50 years of fixing cars by the bay
HOLDING down a career spanning five decades is no mean feat, and working out of the same premises for all of that time is equally as impressive.
Mechanic and Lyall Bay Service Station owner Bob Hendry even jokes that the daily journey to work is so familiar he could get there with his eyes shut.
‘‘I’m on automatic pilot,’’ he grins, ‘‘and the great thing about the south coast is that you can’t beat it on a good day and even on a bad day it can be spectacular.’’
Bob’s 156 square metre garage is ideally placed across the road from Lyall Bay beach, a ‘‘desirable’’ location he never tires of.
While the beachfront has remained relatively unchanged over five decades, the garage itself has too.
‘‘Like most workshops it’s a big square open space where you put hoists, jacks, oils and bits and pieces, it hasn’t changed to a great degree.’’
The Wellington-born man’s journey as a mechanic began when he took up an apprenticeship at the end of his schooling at Rongotai College in the mid-1960s.
‘‘It was at a time where there was work in all kinds of areas – I wasn’t hugely academically oriented at that stage but I was a practical kind of kid, I’d fix my own bikes and tinker.
‘‘My father worked in Army transport, he said ‘how about becoming a mechanic’, and brought me here to Lyall Bay Service Station which at that stage did a bit of work for the Army.
‘‘I decided to become an apprentice and I’ve loved it from the moment I came here.’’
Because few young people owned cars in those days, one of the big drawcards was being able to work on and drive customers’ vehicles, Hendry says.
As part of a relatively big staff in those days, Hendry would work on everything from the early Fords to Vauxhalls to Chevrolets.
‘‘Cars now are more reliable and suffer less breakdowns, whereas back then they required a lot more servicing.
‘‘You’d have your straight-out mechanical problems like brakes and suspensions which weren’t as good, but one of the big problems was ignition systems that were nowhere near as good as they are now.’’
Those ‘‘primitive’’ ignition systems meant plenty of callouts in damp weather.
‘‘If you had a rainy day you’d go out on a half a dozen breakdowns because half a dozen cars wouldn’t start.
‘‘But in saying that, with an adjustable spanner and a couple of screwdrivers you’d go out on a breakdown and start most cars.
‘‘Making somebody’s car go so off they could go was in its own way, quite thrilling, I got a kick out of that.’’
Hendry has worked as a mechanic for all but five years of his working life, and that was after he’d finished his apprenticeship and decided to head off to Britain on his OE.
‘‘Over those five years I did all kinds of things, from truck driving and forklift driving in London to building telephone exchanges in Germany.’’
News of his ailing father prompted a return home, though his intention had been to settle in his wife’s home country of Finland.
‘‘I had a job arranged in Finland but when I came back here I visited the people I had previously worked with. They were short of a person and asked if I wanted some work – I thought I may as well while I’m here.’’
Hendry never got to Finland, he and his wife instead settling in Wellington, buying a home and starting a family.
He bought into the garage when one of the partners died and bought it outright when the other partner passed away in 1997.
The business has since employed numerous staff and trained up its fair share of apprentices.
‘‘Once I bought into the business, had children and mortgages, going back to Finland kind of went by the by,’’ he laughs. But Hendry has no regrets. ‘‘I’ve worked on cars for five decades, I still enjoy cars, they are a fascinating thing and they have changed so much over my lifetime.’’
And he still gets a kick out of making customers happy.
‘‘When someone brings a car in with a problem, you fix it for them and off they go, there’s a certain amount of satisfaction in that.’’
Hendry enjoys problem solving and there’s plenty of that when it comes to cars.
Most cars he works on these days are Japanese models across the spectrum such as Mazdas, Nissans and Toyotas.
Jobs he does range from changing a blown bulb or fitting tyres to getting to the bottom of an unknown rattle.
‘‘Today, for example, I’m fitting some brakes, I’ve got a car at the moment that has an electric problem, yesterday I fitted a radiator and I did work on a cooling system on a 4WD that had overheated badly.’’
Hendry often draws on past experiences to problem solve.
‘‘You really do have to have, if anything, a good memory in this job – if I ever lost my memory I’d be out of the trade,’’ he laughs.
‘‘Somebody will come in and say ‘my car’s making a noise’ and quite often I think I’ve heard that noise before.
‘‘You store that stuff away and use that previous knowledge to come up with the answer. It doesn’t’ always work but it’s a good start.’’
Memory aside, a mechanic must also be prepared to get dirty. And be handy with tools and machinery.
‘‘You had to know how to wield a hammer back in the day, in the days before the likes of tyre machines. Nowadays it’s just not required, machinery is so much more advanced and easier to use thanks to technology.’’
He recalls changing truck tyres, which used to be a hard, physical job.
‘‘Trucks used to have things called kingpins – big steel pins that went through the axle which was solid.
‘‘To replace the bushes that wore out you had to get those pins out which was a big problem – we’d be under there with hammers, punches and sledgehammers hammering the axle to get them apart. It required a certain amount of physical strength to do that, whereas today the machine goes bang and there you go,’’ he laughs.
Car suspensions are designed to come apart much easier these days too.
‘‘There are proper separators now which means things seem to unbolt and pull apart rather than having to hammer them apart.
‘‘If you started hitting cars with hammers today you’d risk firing off an airbag!’’
While technology has made vehicles easier to work on, and cars are far more reliable, the problems they do have are more complicated because of it, Hendry says.
‘‘Certainly on the mechanical side of things, problems with the likes of brakes, suspensions, rattles and squeaks haven’t changed much over the years and are easy enough to fix.
‘‘Technology, mainly in engine management and gearbox systems, has made engines tremendously reliable, but if there is a problem it can then be obscure.’’
Technology has posed the toughest challenge for Hendry.
‘‘For young people coming into the motor trade now it’d be easier for them in that they’ve grown up with technology at school but for me it was a whole new ball game.
‘‘There was no such thing as personal computers when I was an apprentice – I’ve gone from invoicing by pen and paper to a computerised system, and a lot of the machinery I use is all technology-based.’’
There’s still the mechanical aspects such as the brakes and suspensions, but in diagnosing gearbox faults and engine faults it’s becoming more and more computer-oriented.
‘‘Then there’s the new push towards electric cars, kids coming into the trade now will be at the forefront of technology.’’
When it comes to buying a car, Hendry says he has a different view to most.
‘‘People might like the look, the name, the colour, but a mechanic’s mind looks at it with a completely different set of priorities.
‘‘Are the tyres a common size so that they are not going to cost a fortune? Is it reliable, is it easy to get parts for, is it easy to fix?’’
Cars aside, with retirement looming in the not too distant future Hendry is keen to pursue his hobbies outside of the workshop.
But he’s not quite ready to shut those doors just yet.
‘‘It disturbs me – when you’ve spent your entire life working and you think about not getting up and going to work, not making that daily jaunt to work, not tinkering with vehicles or dealing with customers anymore, it’s tough!
‘‘I keep threatening to go to four days a week, but then the phone goes and a client says ‘my car won’t go’ or ‘something’s wrong with my car, can I bring it in on Monday’.
‘‘My planned day off is no longer a day off’’ he laughs.