Year of Manufacture *: Modern Cars
Thought i might bring a light hearted moment to your day.
They say that most things in life don't improve with age, and in the main I would agree with this (cured meats/cheese, fine wines/whisky & the odd highly experienced in-the-bedroom-dept woman aside) but i do think i may currently be bucking the trend.
Take today for example, I fitted a set of glow plugs into a Mazda 2 1.4D & it only took what seemed like 3 times longer than the allowed 0.7 hrs (I try not to accurately measure the time during these handlamp & mirror operations & I am assuming this time is for 4 plugs & not each, which would make me feel much better), this was in fact a huge step in the right direction from the first set of plugs I fitted to a 1.6 Focus C Max (which were all tight as a mouse`s ear, cracked off with worrying tension applied & had to be wound back & forth on the threads right to the end on three of the four).
This seemingly age-related, new-found improvement in my technique allowed me to fully focus on the job in hand today, keeping a clear head till very near the end, only loosing one power-supply nut & dropping once only a short 1/4 drive extension & one deep socket down the back of the fuel pump & one mirror down the back of the block which fortunately did not break, even the torrent of swear words, sighs & vocally-expressed general hatred towards the designer of these rearward facing components only occurred in the final minutes, so it would appear that now I am in my forties things are looking up, with (a lot) of practise, one day I may even be able to compete in some kind of National Glow-Plug fitting Championship!
Some of you reading this will be seasoned fitters of these little critters & have lots of little tricks/tools that make the job much faster than I seem to manage (esp as I don't normally do this type of work in the garage these days, tending to do more diagnostic or the management stuff that no-one else can or wants to), but all joking apart, having recently seen a bit more of what's involved in doing seemingly simple tasks on modern cars (or what certainly used to be simple, not just glow plugs, & esp when you may not have done the task on that particular make before), i will be much more understanding when discussing some of the times on job cards that pass through the office, I do also think that as cars change & age, even greater care should be given to how we charge for what we are doing, regardless of what the new-car factory times suggest, .e.g. if Autodata stated 2 hours for my Mazda task, would we all just charge out 2 hrs without questioning it? yet when quoting for a job, possibly one we had not done before & possibly with the customer on the end of a phone, would we confidently quote 0.7 hrs, imagining it would be like a 1980`s/90`s Peug or Ford.
Regards & Respect to all of you doing the job all day, every day, Phil.
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