TheBrake-Man

28/06/2026

We love these jobs, especially on a Sunday!!
We came to this car with a strange electrical issue where it wouldn't start, and occasionally, it would. The customer reported that strange things would happen where it would run for a while, and then all of a sudden the side lights would come on and the only other thing that would work was the radio.

We carried out an investigation and finally found that there was water ingress under the passenger seat. We found a correded earth point and water had gotten into the passenger seat... weird one.

We've removed the seat and fixed the earth point and the vehicle started. Luckily e ough we have the weather to allow the carpet to dry out, so we've left that out of the vehicle and we'll return on Tuesday to see if it's dried out enough. If not, we could be looking a seat strip down, and possibly a replacement 😬.

Keep an eye out for the updates.

26/06/2026

There was a bit of typo on the last image I posted. I did mean June and not July.... apologies for the confusion.

14/06/2026

The stunning Scottish coast.

My deployment has potentially been extended until the 24th, but I'll keep my socials updated to keep customers up to date for their vehicle repairs.

03/06/2026

A sneak peek of some of the instrumentation and equipment we deploy from the stern of the vessel for the acquisition of data to give us a picture of what's going on down on the sea floor.

The smaller piece of equipment is a side scan sonar, used to gather real time imagery of the seabed. And the other is a scanfish towing a fixed frame katria containing 8 magnetometers used for detecting ferrous objects, and in particular, unexploded bombs from WW2 on this project. We'll be running 2 of those scanfish frames, and the side scan at the same time. Exciting stuff!!

Remember, we'll be back to fixing vehicles for around the 14th of June!! Feel free to reach out and book in early!!

23/05/2026

Episode 2 of the VW caddy. Bank holiday weekend...? Pft, we don't stop for that!
Today we continued with this little gem, replacing:
NSF shock absorber
NSF brake calliper and brake flexi hose
NSF drive shaft
Both front anti-roll bar drop links
Front brake discs and pads
Rear brake discs and pads
Both rear shock absorbers

Now for a cool shower, some after sun and some nice cold ciders!

Do let us know if you get stuck over the bank holiday weekend. We're here to help!

21/05/2026

Our low cost to our customers is no reflection on our quality of work. Here are some of the ways we manage to keep the cost down when it comes to your vehicle repairs:

❌️ No parts markups. We don't add anything to the cost of our parts, you pay what we pay, and we're more than happy to provide the receipts from our suppliers, and we will immediately rectify any discrepancies... because they can happen.

❌️No travel charge. We won't ever charge you for our time to travel to your vehicle. Obviously we can't travel from Gloucester to Cornwall for free, so it can have its limits.

❌️ No minimum labour. We don't specify an amount that covers the first hour of time we spend with your vehicle. If it takes half an hour, you pay half an hour, nothing more.

❌️ No VAT added. We're not VAT registered because this business is a sideline business when I'm home from offshore work, so we don't turn over enough to be VAT registered. And that's transparency for you 😁.

✅️ Diagnostics "plug ins". We appreciate that it only takes 15 minutes to plug into a car and read codes, so we only charge the cost of getting there, and that 15 minutes (£20). Terms apply depending on location.

✅️ we honour our quotes. If we quote 2 hours, and it takes 3 hours (for example), you only pay the 2 hours.

✅️ Business to business discount. We offer a 12.5% discount on labour for other businesses. As we don't markup our parts, unfortunately we can't discount those.

✅️ Recommend a friend discount. We offer a 10% discount on labour when you're Recommended to us by someone you know. As we don't markup our parts, we can't discount those here, either (sorry 😬).

Please do get in touch to see how we can help you out and keep you running.

21/05/2026

What a day we've had today!
A VW Caddy needing discs and pads all round, a near side front shock absorber, near side front caliper, a near side front drive shaft and 2 rear shock absorbers.

Then we moved on to a stunning L322 Range Rover that needed new rear pads, and new front discs and pads.

Both of these customers supplied the parts on both of these jobs, and we found we had the incorrect shock absorber for the front of the caddy, and the wrong pads supplied for the Range Rover. We won't give up, and we'll go back when the customers can obtain the correct parts and get these vehicles back as they should be, with the Caddy already re-booked for Saturday morning, but lesson learned.... let us take the headache out of parts and let us supply them. We offer them at cost and put no markup on our parts, keeping the costs down for our customers, and we deal with the exchange, if they're ever wrong!! 😉

20/05/2026

19/05/2026

We revisited this machine today to replace the stator.
Once we got the flywheel off, we did find corrosion in the copper windings which had led to a breakage.
Combine that repair with others that we'd carried out on our previous visit and the dash now lights up with a green "OK" LED, something the customer states he'd never known in his ownership.
We checked the charge state of the battery, and it's charging nicely, so no more having to pull start the engine for this customer. A flick of the key, and away they go!!