Changing a fan is the sort of job any fitter should be able to do. Not usually at the difficult end of the spectrum. But if an electric one, it may not be the fan motor which has failed. You then move on to needing electrical/electronic skills. Often rather lacking in garages.
For a radiator fan? Anyone, TBH. My favoured garage is a small independent VAG specialist that I've used and trusted for over 10 years. Generally skilled, know the cars well, don't rip me off, don't bodge things.
In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, sm_jamieson <sm snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes
Depends on the car. For my Skoda, I'm happy with the main dealer who always seems reliable and sensibly priced. Pleasant surroundings if it's a while you wait job.
For the Rangie, either a recommended back street LR specialist, or my normal back street garage. For the latter, unless it's something pretty standard, I go online and try to find a descriptive post detailing how to diy. My backstreet man has never been insulted by this and, on one occasion, looked at it and came up with a better approach.
As I'm sure everyone knows, some main dealers have to be experienced to be believed. Locally, Jeep stands out. "We threw out all the tools for that model when we moved", " If it's 4 wheel drive, we can't do the tracking", "You will have to wait until we can borrow the Jeep diagnostics tool from Jeep HQ". I never actually got as far as putting my vehicle in, but online Jeep forum posts indicated that not letting them get their hands on mine was a very good move.
My favourite - not - was my local BMW main dealer. Now closed down.
Car went in for an oil service and to have a leak on the power steering fixed. Which had left the front of the engine covered in fluid.
On picking it up, the car had been valeted as usual. So I looked under the bonnet expecting to see a nice clean engine. Not so. Wondering if there had been some mistake I checked the oil level too - car on level ground, their car park. That was well below max without the engine having been started by me - and was cold.
Went back to reception. Was told If I'd wanted the engine cleaned I should have asked. (and paid for it) I didn't ask for the car to be valeted. And that I didn't know how to check the oil level as it was measured out by a computer for each model. So invited the service supervisor to show me where I'd gone wrong. Even gave him a tissue to wipe the dipstick with.
I also asked him how you could check a leak had been fixed without cleaning off the old fluid.
One thing was clear. A BMW customer at service time is always wrong. But all most of them want is dolly birds in reception and free coffee.
As soon as it was out of warranty, I found a good independent.
I hate letting anyone else work on my cars because for a long time I did all my own stuff, but bad backs and knees being what they are, and lack of a covered work area, I've had to pay to get stuff done recently. My first car I used to take to a back-street guy that my dad used.
I'd trust the backstreet guy to fit a fan as long as it's really just the fan motor that's the problem, although you may find it comes back with broken or missing trim clips/screws - that's going to a problem no matter who does it IME. For more advanced diagnostics I once used a mobile guy who was really on the ball, told me how to do the repair and was very reasonably priced. Halfords I'd avoid OTW, although we do get MOTs done there because it's near and you can book online. I've found my local National Tyres pretty good for brakes, exhausts etc, shame they don't do MOTs, but IME all the chains will vary from branch to branch. I used to know someone who worked at Kwik Fit, and the stories he would tell ... I've never used a main dealer - always had older low-value cars or classics.
In message snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk>, "Dave Plowman (News)" snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk> writes
Oh, I forgot my favourite!
We had a Hillman Hunter - quite high profile with a mast etc. - and took it to the main dealer for something or other. I took a colleague to collect it and the receptionist asked us to wait on the forecourt while he drove it round from the workshop.
He drove up, opened the bonnet and started to say they had replaced a front shock absorber as well. As we chatted he leant on the front spring turret and all three of us saw the nuts turning loosely under his hand. No-one said a word, but he said something about Oh there's something I wanted to check with the mechanics, and drove it round the back again.
Going back a couple of decades my Mother complained about the dolly bird receptionist at the VW dealers. She was, according to my Mother, a bit of a slapper.
About 2 weeks later I took her to my Mothers 60th Birthday party and my Mother found out who I had been dating for the last 4 months.
Seeing we're doing main dealer stories, mine is a Ford main dealer who replaced the clutch on my Mondeo. They forgot to put a bracket holding the rigid power steering pipes in position at the back of the engine, so one of the pipes rubbed on the sump and developed a pinhole leak which revealed itself about a month later. I was pretty certain they'd deny it and say the bracket fell of later (which it didn't, because the nut it was supposed to be under was tightened up on another componet that shared the same stud but I guess they would say I was mistaken.) Also it was a biggish job to replace the pipe as it needed a subframe removing for topological reasons so they would have charged me as much labour as for the clutch if I had given it back to them. I don't think I could have won the argument without paying an expert, and I really needed the car for work. In the end I silver soldered the pinhole in situ and somehow got the rear bracket in place and it ran for another
100,000 miles. But it was pretty crass incompetence for a main dealer.
With modern cars I wouldn't like to bet that you can get access to all the fixings without having to dismantle the front end of the car to at one of them.
Assuming the fan only has two wires any fitter ought to be able to feed it some volts and see if it goes round. If the control system has gone up it, then you'll probably need the makers diagnostics computer to find out what it's not happy about.
I do most work myself, but have used main dealers three times (warranty work twice and a new key once) all three times were bloody awful. Long delays, failures to meet deadlines, repeated visits to do something that they'd supposed to have already done. In once case, they did so much wrong that I didn't feel safe in the car afterwards and got rid of it!
I have used a backstreet garage for a bit of welding on my wife's car, a mid-winter cambelt change before going away, a dual-mass flywheel and clutch and an injector problem. I have found them to be excellent, timely, well priced and very, very honest.
Westway Nissan had my 2004 Primera 2.2 DCI for a turbo replacement and diesel pump replacement. The latter was an engine out job, as the pump was a mechanically driven, electrically timed thing on the back of the engine and up against the bulkhead.
I was told that they needed it for a week, dropped it in on a Monday morning and picked up a courtesy car.
On Friday, they told me that it wouldn't be available 'til Monday, but they needed the courtesy car back and would replace it with a hire car. That cost me three hours off work with travelling, to them; them getting me to the hire place; paperwork and delays there and then getting going.
On Monday I'd booked the afternoon off work to return the hire car and pick mine up. Only to be told after I'd left that it'd not be ready 'til Tuesday. Same thing happened on Tuesday. They promised it would be ready Wednesday.
Wednesday, they thought 16:30, but I needed to be picking my son up from nursery then. I could not do Thursday as I was due on a business trip. So we agreed Friday.
Friday afternoon off again. Returned hire car, waited for lift back to garage, got there and my car wasn't there, it was still being valeted! Considering it was due to be ready on Wednesday, why leave it 'til then?
Anyway, it eventually came back and I had a journey home on wet seats :(
Arriving home I started discovering problems:
1) broken driver's door mirror surround - Westway would not admit to this.
2) Exhaust reattached to manifold with a twist, so that reversing uphill at low revs into my drive caused it to knock on the body.
3) One of my set of four mats missing and replaced with a non-matching one.
4) During valetting, they'd slammed the rear seat back up onto the seat belt, punching a hole through it on the seat catch.
5) Odd noise from power steering - they said it was air and would soon clear. It wasn't, they'd wrecked the power steering pump and it had to be replaced.
The piece-de-resistance though was that to remove the engine and gearbox, they'd had the driveshafts off. A month later, I came to change the front brake pads and found that they'd re-used the split pins in the hub nuts - one had broken and had only one remaining piece holding it in, while the other had broken totally, had fallen out and was rolling round the inside of the hub cover!
I felt totally unsafe driving that car again and even though I insisted on an independent examination, I got rid of the car soon after.
There's a variation of 3 which is a classic car garage. They're people who know how to improvise and actually fix stuff. Some backstreet garages are part number jockeys - they just phone up the wholesaler for a price for the part, go to autodata for the hours, slap a quote together. If anything doesn't fit this process (eg the part is out of stock at the wholesaler they use) they don't want to know.
A classic garage might know they haven't made the part since 1953 but can drill a couple of holes in a bit of scrap metal to mount a generic one from their parts bin. Even if I don't have a classic I'd trust that sort of garage rather more that they know what they're doing.
(OTOH they're probably not the best people to reprogram your ECUs)
You find a good independent garage. A proper business that issues proper invoices, charges VAT, has decent premises, does MOTs, has all the gear, and is operated by the owner.
My relative runs such a garage, Central Garage Carcroft. Another one is DPS Motors, Barnby Dun.
When you find such a place treat them right and they'll come to respect you as a customer and treat you right. Go by recommendation.
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