TORQUETALK
Sitting down to knock out a few words for this column and the realisation that it ’s December, or very nearly, and it ’s not long before the white bearded old man in the red suit is doing his annual rounds. I need to make up my list for him, but only after finishing this column as the editor is waiting.
I have been busy sorting out issues with the Discovery over the last few weeks. It all started when I noticed one of the front tyres was wearing out on one shoulder indicating a wheel alignment issue. Sure enough a check underneath and the track rod is rather bent and must have been like that for a while. While you can straighten them carefully in a press, I quickly swapped it for another one I had in the workshop.
A few weeks earlier a new tyre company set up in the area and did a pamphlet drop with a special of $ 39.00 on wheel alignments. This is a large business with 36 brightly coloured tyre outlets spread around the country and although I haven’t used them before, the location was convenient and after all how hard is it to do a wheel alignment these days? Armed with this pamphlet I headed in to make a booking to drop it off and I could then walk to the workshop.
I changed back to standard road tyres and had put tyres on the front that still had three mm but considered end of life so that I wasn’t ‘chopping’ out my good tyres further until the wheel alignment was corrected. On the morning I dropped it off, the manager went around the vehicle, mentioned that they would normally do a wheel balance but the tyres I had on the front were getting down and should be replaced and wanted to sell me new tyres. Also he asked how many vehicles I had and tried to sell me a wheel alignment package to include all my vehicles for two to three years. Just dropping off the vehicle took over 25 minutes out of my morning, but that was nothing as to what would follow.
In a lit tle over an hour I got a call advising they couldn’t do the wheel alignment as they couldn’t free up the track rod and ball joints as it was seized. So back I walked and picked up the vehicle. No sooner as I moved it out of the parking spot I noticed something wasn’t right, the steering wouldn’t return to centre and there was a significant noise, especially when turning left. Back to workshop and I was underneath again checking to see what the problem was. There shouldn’t have been any changes as they said they couldn’t undo anything. Clearly when driving something was changed but initially I couldn’t see anything and thought it might be a ball joint that had been jammed in their attempts to complete the job.
I removed the track rod and steering damper, which appeared to be faulty and wouldn’t compress properly. I freed up the track rod on the bench, decided that one ball joint was suspect and replaced that while I was at it. Looking over the steering damper I realised what the problem was; the steering damper housing was oval shaped with a distinctive indentation where they had put a bar of some sort between the track rod and damper in their effort to turn the track rod.
Their incompetence didn’t stop with damaging the steering damper, but the paperwork they provided of before and after the wheel alignment showed they had entered the wrong vehicle model details. Needless to say I wouldn’t be going back!
Instead I headed to my usual tyre shop, Herb Morgan Tyres in Onehunga and explained the saga to them as they expertly checked the wheel alignment. Sitting in the waiting room the alignment tech comes in and asks, ‘ did I set the wheel alignment myself by eye?’ No, just that when I changed the ball joint I counted the turns off and back on for the new one. He then informed me that I had managed to get the wheel alignment bang on and no adjustment was required.
Moral of the story, if it’s cheap and costing peanuts, then most likely monkeys are doing the work. In hindsight I am probably being unfair to monkeys as I am sure they wouldn’t have been so incompetent in the first place!
Given the amount I have spent on vehicle maintenance and repairs this past year and that I now should be replacing a couple of tyres, don’t expect too much from me in your Christmas stocking this year. Hopefully that whited bearded old man in the red suit will look after you this Christmas.
Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2019.