin Dawes of Farnham Carriage Company now explained from my doorstep, not only has Max Emmerson-Fish left the Farnham Carriage Company site, but so has Glenbourne Motors.

This means that Farnham Carriage Company has removed these tumours from site – and Farnham Carriage Company themselves would like to distance themselves from the past problems caused by the other people they shared the site with.

The thing is, I don’t want to remove this blog entry, and explained to Martin that, seeing as I have been getting more hits than Farnham Carriage Company itself, that as a gesture of good faith I would write this new introduction. After all, people searching for FCC will still land here, and from here they can click the link below to Farnham Carriage Company itself, happy in the knowledge that things have moved on, and that the people who caused my problems have been removed…..

As Martin said in a comment response in September this year:

Farnham Carriage Company would like to thank Max Emmerson Fish and Glenbournes for leaving the Farnham site. Please feel free to use this blog if you have any complaints regarding FCC and we will try our best to resolve any issues you may have, or telephone us on 01252 711900 anytime.

… oh yeah, they’ve gone all right…. but just in case you want to contact them… Just in case you have outstanding issues with them… Martin included their company details too. After all, free advertising cuts both ways.

So… Click link for the Farnham Carriage Company (now with 100% less Emmerson-Fish and Glenbournes):

Now with 100% less Emmerson-Fish and Purdy

If you have outstanding questions (etc, etc….) with either Glenbournes or Max Emmerson-Fish (Auriga), then I am sure that they’d be more than happy to hear from you at their new sites…….

Glenbourne Motor Company – Twelve London Road, Bagshot, Surrey, GU19 5HN

Glenbournes…. Just so you know

Max Emmerson-Fish can be found at Auriga Autos, Bowenhurst Golf Centre (apparently).

Oddly enough Auriga Autos only has a phone number, with no address. A car dealership who won’t say where they are? Am I the only one that thinks that is a bit odd…. It seems like someone is trying to stop their past catching up with them… but that’s probably just my strange way of thinking, and might not mean anything….

Address…. yeah…. erm….

If Glenbournes fancy a bit of a shoulder pat for customer satisfaction, then they could buy our Fiesta back for, lets say £995. It still drives poorly, the engine still misbehaves and we have to keep nursing it due to intermittent faults (which we are still trying to fix). Yes, that would be a turn around for the books – a phoenix from the ashes…. a fat chance of ever happening….

Hell…. whilst I’m dreaming… they could really get huge kudos from me if they gave me an old Discovery or Land Rover in exchange for the continuing nightmare of the purple Fiesta! As if….

That original blog:

Remember, Farnham Carriage Company are mentioned below in the original blog, but the group within FCC that caused all of the problems in the blog & the comments after the blog, have moved on (Glenbournes/Auriga). As far as I am aware, FCC are now a good company to deal with. Credit to Martin Dawes for coming over to see me to explain the recent history.

So… step back in time…

Cars, and why Farnham Carriage Company suck the big one…

Allegedly….

August 23rd, 2009

The Purple Fiesta died again…. due to a mistake that could only have been made by a mechanic used by a Farnham car dealership.

Lets start at the beginning…. Due to some unobservant idiot driving into our Citroen Berlingo and sending it to the car graveyard we were forced into buying a replacement car in a very limited time.

Death of a work horse

We found a Purple Ford Fiesta with low mileage and in superb condition at Farnham Carriage Company.

It was purchased with 3 months warranty and a service. I had looked over the car and found the handbrake a bit slack, and a spark plug hanging out. Not to worry, Farnham Carriage Company said it would be serviced before I picked it up.

I picked it up… got home… spark plug still loose… handbrake on end of adjustment.

Mechanic said spark plugs in Fiestas have a tendency to do that (can you smell that? can you?)

60 miles later it blew its guts out on the M3…. head gasket had blown…

They

Oh yeah, they’ll do that if the temp gauge doesn’t work – a known issue – Missed at service.

So they fix it – In the meantime I chuck money on top of the purchase price as I have to get a hire car for a week – which Farnham Carriage Company don’t pay for.

We get the car back and it doesn’t sound right. The sales ‘robot’ says I’m being over sensitive and just picking out faults. He says it sounds fine for a car of that age. I say it may sound fine for a car of that age, but it sounds bad compared to how it was when I brought it… 60 miles earlier.

Getting fed up of trying to get the smug numpty to even admit there may be a fault, I accepted to drive away and give it a go.

Less than 8 weeks pass and it blows its guts out again. It turns out that the mechanic hadn’t fixed a pipe back properly and it had worn through on a drive shaft. Water emptied everywhere. Car had to go back to the warranty garage at Farnham Carriage Company… and I had to get a hire car again…. yet more money!

The mechanic tries to use sticky tape to do a temporary repair…..it chucks water out again… funny that.

I tell him I’ll leave the car there until he gets the parts in.

We have to pay half of the bill under warranty conditions, even though it’s the fault of the repair THEY carried out last time. Bloody cowboy criminals. Half the £100 bill…. which doesn’t cover the £200 hire car…. Their £50 is no way half of the costs these repairs have cost me. Thieves, if you ask me.

Farnham Carriage Company yesterday?

They even tried to say the pipe might have been like that all along! That’s a bunch of arse – No way a rubber pipe would last 60,000 miles bouncing on a drive shaft! Maybe 1000… which is what I had done since the head gasket repair was carried out…. what a coincidence… Yeeee haw!!! COWBOY! You don’t need to be ‘engineeringly minded’ to realise this doesn’t add up.

So they fix it… ahem. Chris drives it home. The thing is filthy orange from all the rusty water that has sprayed all over it… and they didn’t even bother cleaning it. Chris then notices a big scratch where something has rubbed hard against the wing whilst at the garage.. bloody shoddy workmanship, and no care for the customer vehicles.

Where

She then pops the bonnet up and sees…. NO WATER in the car again! She calls the garage and they say that sometimes after a repair like that, the water needs time to settle and get the air out of the system! Once more the flaming cowboy alarm goes off! I have done car and aircraft maintenance, and I know that after topping up reservoirs and systems you BLEED them.

You don’t give an unfinished job to the customer and try to fob them off with some half arsed lame tale, because according to other technicians I know, and general engineering common sense, that’s exactly what it was – an excuse.

I did double check with a couple of well trusted auto technicians I know…. and they said that you would never return a car like that. One even said that he would bleed the system fully, but also tell the customer to check the level once they got home just in case there had been an air block. The Farnham guy mentioned nothing.

There you go – If you are looking for a car or mechanic, then stay clear of Farnham Carriage Company if this is anything to go by. Seriously.

I am honestly thinking of legal action, as the car fails to meet SSG act limitations.

LATEST NEWS: Farnham Carriage Company and the AA FAIL – It goes on – Still haunted by FCC

On the plus side, I was forced into getting a second car sooner than I had envisaged.

We always needed the two cars as I need one for work, and Chris needs one for here weekly tasks. I had a list of things to look for in a car, and number one was it had to have the VW TDi engine…. so that meant a VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat….

I had been looking for some time, but no cars matched my criteria – and if they did they were in Scotland or some other far flung location. The day the Fiesta blew its pipe I was desperate to find a car as I needed reliable transportation to do my 110 mile round trip to work each day.

My luck was in this day… Whilst waiting to pick up the hire car I carried out an Autotrader.co.uk search… and there was a ’96 Audi A4 only 7 miles away… in my price range…. with a service history that was so anal it was untrue! This car has been so well looked after! It appeared to be owned by a person who would replace a whole engine if an air filter needed changing! A quick test drive and a look through the records and I was off!

Mr Audi

The only problem was a mismatched alloy wheel – but £30 later and eBay got me 5 second hand A3 alloys with good (nearly new) Pirelli P6000 tyres… only 5 miles from my place of work! A little bit of luck was due our way!

The fan belt was on the way out though – but one chat to my auto technician friend, a Haynes manual later, and a trip to Camberley Autofactors and I was elbow deep in the engine bay.

Haynes said remove the front bumper and associated parts, and jack the car up, use axle stands, two people etc….. I managed with opening the bonnet and cranking a 15mm spanner to swap the belt over! (with a third hand from Chris to keep tension on as I fed the new belt in). This was thanks to advice from the technician I use – and can’t rate highly enough!

I took the new Audi (or Mr Audi, as Alex calls it) to T.J Services – who I trust. I wanted to get a service done to make sure it is all up together. He looked over the history and was taken back by the work the previous owner had carried out. Most of the expensive bits that haunt any car… all of them had been replaced already! I had spotted a gem of a car! Trevor (T.J) simply said he’d see me at the next MoT, as no work was needed yet. Hurrah for honest tradesmen!

Owdi A4

The Audi drives like a new car now… So quiet & smooth…

Two years ago my Audi had a front left wishbone changed (dangly bit that holds the wheel in place).

After that my ABS would vibrate at low speed & the brakes would snatch. The general consensus was a sensor was damaged during the work. As the actual stopping and control of the car was still fine (and passed the MOT), it became something I could live with. It was just a low speed irritation.

Over the next 18 months my auxiliary drive belt (fan belt) started squealing. The Audi had 130,000 miles on the clock so this was put down to shiny & worn pulleys. Some anti squeak spray (yes, really) helped this. Once more it was just a slight irritation and occasional squeal.

The other day the front right wheel bearing… or maybe brake disk… started vibrating. I purchased a replacement bearing & set out to fit it… before finding out I needed a big press tool. I decided to book the car into Regency garage in Cove. A failing wheel bearing is more than an irritation….

As the technician drove it to the ramp he noticed the ABS problem & squeal. His initial though was the same as mine – dislodged sensor & worn pulley wheels. Only once he opened the bonnet did his Polish tech notice why the belt was squealing. If you looked closely you could see the belt tensioner was bent. That could fail & take out the cam belt housing & wreck the engine. Well spotted!

Thing is, to fix that the front of the car has to come off, so as the car now had 160,000 miles on the clock, and 40,000 since the last cam belt change, I opted to get the lot done whilst the front was removed. I also had the water pump done at the same time, as they are prone to fail & doing it now would save time & money later.

This was expense I didn’t need, but the tech was happy enough for me to source my own spares to save additional mark up.

Whilst the car was up on the ramps the Polish guy noticed a bit of a problem with my rear brakes. As he walked past the car his eye caught a mess of seized pads & a wrecked disc. As I hyper-mile & hardly use brakes I had not noticed a problem. Once the wheel was removed I was shocked at the mess…. The Audi was scrap if left like this. Unsafe, undrive-able.

A new calliper was needed on one side, new pads & luckily the bearing carrying discs were repairable. Less customer orientated places would gave fitted new parts, but these guys figured it was worth a try overhauling them (as new parts to fix this mess would be upward of £200 a side….).

Luckily they managed to skim & fix the discs. This it turns out was also the cause of that ABS vibration…. which one unscrupulous garage wanted to charge me £1500 for a new ABS pump & fitting!

So an £80 job to fix a wheel bearing turned into £700 (including parts) to fix the rear brakes, cam belt, aux belt tensioner, water pump and wheel bearing. Regency did all they could to help me and to keep the cost down and did a bloody good job.

They talked over the work with me, showed me the problems, gave me the options. Not once did they try to pull a fast one or milk the job out. I heartily recommend them.

The Audi now feels a lot better… and is a lot quieter…. and the ABS doesn’t vibrate any more!

If you thought reading this tedious blog was painful, I’m the one who had to pay for all of this….

Stop that car!!!

Alex was watching the original “Italian Job” this morning and said how much he likes car chases (they have cars in, so I’m not shocked…). He asked me to find some more chases for him to watch, so I decided to blog the ones I think are top of the charts – or at least the ones that I think are top of the charts and available online to watch!

Some clips were unavailable, so I had to use what I could find – dodgy edits, condensed clips, altered music… but you get the idea.

A good chase is about the cars, the driving, the skills… and not the computer effects…. That’s why ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ and ‘Fast and the Furious’ don’t make the grade – they use CGI to augment the driving, and that takes me out of the moment.

That being said, the final scene in the first ‘Fast and the Furious’ is pretty good – and one of the best staged race/chases in the whole franchise.

A doff of my hat to the one good chase in the franchise…

And now, in no particular order…. the good stuff…

(Vetted by Alex..)

Dual (The movie IS the chase. Truck v Car)

The Italian Job (Original – not the weak 2003 version).

Quantum of Solace (Bond with no gadgets)

The Bourne Identity (Not a great recording of it though)

Ronin

The Blues Brothers – Nazi “Always loved you”chase.

Gone in 60 Seconds – (The original 1974. No need for CGI)

Bullit

The Blues Brothers – Condensed chase footage. Face it – the movie IS the car chase…

The French Connection

The Driver

And finally…. for a laugh…

The Blues Brothers chase in full… but with ‘Benny Hill’ effect…

What? You didn’t mention HERBIE?!

No I didn’t…. because it’s b******s. FACT.

Dung Beetle?

Finally finally…. because Alex likes it… (although it has software  speed help)

Me, my Audi and Goodwood circuit… (fitted with Macbook Turbo… )

Improving on perfect

BMW, Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes… they all make superb saloon cars. They are well made, refined, smooth and drive well.

So when these top marques then bring out a sport model (be it an AMG, S, M etc), then they improve on the already great basic saloon car model.

They improve the handling, they tighten up the feedback, driver involvement, road holding. They tweak the chassis, engine and suspension. They end up with the same saloon car… but different – better – each part honed to a higher level.

What they don’t do is stick on some gaudy graphics, a big exhaust pipe and a huge spoiler and then try to palm it off as a sports car…

Where is this leading then?

For the past 2 weeks I have had the pleasure of test driving an aluminium bodied (hand finished in the UK no less), tweaked and more responsive version of an engineering marvel that I have blogged about before.

Will King (King of Shaves) hasn’t sat on his backside and let the already great award winning Azor (and Azor S – Sensitive) blow away the competition, oh no, he’s been working on improving perfection.

Well, that’s a bit strong. Azor had it’s bad points for some users, and a few quirks that first time users weren’t ready for… so maybe not improving on perfection, but most definitely improving on the Azor, the best multiblade shaving hardware since the Gillette Mach 3.

The trouble some people had with the Azor is they expected it to be the same as any previous razor – but it isn’t. For one it is sharper and more responsive.

Like all things different you need to get used to it – so a couple of shaves really won’t give you the real benefit of the Azors great shave. Try it, stick with it for a month and then see how you feel. You wouldn’t expect to get into a new car and have everything be in just the right place straight away, as each driver adjusts and gets used to their new car – so you should adjust and get used to the Azor.

So anyway today, the official launch of the Azor M…. I wasn’t expecting a great improvement leap, as the first Azor was already a benchmark product.

The NEW King of Shaves AZOR M

For the two weeks prior to today’s launch I have been a tester using the Azor M and the new slimline blade cartridge. The M stands for metal – an aluminium body hand finished in the UK. The slimline cartridge is an improved version of the original, already incredible Azor blade.

The heft is good – this is down to the extra weight of the metal over the previous Azor models. It feels more controlled & has a certain quality feel about it  (Azor 1 & S have great quality & design, but to some people a light razor is seen as cheap & tatty). Azor M nicely addresses that & more.

The 3 colour look… it sounds a bit dicey, but when I saw it I was immediately impressed. No tarty chrome look like Gillette use. A subtle, almost Audi-ish brushed Aluminium that wasn’t pretending to be anything else, because it is what it is. Very stylish.

The shave… Okay, I was surprised at how different it was. Doing my head really showed the improvements. That weight made for more control & a smoother glide.

Better still – and this shocked me….the blade life is longer! I thought the first Azor blade was good, but this is still as blisteringly sharp now after two weeks of full head and beard shaves as when I first used it. This surely is the KoS standard now – Cheaper, longer lasting and far, far sharper blades.

Azor M - Perfection squared

The new cartridge design seems to be more than meets the eye. The trimmed & squared off lube section made for a more accurate trim around my goatee. Now there is a definitive squared end across the head of the cartridge that is parallel to the blades, which actually gave more confidence around the beard and that just worked better – I didn’t need to think about it so much as I knew exactly where I was shaving.

I managed to shave several areas around my ears that the previous cartridge wouldn’t touch due to the old larger cartridge – so a marked improvement there.

The reduced top end section also appeared to pull/tighten my skin slightly more than the Azor S (not in a bad way). It felt taut & controlled – referring back to my car analogy I’d say the Azor M is the sports saloon of the range – tweaked to give a firmer, more accurate & closer ride. It’s all a bit more “together”, which is amazing, seeing as the previous Azor danced over the competition without bothering to even take it’s shoes off!

The distinct but minimal packaging of the Azor

Even though Azor has one of the narrower side walls on the cartridge than other brands, I personally would like to see even thinner side walls with the blades as close to the edge as possible – but that’s a wish list thing & no complaint against any Azor.

I don’t know how many of the above improvements were intentional or just a by product of the new M design, but I can say that King of Shaves have improved on something that was near perfect anyway, and improved it more than I could imagine!

As for Gillette and the Fusion range…. remember the comment about sticking on a big spoiler (more blades) a big exhaust (shove a battery in it) and gaudy graphics (oranges, blues, greens, and chrome)……Well… there’s an old saying…

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig

Gillette were great in the Mach 3 days, in the same way the old 1980’s BMW M3 series was great… but times have moved on and things have improved.

Look at the modern designs we are seeing in cars, mobile phones, computers etc…. it’s all smooth, simple, no fuss, functional and thought out (much like the early days or race cars, aircraft etc… smooth and flowing).

Gone are the days of angular brash and loud designs that were definitely more show than go… It’s easy to see which of the two camps the Azor and the Mach 3 belong to.

Gillette Fusion yesterday

The King of Shaves press release for Azor M is HERE.

Save cash on fuel

EDITED – See end of text for latest figures!

Since getting my old Audi A4 (1996 Saloon) I have covered over 6000 miles in under 3 months.

I drive over 100 miles a day – and that works out as an average of 76.1 miles a day including my none driving days!

That also works out at £8.04 a day on average…. and 659.8 miles per fill up.

So… I have the perfect chance to try several ways to save fuel.

I didn’t want to do anything over the top. I wanted to make slight changes to see what would happen. The type of changes you could do quite easily without altering your driving style so much.

Firstly I did a few journeys at my normal style. I’m no racer – I keep up with the traffic and drive as the traffic around me drives – so pretty average.

The table below shows a few statistics on my trips. I purchased the car with 113816 miles on the clock – so that is why the first line shows 0mpg – I hadn’t got anything to judge it against.

By the 27/08/09 I had covered 638 miles filling up with 57.63 litres – I had covered those 638 miles at 50.33mpg – a good starting point, as when I chose the car I was looking for 50mpg or more at the very least.

The next entry and I only got 47.03mpg! I knew why though. I was a bit heavier on the throttle and harder on the brakes. I even went around a track which gave the impact of driving the car like a “boy racer” – although that was only for 3 miles…. ONLY 3 miles like an idiot racer and it hammered my economy.

The following fill up gave me 55.66mph – and that was by far gentler driving… but nothing major!

I still drove at the same speeds on the roads as I had done on the previous tests, but this time I didn’t floor the throttle to get to those speeds, and I didn’t use harsh braking to slow down.

I simply put enough throttle down to get the car moving, then as it gathered speed I’d change up a gear – but a little earlier than usual. The time it took to get up to my usual top speeds was a little slower, but it was there that most of the fuel savings took place.

When it came to driving I simply left a bigger gap between me and the car ahead. If I saw the cars ahead start to slow I would come off of the throttle straight away instead of catching up and having to brake.

This way I wasn’t wasting fuel by braking and accelerating all the time – I was just using the throttle to keep me gently at my cruising speed – which was the same cruising speed I had used from the beginning of the test.

As you can see – between harsh driving and gentle driving I had a change in mpg of 8.63 mpg… or 299 miles per tank – at the time that was £6.84 per tank saved. For me that is over £350 a year… which  covers MoT & Tax.

The thing is, the journey to and from work is not taking any longer. Just driving calmly, pre-empting what other cars were doing, having a feather weight foot rather than a lead one… it all added up.

I use the iPhone App – Road Trip to measure all of this. Since using it I have taken a greater interest in my economy – I even have all my expenses set up on it so I can see the true daily cost of my car once insurance, fuel, tax, MoT, services etc are taken into account. Currently it costs £12.21 a day – which is less than half the price of a return train ticket for my work!

Annoyingly the M3 then had months of road works – and the reduced speed took the car out of an economic cruise, so I lost the high mileage economy for a while. Still, I managed to keep the average up over 50mpg.

Yellow: Price per Litre / White: MPG / Blue: Average

I am now trying to hone my driving style to reduce the fuel cost even more. I mentioned that I would simply come off of the throttle if I was catching up with traffic. If I caught up too fast (nothing dangerous)  then I was using the brake. This isn’t the best way to save fuel…. You see modern cars that are aiming at giving better economy are now using engine braking to help save fuel. One way you can do this with older cars is to come off of the throttle, put the clutch in so the revs drop off, then slowly let the clutch out again. The speed of the car will then try to spin the engine revs back up again, and as this happens the energy used to spin the engine up is lost in speed. I am finding I can slow down quite smoothly this way – and in fact don’t need to use the brake unless I am coming to a dead stop, or if there is an event that requires faster stopping.

I also don’t sit on the clutch at traffic lights or on hills. I go into neutral and put the hand brake on. It doesn’t seem like much, but it all adds up. Correctly servicing the car, keeping the tyres to the correct pressure (an important safety check in its own right) – it’s all important in the fight to save fuel bills – and none of it is difficult to achieve.

It’s all about being calm – and it is true to a point, driving faster doesn’t get you there any quicker – but driving there with a bit more thought will save a lot of money.

UPDATE!

Even though I spent some time stuck in traffic due to a huge problem on the M27, the results from clutch braking are showing through. I have just returned my best MPG to date at 56.18mpg – giving my daily running cost (including all bills etc) of just over 15 pence!). If I carried on driving hard, that would go up to £1.15!!! That’s a heck of a difference.

One person pointed out that this may wear the clutch out more… BUT… I am using less brakes and less fuel – which more than makes up for any additional clutch wear. Also. the clutch is gently slipping within a small speed & rev range, so the wear is much less than you would get when changing gear. So clutch wear is a mute point here.

Budget Motoring doesn’t mean tiny cars…

Mr Audi (as Alex calls it), my ’96 Audi A4 has returned a fantastic set of figures for me.

Purchased for £1,700, this Audi A4 may be quite cheap and have a high mileage (114,000), but if you look carefully you can find a bargain. This one has a full service history and has been very well looked after.

Frugal Mr Audi

Even for an old, high mileage car it is in great condition and all the toys work. Better still the TDi diesel engine has been well maintained and is still very tight and smokeless.

Even better…. Mr Audi just returned 55mpg to me getting me 771.2 miles from a tank of fuel.

That’s a true 55mpg over a complete tank of fuel – not just the best “one off” trips.

I ran down to the red line and refilled with 63 litres (officially the tank holds 62.5 litres…. I was very close to running out of fuel on my way home!).

This is the true reading! I was still running at this stage (I had just got to the garage!)

Using the iPhone application “Road Trip” I have been tracking all my costs on the Audi to make sure everything is in order, and to ensure I capture anything that might look like it is about to go wrong. A reduction in fuel economy can mean a problem with the car, so that alone is worth keeping an eye on.

Since purchase....

On the above picture from “Road Trip” software, you can see the drop to 47.03mpg during the recent Goodwood circuit outing – which really wrecked my last economy figures!

I decided to pay a little more attention over my latest tank of fuel. I didn’t drive over-slowly,  In fact I kept up with most of the faster moving traffic at around 70mph. I drove sensibly by slow acceleration and looking a long way ahead to try and avoid too much braking. I slowed by taking my foot off of the throttle in advance, rather than braking later.

Just this gentle driving was enough to raise my previous best 630 miles from a tank up to this great 771.2 miles. Driving smoother really does make a huge difference – Give it a go.

ROAD TRIP data view

Happy lads from 3ish to 30ish

Okay, it started out as a trip to see the Goodwood Breakfast Club car meet & ended up with two very happy thirty somethings & a tired but happy toddler!

The cars at the event this month were mainly pre-1966, but with plenty of later day exotica to be seen.

I took Alex along with one of my oldest buddies, Eddie. We were going to see my father in law as well – although he was going to be pretty tied up with keeping the event moving smoothly from his pit side control room.

The event was superb, but the best was to come. Ian (my Father in Law) offered to take Alex out in the Aston again, but Alex wanted to go in my Audi. I offered Eddie the ride in the Aston in Alex’s place as it was only going to be down to the pits… or so I thought!

The Aston

Alex and I followed on in Mr Audi, my 1996 A4 TDi with 114,000 miles under the belt. As we drew up to the pits the Aston pulled away down onto the circuit, so needless to say I followed on.

It was a brisk pace, but not racing by a long shot. Just the right amount of go to be fun in the Aston… and as for me & Alex in the Audi,we were happy to be going around the famous circuit!

The Audi is so well poised I wouldn’t have minded putting my foot down – but this was a circuit tour drive around, and that was more than enough for me, Eddie & Alex.

Eddie didn’t have his camera with him in the Aston, but Ian said we could film another circuit in the Audi if we kept to 30mph.

The Audi

No problem…Take one semi-tech geek, a friend with a camera, a young wannabe race driver…. and a high mileage diesel Audi…

Oh yeah….a 1:32:00 lap once it had the “engine tuning” by Apple Mac….

Many thanks again to Alex’s Granddad, my Father in Law.