Technical Fan belt on a Sei. What a winker.

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Technical Fan belt on a Sei. What a winker.

Orfy

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Nov 21, 2009
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I was driving to pick the wife up from work and the battery light came on about half a mile away.

Couple of options, ignore carry on the journey.
Stop immediately and call breakdown service.
Pull over in a safe place and check out conections and fan belt.

I went for the last option. pulled over in a side road and checked the fan belt and it was missing.

Two more options.

Get home (a few miles away) and deal with it.
Call down a breakdown service.

I pay for the service and know it's a simple fix and didn't know if it was used to drive the water pump, So I called the serivce. I made it clear it was a fan belt. I called a mate and asked them to nip to Halfords and pick up a belt in case they mechanic didn't have a suitable one.

The guys turns up and say's it's a recovery job.
I asked him why and he um's and ha's and says it's a ramp job.)

I told him my sheme allows up to an hour assistance before it's a recovery job and I asked him why it couldn't be done with a jack. He then tells me he can't do it because he doesn't have a fan belt. So I presented him with one. I told him I was ringing up my insurance company to find out why he was telling me it was a recovery job before he had tried to fix the simple fault or come up with a proper reason for recovering. By this time is in a very bad mood but gets his tools out. Loads of griping and 45 minutes after turning up he then gets his jack out. He tells my wife if he continues he'll have to charge. So I ring up the insurance and tell them I'm having a problem with the guy. Tey ring up the garage and get them to have a word with the mechanic and then he decides he csn't do it for health and safety reasons because the wind might blow the bonnet down on him. So I offer to ohold the bonnet (It wasn't more than a slight breeze)

One hour and lots of other reasons like th battery was going on his lamp! he told me that he couldn't continue because the air filter housing was broken so even if he fixed it the car would be undrivable and he was at his 1 hour time limit anyway.

I told him there was nothing wrong with the filter when he started and if it was damaged he should of pointed it out when he started.
The idiot told be he knew it was damaged because when he leant on it! it moved. I know it wasn't faulty.

For gods sake, the two most common faults for breakdown is fan belts and flat batteries!

The long and short of it is he wasn't capable and didn't want to do for it.
I pay for roadside assistance so simple faults can be dealt with and I can get on my way.

CIS recovery use Houghton Green Garages in the Northwest.(n)

I do not recommend Houghtons so can't recommend CIS if you live in the Northwest and will very likely be changing to another breakdown scheme very shortly.

The guy tried to apologise and said his boss told him to do an immediate recovery.
 
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Because of their incompetence and scheming I wasted 2 hours had a load of grief and will have to lose a mornings work to deal with the problem.

I'm not willing to have a repeat of this if I need it next time so will probably look at changing to the AA or someone who doesn't use Houghtons.
 
I remember my mum incident with the AA. Her gear linkage snapped on her mini cooper, she rang the AA to get a recovery truck out to her and they sent out an examiner and it just drove past her and rang in and said that her position was too dangerous to be recovered. Then she had to explain that the car isn't going anywhere and that it needs to be recovered.


She was stuck on a hard shoulder for 5 hours and 7 phone calls to the AA. Nobody would come and pick her up. In the end the police noticed she was parked there for a long time and they insisted that they come out to her and they did so.

The main manager rang her the next day after listening to the phone calls and apologised and gave her vouchers for home and car insurance and a free 1 years break down. He couldn't stop apologising and he said that the people in charge of the situation at the time were looking for new jobs.

Thanks
 
man that sucks! When my clutch was stiff, the AA man came out to adjust thge clutch, then after about 1 mile drive the cable snapped, the same AA man made up another cable for me on the spot!

Never had any problems with the AA what so ever!

Not to bad of a job the fan belt :)

Good luck
Ming
 
Local garage did it this morning in 20 minutes.

Wheel off. (First Job not 30 minutes into the job)
2 bolts out of the arch liner
Loosened the alternator.
3 bolts off the bottom pulley.
Fanbelt on
Pulley on adjust and tighten
2 bolts back in.
Wheel back on.
 
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