Fork Tubes installed "wrong" groan

[Seaking]

Long story short, a licensed mechanic was fired at a bike shop that I had my neck bearings replaced and forks serviced at not long ago, by that mechanic.. All this came to a head after I had to remove the fuel tank from the bike this weekend to change my tach. He had so badly cross threaded the tank side mounting bolts that the shop owner had to come over and fix the threads on the bike so that I could re-install the tank to the bike.. no joke, the level of incompetence of a person to have to use that much ham fist torque to munge up those bolts.. my gosh.. I mean seriously, what is the thought process of that person as he's forcing those bolts in?? So badly munged were the bolts that they were BENT..

 

After a closer look, several other things were noticed not done right. The shop owner had fired the licensed mechanic for incompetence and other problems.. unfortunately my bike was one of the last bikes he'd worked on and now I'm worried.

 

The shop owner, a much respected person for his upstanding character, without hesitation assured me he'll do what is needed to get my bike sorted out if there happens to be a problem with it..

 

One problem I discovered is that the air valves at the top of the forks point to the sides instead of to the rear of the bike.. I'm not sure if this is a very BAD thing, or just an annoyance thing.

 

The shop owner said he would take the bike in, sort that problem out and check for anything else that might be amiss...

 

Question is, does it make a large difference if the air valves point to the sides or to the rear? I can still get an air pump line to them.. there's enough room..

 

I feel bad for the owner, that one mechanic almost sank his shop with such incompetence..

[skydoc_17]

Hey Pete,

Is this the same shop that bunged up the threads on your front axle??? If it is, bring it to his attention and get him to reimburse you for the Heli-Coil kit you had to buy!

I have seen a few "heavy handed" mechanics in my time, and the results are ugly at best.

I hope this shop gets your bike taken care of.

This is the kind of thing that makes me work on my own scoot.

Earl

[LilBeaver]

I realize you feel for the guy but the fact of the matter is stuff may not have been done properly and he wants to make it right.

 

My suggestion would be to look over it as much as you can on your own to figure out what else might be goofed up then take it to him and let him make it right. If you really feel for him, when you take your bike in letting him know that you understand that stuff happens and that you are okay with it taking a little bit of time to get your bike back to you I am sure would be appreciated on his end. Likely he'll want your bike IN and OUT as fast as possible to 1) make sure you come back and give him your business again 2) get your bike off his floor so that he can go back to working on stuff that will bring in the money 3) If he is an honest business man (which it sounds like he is a credible guy based on what you've said so far) HE will want to make sure that you are satisfied with the end result and will do what you paid him to do and whatever else it takes to make it right.

 

My family owned a body shop for several years and I helped out with it in all aspects. I painted, did body work, sanded masked, detailed, swept the floors, kept the books, sales, babysit the incompetent employees until we could get them out, help support the few good employees we found, etc. Our body guys got paid when the job left the shop and passed the customer inspection. Mostly because that is when the shop got paid, and that's just how it works. The few exceptions to that rule was if there was a very large (time consuming job) that one of the better guys (that we KNEW did good work) was working on, frequently for those we would go ahead and give them a fair amount for that week - that way they would actually go home with a check that week. For the rest of the guys, they complained about it BUT it protected US for situations like you are in right now. We would have a few days to NOT pay the body guy (or pro-rate the job as required) just in case. This saved are rumpuses, more than a few times, from having to completely pay for a job to be done twice thanks to some a-hole that didn't give a rip about what he was doing. We did get burned a few times too BUT it is an unfortunate part of doing business. Our goal was to make sure that we completed the job to surpass the customer's expectations.

So, for the jobs that needed to be re-worked or the few that came back to us, we made sure we told the customer exactly what was going on and what we were going to do to rectify it. Yes, we had a few that came in and thought yelling at us was going to get them somewhere. Most customers didn't mind waiting another day or two for their job to be done RIGHT.

Yes, we lost money on having to do then redo a job. BUT, it is all part of doing business. We had a lot of repeat customers too (with their other vehicles or unrelated incidents), so that tells us that we must have been doing something right.

 

Point of all of my yammering is you shouldn't feel bad about taking your bike back to him and having him/the shop go over it again. Especially since he offered and it was HIS responsibility to do it correctly the first time.

 

just my . Well maybe more like :2cents::2cents:

 

[Seaking]

Hi Earl.. the front axle mungeing was done by yet another shop.. I had put this same observation to the owner that perhaps that same mechanic may have caused it and tried to hide his mistake, but he wasn't at the shop that day my bike was being worked on for the front tire shop..

 

However I did get reimbursed for the screwed up clutch job that idiot had done.. I needed to get the clutch plates changed and clutch fluid flushed as I didn't know how at that time (I do now know how to flush the fluid myself)..

 

A week later, I had to do an oil change before another road trip and as I looked down into the oil refill port, something didn't look right.. huh.. the clutch plates weren't indexed properly... (the three notches and index mark alignment.. )...Grrr.. I had to pull the cover off again and reset everything proper..

 

When I brought my bike in for the forks and neck bearings, I even provided him with the repair shop manual for the bike.. He said he didn't need one, because he had one.. But the kid behind the parts counter quietly shook his head (you didn't see me say NO...kind of look).. At that point I should have realized how much of a moron he was.. I pointed out to him that if he had a manual, why didn't he use it for doing the clutch plates, did he use the proper torque values etc etc.. Oh THAT manual.. blah blah... i should have seen the writing on the wall at how incompetent he was..

 

he's probably looking to work on farm machinery now.. less likely to kill someone there..

 

Nuff said.. one idiot fired, one shop owner redeemed himself.. and I learned another valuable lesson.. I'm sick and tired of getting pooched by incompetent people that I'll no longer decline taking them to task for their stupidity or incompetence. Honest mistakes are that, mistakes.. Incompetence and idiots are unforgivable..