Well, here's the outcome - spent the day at the shop yesterday. Whatever opinions some of you have about the shop and Lindsay's work you are free to have, I can only speak about my experience, which frankly was incredible. I found Lindsay to be very professional and friendly and it's clear he really knows his stuff. I have a fair amount of mechanical experience which he picked up straight away and involved me in every step of the process - we both inspected anything that needed work and were in agreement on everything.
We ended up also replacing the tail shaft as one of the unis was stuffed, we went looking for a knock in the rear end which we decided felt like a sloppy diff, so we fitted a tight replacement - when we found afterwards that the knock was still there Lindsay was happy to leave the new one there as we misdiagnosed it - only charged for half the labour and for the oil. Looks like the noise is coming form a combination of slightly sloppy CVs and the suspension somewhere. Also replaced all the rubbers in the front end with urethane and straightened a bent caster rod. Clutch master cylinder was stuffed too so we fixed that. After a test drive he did a wheel alignment, a tune, inspected all fluids and lights etc and didn’t charge for any of that.
At the end of the day I was honestly a little terrified what the total bill would be as he had 2 other staff along with himself going flat out on it all day – I told him that and was advised he’d look after me. Total bill was just over $1200 all in – honestly I was shocked – was prepared for double that. He charged some things at a quoted fixed price irrelevant of how long it took and the fact 3 of them did the work, and where it was at an hourly rate he charged for 1 hour for 3 guys (not 3 man hours for 1 hour!)
The gear box is tight, slick and silent and the car ran beautifully all the way back to Sydney. Everything came with a written 12 month warranty.
As someone has said above – give someone your time, honour and respect and you’ll likely get it back – being involved in the process helps build a good relationship. On the other hand if you’re a pain in the neck, question all the work based on little personal experience of involvement, and then grizzle about a reasonable bill then don’t expect a good experience anywhere (not saying anyone here has done that nor am referring specifically to the Z shop). Lindsay and his staff bent over backwards to see me out on the road that night in a great car.
I couldn’t be happier with Lindsay and the Z shop and from my experience would go back in a heartbeat and recommend him unreservedly to anyone who asks.
