Air Conditioning for a cooler Wellington. Cooler summer, dryer Winter

Upgrade time with the purchase of a new AC servicing station loaded with features.  Our Weltec friend Adrian has been it to give us all a refresher course.  Now loaded with the equipment to assess most faults with HVAC and AC systems, scan tools to provide code reading and live data, Thermal gun provides a great visual tool for our temperatures of high and low pressure circuits, temperature drops across condensers etc and of course the AC station for Recovery, recycling, vacuuming and refilling of systems. 

Charging station put to work while we got schooled up on the new equipment. It was a bit of an eye opener as to how forgiving some cars are, we selected 4 cars, My car pictured, a BMW loan car, a customers Tiguan and a staff members Suzuki. All 4 cars fundamentally were cooling the cars, and exhibited no faults, IE, no electrical issues detected with the scan tools, codes etc. Thermal gun and touch test of the high and low pressure pipe work as expected, Ie, frosty cold and very hot. Temps across condensers acceptable and all cars were cool at the vents. (not freezing cold but definitely cooling). And the gauge pressures were with-in acceptable ranges…. However as we were training on the new equipment, all cars we degassed and the extracted amounts across all of them were 1/3 to 1/2 below the manufacturers specs.

As I said above, forgiving, however as we found out, they were working but no where near as effective as they could be and were about to be…. After a vacuum of the system and a recharge of the systems, all 4 cars had a considerable drop in temp at the vents. BMW loan car as an example we removed 330grams from the system which should have had over 700. Once recharged we saw as low as 1.5degrees at the vents..

All cars were tested for leaks, all were ok, all held a vacuum for our test period. Much like tyres on your car, there is a certain amount of loss over time., unlike a tyre where you can just pop on a gauge and top up the AC system isn’t as simple and the only way to really know is to recover and measure and recharge with the specified amount..

Thermal Gun, what a great tool to inspect the system, the obvious is check the temp at the vents, however its awesome to look at the expected temperature drop across the condenser (checking for blockages, internal or external) and pipe temps etc

Wellington European Tyres – YOKOHAMA now available.

Some time ago we added tyres to our growing list of services on offer. We have a large range available, Continental, Maxxis, Goodyear, Pirelli, Nankang and Hankook to name a few. Recently we managed to get YOKOHAMA on board. We had a request for some road legal track style tyres for the car pictured. Great outcome as we have now added Yokohama to our available tyre brands.

And this is why we service and WOF cars

Here’s is a great pic and a great example as to why cars get inspected like they do. On older cars with brake drums and shoes, the car had a way of telling you there was a problem. the brake pedal travel would get longer as the shoes wore out. The handbrake might not hold like it used too. The pedal may go soft or spongy.

In a modern car with disc brakes all around you can virtually have no brake linings left, but still have brakes that perform well, as was the case with the car in the picture below. By design the brakes are continuously adjusting as the pads wear. So they don’t go out of adjustment like an older car might. These brakes pictured well and truly passed the WOF brake test on our electronic gauge, however on the visual inspection they are about as low as you would dare to go and in fact were failed a WOF.

Other factors here too are this is only 1 of 4 pads in the front, and the pads don’t always wear evenly so often the one we cant see easily is worse off.

Timing Chain fun on an Audi Q7. Intense.

Here we have the rear of an Audi Q7 engine. This section requires the removal of the gearbox for access. So ultimately the complete subframe and powertrain needs to be removed. and then there is room to split off the gearbox and all of the associated intake and exhaust plumbing. If you look closely you can see some of the timing tool locking pins are fitted. This job started out as chasing oil leaks and ended in timing chain replacement as some ‘routine maintenance’.

More brakes, This time BMW M5

Check out these massive stoppers! These things are absolutely huge. Huge power under the bonnet requires matching huge stopping power to match. Nice Genuine fitment here, we also have some nice aftermarket options out there for these.

Oil Burning BMW for repair

BMW in for heavy oil consumption. The car was performing fine however the oil usage was high. Tests came back with using about 1Litre of oil per 1000km’s. Thankfully this owner had a mechanical breakdown insurance who came to the rescue and paid for a large portion of the repairs. As it turned out we did 2 of these jobs in August.

Both with policy’s through different providers. This one required ‘exhaust’ valve guides and valve stem seals. A reasonably common issue. The work involved removing the cylinder head for inspection and repairs as required. The owner in this case opted to renew the timing chain ‘kit’. The timing tool in ‘blue’ is fitted here as we ‘time’ the engine and torque up the crank and cam pulleys.

BMW’s twinning

Our car TOY006 was in for brakes and then its twin arrives for the same job. Snap, hit repeat in the shop.

AC Cobra

Great seeing these arrive at WEEU. We are also looking after a few at the Hamilton shop, Terapa Auto Electrical. This particular one is a Graham Berry built replica. My 2 and 4 year year old boys were lucky enough to get special treatment with this car when we ran into the owner at a car show….

RS Audi BIG brakes!!!

This is only a little car, but these brakes are huge!!

Our new neighbours

So after a long couple of years dealing with noise and construction, trucks, trucks, and more trucks, we now have a shiny new building to look at from our entrance. I took this pic early morning, after the builders were done and before the tenants started moving. If you’ve not been to us for a while or at all then this landmark will let you know you’ve arrived at Wellington European….