In this report from the Pugsley & Lewis workshop we take a look at the topic of balance. And before you jump to conclusions we’re not talking about balancing tyres on a restored V8 or some esoteric technique relating to the suspension on a vintage DB4. When we say balance we mean the tricky juggling required to keep the cars flowing in and out of our workshop, to keep up a supply of the specialist parts we need to work with and – above all else – to keep our customers happy and keen to deal with us again. It’s a tricky balancing act at times, and this is how we pull it off…..
One of the cars we worked on was a beautiful blue DB4 which was road-tested and ready to be collected and driven away to Switzerland, of all places. We’re used to our customers cruising the highways and byways of the continent in the cars we work on but thinking of this beautiful car heading for Switzerland did give us a bit of pause; the reason being that parts of Switzerland had recently been impacted by floods, and the owner was talking about hailstones the size of golf balls, amongst other things. All of which had us wincing over the threat to the Aston’s body work, not to mention wondering if we’d be called on to do some climate-related repair work once the car was back in the UK. Either way, the weather in prospect for this DB4 tended to put our washout of a summer into perspective.
Another bit of work we did arrived with us as something of a detective story. You could call it Pugsley and Lewis and the Case of the Faulty Gearbox. The owner brought in their 1977 V8 because the gearbox wasn’t quite right, in as much as it was struggling a bit to change gear. Apparently, the levels of fluid in the gearbox were low, which turned out to be true when we checked, so we sorted the levels out and the owner was happy to drive away in a burnished olive (goldy green if you’re not feeling quite so poetic) AM which was changing gears quite happily. The big twist in the plot comes, however, when the owner gets back to the garage and spots a puddle of liquid on the floor right where the car had been parked. It doesn’t take a detective to figure out that during the period the car wasn’t being driven as much, a gasket had gone and the gearbox had sprung a leak. Pretty quickly, our customer came back to us for a permanent repair to this more serious problem which entailed sealing up the gearbox.
We’ve also refurbished two of the wheels on one side of a Vantage Roadster, both of which had been clipped. The interest in this particular car, which dates from around 2017, is that it’s kitted out in orange and white – an Aston Martin Racing option. It’s got serious power, and given the size of the car as a whole it’s probably fair to say that, like a lot of racing models, it’s mostly engine. Not that the owner does anything as irresponsible as racing it, of course, since even now it’s only got around 8,000 miles on the clock.
The kind of work we do is often all about balancing the differing demands of our customers. We’ll deal with modern cars, like the Vantage Roadster, which have developed a fault and need attention to get them back on the road again as quickly as possible. At the same time, we have owners bringing us their classic cars, often for more in-depth work and restoration, or just a tune up. In this case the drivers don’t take them out as regularly and are willing to wait a little bit longer – for example, they have a planned trip in a month or so and would like the Aston back for that. The Switzerland-bound DB4 mentioned at the start of this Workshop Diary was a good example of the latter. Our job is to juggle our workforce and resources in order to deliver exactly what our customers are looking for.
Sometimes, that’s easier said than done. This month, for example, we needed new fuel pumps for a DB9, only to discover that the fuel pumps in question aren’t being manufactured, which meant that we had to work with refurbished fuel pumps instead, or wait six to nine months. Luckily our customers trust us to do whatever is best when it comes to getting their car back on the road, and in this case we were able to source fuel pumps and refurbish them to deliver the level of pressure that a brand new pump delivers.
It’s another example of us constantly balancing competing demands, and supply lines. Sometimes components or larger parts are on what’s referred to as ‘back order’, which can mean for example, that manufacturers are building a backlog of orders for components before manufacturing them, so they’re not holding superfluous stock.
Recently, to give another example, we found it hard to source clutches directly from Aston Martin, which is pretty unusual considering it’s what you might call a fairly useful part to have lying around – especially when you know it’s the type of part that can just go without warning. In a case like that a customer might be happy to wait, or they might equally be happy for us to source from elsewhere – either way is fine with us as long as the customer is happy. Even ordering available parts is a bit more complicated than it sounds, because the delivery fee is sometimes more than the cost of the part, so it makes sense to order multiple parts under one delivery, which calls for forward thinking and keeping a careful eye on the schedule for the parts you might need next week or the week after.
Like we said, it’s all about keeping our eyes firmly on multiple moving parts in order to maintain the smooth running of the business and keep each individual job running on time.
