Garage charges drive up the cost of motoring

Following the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule is essential for keeping your car running in peak condition, but rising garage costs may encourage more DIY mechanics to carry out simple maintenance and repair jobs themselves. A recently published survey by Warranty Direct (see labourrates.co.uk) showed that the cost of keeping your car on the road increased dramatically last year, with some garages charging up to £183 an hour for a mechanic.

The survey, which compares franchised and independent garages, also highlights a North South divide when it comes to the cost of motoring, with garages in the South East of England topping the chart for high labour costs. Greater London is the most expensive region in the country with an average labour rate of £89.78 per hour. The Capital was also home to the most expensive dealer in the UK, charging an incredible £183.30 an hour.

The ten highest counties were all from the South of England, including Hertfordshire (£86.68), Essex (£80.20) and Berkshire (£78.76). Looking for a cheaper alternative? Warranty Direct’s survey found that the best value region was Fife, where garages charge an average of just £55.40 per hour. Besides Cornwall (£62.68), Lancashire at £61.67 an hour was the most southerly region in the ten least expensive areas, but that’s still a long way to drive if you live in the South of England!

There remains a significant difference between choosing a franchised dealership over an independent garage at £89.31 and £49.92 an hour, respectively. For every £100 spent at a garage, £63 is spent on materials and £37 on labour. In total, motorists spent nearly £10bn last year servicing and repairing their vehicles, and paid for more than 504,000 mechanic hours. The data is based on labour rates from more than 3,850 franchised and independent garages across Great Britain.

Wythall Transport Museum, Birmingham

The Transport Museum at Wythall is located just off the A435 to the south of the Maypole Island. The charity was founded in 1977, and when I visited, in August 2007, a comprehensive fleet of vehicles was on display, from ‘Jumbo’ Daimler Fleetlines of West Midlands PTE to Routemasters of London Transport.

The admission price is very reasonable, just £3 for adults and £1 for children, although this increases on major operating days. The newly-opened ‘Power Hall’, funded by a Heritage Lottery Grant, contained an extensive exhibition, as well as displaying vehicles and other bus and coach memorabilia. In many vehicles, you are able to climb aboard and have a look inside – one of these was a London Routemaster, RCL2219 (CUV 219C). There is also an ex-Wolverhampton Trolleybus, a Midland Red coach and a ‘Red and White’ Duple Arab. There was also a ‘fake’ bus cab, with a steering wheel and movable destination blind, for children.

Outside, there was a collection of vehicles. Several of the once very common Birmingham ‘Fleetlines’ of both Daimler and Leyland manufacture, as well as a ‘Volvo Ailsa’, two half-cab double deckers (known as Guy Arabs) and a 1980s MCW Metrobus, a type which can still be seen in service with Travel West Midlands. Undergoing restoration in the shed behind these vehicles were more buses, including another MCW Metrobus and other Midland Red / WMPTE vehicles.

Over on the other side of the site is another shed, home to vehicles awaiting restoration, although most are cosmetically restored. One of these is an enormous Daimler double decker in Walsall Corporation livery. With 86 seats, it was an experiment by Daimler, before selling 16 of these buses to South Africa. Also in that shed are 1950s and 1960s coaches, single deckers along with a selection of Milk Floats, believed to be a unique collection. The Milk Float is fast disappearing from our streets, and it is remarkable to think that not only Dairies, but bakeries and even laundrettes used to use floats like these.

Back out at the front, the chassis of yet another Daimler Fleetline (this time from Swindon) can be seen, bodyless. A miniature train gives rides around the front, and there is a reconstructed bus terminus, with time clock and shelters. During special events a bus service runs from here to Birmingham City Centre using a vintage vehicle, route number 750.

As well as the vehicles on show, a café is open during visiting times (Saturdays/Sundays 11am-4.30pm from March – November), along with a well-stocked transport shop, providing everything bus and coach related, such as back issues of bus magazines, slides of vehicles, old timetables and maps, operating manuals, models and destination blinds.

As the largest collection of Birmingham City Transport and Midland Red Vehicles, Wythall Transport Museum is well worth a visit. Private Hire of vehicles and Group Visits are also available at the site.

- David Smith, Sutton Coldfield

A Brief History of the Haynes Workshop Manual

There are few household names when it comes to the world of publishing, but ask most mechanics a name that springs to mind when thinking of car manuals and they will almost certainly say one – Haynes. Over the past fifty years, Haynes has become synonymous with the humble workshop manual and with good reason, they are the clear market leader in their field, selling around a million books a year in the UK alone. World wide sales of Haynes’ workshop manuals are now guessed at somewhere in the reion of fifty million – that’s a lot of professional and DIY mechanics learning about car maintenance (and skinning more than a few knuckles along the way) with their help.

Many will be surprised to learn that the company’s origins can be traced back to just one man. When he was still a schoolboy John Haynes built an Austin Seven Special and produced a short booklet that he hoped would be of interest to others embarking on similar projects. The book was such a success that more DIY motoring titles followed, with two further special builders guides produced while the young Haynes carried out his National Service in the RAF. This lead eventually to the formation of J. H. Haynes & Co. Ltd just four short years later in 1960, while the first recognisable Owners Workshop Manual, for the Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite, was published in 1965.

Now as then, all Haynes Manuals are based on a careful strip down and rebuild of a vehicle, which is retained until publication date in case of any last minute enquiries before being sold on to staff or on the open market. This hands-on approach undoubtedly helped to strengthen the series’ reputation amongst mechanics everywhere, as it’s always reassuring to know that someone else has successfully completed the job that you are about to do.

Haynes simple approach of describing each task with text and photographs has also endured over the years, again because of its popularity with readers, and is a central part in the production of each manual. From start to finish each car manual will take around twenty to thirty weeks to write, with authors working in pairs, while a car will remain in the workshop for around four weeks. Motorcycle manuals will be written in around a third less time. One design aspect that has changed over the years is the use of computer generated photographs instead of hand drawn cover art. It may seem odd that a range of technical manuals should be fondly remembered for their jacket design, but some of the car cutaways drawn by Terry Davey were so incredibly detailed and entertaining that they have now been reproduced on a range of related products from playing cards to money boxes.

In recent years Haynes have diversified their publishing interests, and now produce a range of titles on many other motoring andt transport topics, as well as books about DIY and general lifestyle issues. It’s an ambitious range, with successful titles on house restoration, motor sport and maritime, aviation, farm tractors, commercial vehicles, motorcycling, cycling, caravanning, camping, home decorating and American cars. In late 2007 Haynes also produced a fantastic Desk Diary (featuring artwork by Terry Davey) and the year’s surprise bestseller – an Owners Workshop Manual for the WWII fighter, the Supermarine Spitfire!

Apart from publishing, Haynes also founded an impressive international motor museum, which is now dedicated to restoring and preserving motoring and motorcycling items. It houses more than 340 vehicles dating from 1886 to the present and is the largest of its type in the UK. Most of the cars in the museum are driven at least once a year so they are maintained as well as preserved, a fitting pursuit given the company’s workshop manual origins. For more information about the museum visit www.haynesmotormuseum.com .

Trams and Trolleybuses Worldwide 

In the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, trams and trolleybuses were considered to be old technology belonging to a bygone era ripe for replacement by the all-conquering bus. Bradford had the dubious honour of operating the UK’s last trolleybus system in 1972, and Blackpool became the UK’s only remaining tramway operator, gamely struggling to maintain services with an ageing fleet. Lack of investment and non-existant traffic management meant that trams and trolleybuses were hurriedly abandoned in the firm belief that buses would prove to be a cheaper and more attractive alternative to the car. However, nothing could have been further from reality. By the 1970s, bus usage was in serious decline and public road transport in the UK became what many still consider to be little more than an extension of the welfare state.

But in most parts of Europe things were different. Traditional tram systems were gradually modernised and transformed into a mode now known as light rail with segregated lines and fast, comfortable vehicles. The proven success of the light rail concept soon spread worldwide and new examples can now be seen in many countries, attracting passengers away from their cars and improving the quality of urban life. Even car-loving North America has embraced light rail to help turn run-down and neglected downtown areas into vibrant and attractive shopping, commercial and leisure destinations.

After a worldwide decline in trolleybus operation, modern articulated trolleybuses are now experiencing a resurgence of interest in many towns and cities where traffic levels don’t justify light rail but clean air is valued. Although far cheaper to introduce than light rail, trolleybuses cannot handle the same passenger flows and the speed and infrastructural flexibility of light rail. However, serious interest in modern trolleybuses has yet to penetrate UK transport planning. Light rail in the UK has had a slow and sometimes painful introduction, where it took up to ten years to get from proposal to operation, with an inevitable growth in cost and congestion. Conversely, in France and Spain a new system can be up and running in three years, with obvious benefits for budgets and traffic. Sadly, plans for new light rail systems in Leeds, Liverpool and South Hampshire were abandoned by the Government after years of preparation costing millions of pounds. This is in spite of light rail’s proven record in attracting and handling high passenger flows and giving a superior ride quality than buses. Funding for existing UK light rail system expansion is also a time-consuming and often fruitless exercise for what would be, in most other countries, a logical rolling programme of network development.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world gets on with modernising, expanding and building new systems, letting the UK decide whether it wants bendy-buses or a new version of Routemaster in London, or token sections of guided-bus or bus-lanes in provincial suburbs. Once more, trams have become a political football, kicked between pro-tram and pro-bus camps preventing sensible and long-term planning. The consequence is inertia and increasing road congestion.

When will we ever learn?

- Paul Haywood, author of Trams and Trolleybuses Worldwide