AA and garage - very poor service

EdGasketTheSecond

Well I'm saying AA Home Start are pretty useless and waste of money if they can't do a simple thing to start my sister's car which is all that was required. Took me less than 5 minutes and that's without training from anyone.

As for the 'expert' advice from the garage that it would not start and would cost over £1000 to try and make it start, it borders on being fraud imho.

EdGasketTheSecond

An update on this. I replaced the plugs, leads, and rotor arm (not distributor cap as I didn't have a number and couldn't match in by make/model of car) and now it starts first time, every time and drives fine. Complete fabrication that the head needed to be removed. My sister didn't want to make a complaint; her choice.

williamgriffin

Rover Metro is this a thread resurrection from the late 80's?

fred246

My wife had a Rover Metro years ago. It never seemed quite right in that the fuel economy was never very good and the mixture always looked rich looking at the spark plugs. I saw a garage locally that called themselves 'Tuning Specialists'. I took it there. They asked me to come back in a few hours but I spotted they had a 'Viewing Gallery' so decided to take up position there. It was awful. Like an episode of Chuckle Brothers. They were so clueless. I thought they would have a posh 'diagnostic computer' but they had nothing. They just took the spark plugs out and put them back in. I had already changed them. They spent about 2 hours. It had taken them about half an hour to work out how to lift the bonnet. They charged me £10 which I think was because they had realised that I knew that they were clueless. It was like "we have done nothing useful, but the deal is we won't charge much".

Ditzy_Mitzy

Presumably it's got an automatic choke?  I'd begin with a look at that if cold starting is the problem.  Thinking back to the old days: very occasionally my Nissan Bluebird wouldn't start.  And then she would.  I can't remember if I ever needed to resort to easy start but it's possible.  Sometimes carburettor engines just play up a bit.  

EdGasketTheSecond

Manual choke. It has a coil pick-up in the distributor but other than that its old school; no idea why the AA couldn't get it going as there is not really anything much to stop it running if you do the basic checks.

Ditzy_Mitzy

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Manual choke. It has a coil pick-up in the distributor but other than that its old school; no idea why the AA couldn't get it going as there is not really anything much to stop it running if you do the basic checks.

Manual choke!  Now that is primitive, albeit reliable and fine if one knows what one is doing with it.  I don't know either, unless it is simply a case of the wrong mechanic at the wrong time; someone who doesn't really know what he's looking at. 
Or it could be something more sinister.  I had an odd but somehow similar experience when my old Volvo, which had mechanical fuel injection, broke down.  The car was recovered somewhere and I was given a load of guff about the entire fuel injection system failing and potential costs of thousands to fix it, along with various horror stories about obsolete parts and the car being an effective write-off.  I insisted the Volvo was recovered to an old-fashioned and good mechanic I knew of; he correctly diagnosed a seized fuel pump, fixed it and had the car back on the road inside 24 hours.
The first mechanic, Mr Failed Fuel Injection, made me suspicious almost immediately.  He couldn't quite hide the covetous gleam in his eyes when a classic Volvo in, even if I say so myself, excellent condition rolled in on the back of a recovery truck with a 'dumb' female on board.  I played dumb throughout but asked just enough of the right questions to satisfy myself that, firstly, he was lying and, secondly, the reason he was lying was that he wanted the Volvo.  He eventually started going down the line of 'I'll take it off your hands for £50 and you can have this nice (whatever) hatchback I've got for a good price...' 
I wonder if the same happened to your sister?  It's similar: classic car, minor fault, mechanic spots an opportunity and invents a major fault with the intention of prising said car away from the owner for a fraction of its value.  There are still people out there, probably a dwindling few, who have no idea of the worth of their classic cars.  The 'I bought it new in 1977 and never got round to replacing it' lot.  

facade

It is the lead from pickup in the distributor fracturing internally that causes ignition problems, same as on the 1.3 Maestro- we had two of those, and both needed that lead repairing.

AdrianC

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

I wonder if the same happened to your sister?  It's similar: classic car, minor fault, mechanic spots an opportunity and invents a major fault with the intention of prising said car away from the owner for a fraction of its value.  There are still people out there, probably a dwindling few, who have no idea of the worth of their classic cars.

It's a Metro. "Classic values" have not hit them.

Ditzy_Mitzy

AdrianC said:

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

I wonder if the same happened to your sister?  It's similar: classic car, minor fault, mechanic spots an opportunity and invents a major fault with the intention of prising said car away from the owner for a fraction of its value.  There are still people out there, probably a dwindling few, who have no idea of the worth of their classic cars.

It's a Metro. "Classic values" have not hit them.

1987 Rover Metro Metro Hatchback 1.0 Manual Petrol Hatchback Petrol Manual | eBay
Are you sure?  I know it's not up for loads but I remember the days when you'd have needed to pay someone to take a car like that away.