Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Need A Checkup?

Earlier this year Big Red was in serious need of some work. He was running beautifully, and would happily take me anywhere I wanted to go on any of our expeditions, but the poor guy was cruising along with his bum dragging on the ground! After much searching around the internet and posting questions on a number of 4WD forums I found the most highly recommended specialist 4WD mechanic seemed to be Guest 4WD in Fairfield. A family owned and run business, these guys (and gals) know their stuff, they specialise in Toyota and Nissan 4WD's, and don't touch anything that doesn't have a transfer case... so no point dropping your daily runabout off to them!

I was really impressed with their setup (which you can see in their Virtual Tour), their knowledge, and also their range of maps, books and other goodies.

After an initial service and check-over, I took Red back to get a full new set of shocks & springs. Now these guys are really honest, so a pleasant change from your regular 'specialist' mechanic, in fact, they quoted me on the wrong set of springs initially (coils, instead of leaf springs -which are pricier- for the back), so they met me halfway on the price, and threw on a set of extended shackles on the house. Good one guys!

However, if I'm honest and give you the full story, it doesn't end there. There actually was a bit of a cock-up, in that whoever put the rear springs on forgot to fully tighten the left ones. What that meant was, as I was pulling out of Bordertown, all four bolts holding my left leaf-spring were on the verge of dropping off!

Anyway, long story short, I gave them a call last week (yes, I know, I take a while to get around to things...) and explained what happened, they said to bring Big Red in first thing the next morning (ie, 7:30am, tell me, what mechanic is willing to work at that hour?!) and they'd get straight on to checking everything over for me. ...and check him over they did! He was in there for nearly three hours (I only just got home in time for an 11am house inspection) and they didn't charge me a cent. They were all very apologetic, and promised to have a stern word with the guy that finished up the installation in the first place. They even found a couple little things that were getting old (ie, brittle hose on the windscreen washer reservoir) and fixed them up for me. Again, free of charge. They have also offered to help me out with a good price when I'm due for a new set of tires, since the shoddy job partially contributed to one tire wearing unevenly.

So, after all that I've read about Guest 4WD, mine is the only negative I've ever come across, and like I said, they were shocked to hear my story and went out of their way to recompense me. All in all, I'm more than happy to recommend them to anyone needing work done, just book early if you're wanting to get anything done around Easter time, they're flat out preparing all the grey nomads for their migration North!

No comments:

Post a Comment