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Does weeing in the bosses tea count as a jolly jape?
Hiding all the porn mags in the workshop lavvy and replacing them with a gay porn mag made a few people claim to feel ill.
Accidentally dropping the wiper arm on a customers Audi and cracking the screen. Mad panic, and a huge argument over who was going to break the news to the owner, a Mr Geoff Capes Esq.
And my favourite. Not a wheeze, bit still funny. One of pur lads had a bad stammer. When the windscreen man came to replace Mr Capes' windscreen he too had a stammer. We said to our man, "hey, Tom, he's taking the curse word out of you", and the most almighty fist fight erupted because each though the other was taking the mickey. It actually got quite nasty so we had to break them up.
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That'd be about right - turning up to a broken down Ford Onion.
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so those who don't have mot, how do you know your brakes are up to standard? to save a few quid? pathetic. By regularly inspecting them, and getting them efficiency tested on the rollers every spring... Rocket science it is not.
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Its all flooding back...
We used to use this giant rubber band to flick a spark plug at each other. Some bright spark had the idea of playing golf, and the workshop, showroom and valeting bay became a 9 "hole" course.
Anyone remember the "Mr Angry" premium phone line? The parts manager was a penis so we'd ring the line and then transfer the call to parts, and listen to him arguing with a recording for 15 minutes.
The aforementioned service manager was a cock. He had one of these Psion organiser things and his whole life was in it, until one of the lads reset it...
He was going away for the weekend one Friday and left a bag of his clothes in the office. Some wag poured a cup of petrol into the bag, carefully zipped it up and ran. He was in a spectacularly bad mood the following Monday. I think that was the week he had a coronary.
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The Avantime is uber cool. Didn't Renault shove an F1 engine into one for a laugh?
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Oh yes, holding the apprentice down, spraying their groin with wd40 and lighting it was a great gag. We used to wet ourselves laughing as they ran around the workshop desperately trying to extinguish their grollies.
I was an apprentice too once. However, at 6'5" and 270lbs the Fossils were strangely reluctant to include me in such jolly japes, and the much smaller and weedier apprentice used to cop double as a result!
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It wasn't unknown for a customer to drop off a sporty car in the morning and catch the bus home or onwards to work. They'd be minding their own business when their car full of grinning mechanics would come flying last them at warp 9. The workshop manager used to get so angry he'd lose the power of coherent speech and the words would tumble out in the wrong order. Wed then titter, and he'd turn beetroot with anger. My how we laughed when he finally had a heart attack and was carted off in the ambo.
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One nice thing - obvious sh**boxes of no value that came in as trade ins would get sent to auction. We were allowed to pinch or swap bits off these, so my beloved mkII Astra estate over time sprouted GTE alloys, front bumper, bonnet, front seats etc. One of my mates turned his ford Escago 1.3 into a full on XR3i clone for free.
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There was a phone box in the street outside our showroom. When it was quiet wed phone it as people were walking past. Old folk were best, and would invariably answer. We'd pretend to be from BT investigating a fault and ask them to help us with out tests. We'd have old biddies standing on one leg with a phone book balanced on their head thinking they were helping the nice man from the GPO.
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Taking the air filters out of the sales boys cars at their request, to make them a touch faster. Men were men back then.
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I still love the fast MKII Astra's. Boy racers would moan they didn't handle, but no matter - by the time you'd wound up a wheezy XR3i enough to get down the road a GTE or SRI would have blitzed past and had sufficient time to do a three point turn around any corner. The only thing that mattered was POWER, and an Astra could get north of 130 brake out the box without having to resort to turbos like the Escort. And those iron block 18S and 20NE motors were as tough as the Escagos were fragile. Some prats would waffle on about the Golf GTi but real British men wanted a fast Astra from Ellesmere Port, not a modern day kubelwagen from a firm founded by the Nazi party.
Heady times.
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Things we used to do...
Steal customers cannabis from their ashtrays. It wasn't like they were going to call the police.
Spin up bearings on the airline and fire them across the workshop at people. Sometimes they'd climb the wall and sit at the ceiling until they wound down.
In one car we found a load of rather dirty lesbian love letters. We photocopied them for ourselves as porn.
Arrisshole customers could receive a variety of wheezes;
An exhaust full of grease. Once the engine was hot it would smoke like it was ablaze, but by the time they'd driven it back it would all have burned off.
Fish inside the door cards.
Drain 3/4 of the oil out and leave it idling over lunch. 70,000 miles of wear in an hour.
Never entrust your pride and joy to someone you've just been rude to!
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The original Espace was so uncool its now painfully cool. Few left.
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In the old days chrome trim would be applied to arches and panel edges to disguise rust. These days cars tend not to rust the same way, bit those with the necessary gene still drive a market on chrome stick on tat.
Keep fit sunroofs annoy me. How many fights have started because another motorist thought they were being called a walanker? Hell, even my bloody Proton had an electric sunroof ,so why couldn't Cavs, Mondieus, or 4 pot E30 Bimmers have them?
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They were quick things. Wasn't the V6 the full fat 200BHPish version in the Calibra? Not much slower, much more reliable and tractable.
They really were pretty cars for their time, and the most aerodynamic production cars in the World for some years.
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Passengers under the age of 7 can't use side facing seats. No use to me
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Which manufacturer was it that was insisting purchasers went on a driving course before they were let loose with the car? I suspect an IQ test would have been more appropriate here.
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How did they manage that at 30 MPH?
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Overdrive on older RWD 4 pot turbo Volvo's. Changing into 5th gear is hard work, so flicking a switch to engage OD in 4th was wonderfully lazy.
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Wonderful car, great thread.
Last week I drive down to Disneyland Paris for my daughters 6th Birthday. Took the wife's brand new Kia Sportage. Fast, comfortable, obscenely economical, but about as exciting as Norris from Corrie. The journey back was all set to be similar drudgery but on the A26 there was a fleet of DS's, presumably going to or from a show or meet.
I was getting excited for the first time in days, but as I slowly overtook I got to the front of the queue to see a Citroen SM leading the pack. I nearly fainted with sexual desire.
Great cars, lovely country.
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