I made the eagerly awaited trip across birmingham to see the main yam yam benneh today, I bought the car around 5 weeks ago and I always wanted to get the chain done though there was no evidence of problems imo, but to be on the safe side like when you buy any second hand car the first thing u do is replace the cam belt or in my case the chain

I arrived at around 9am today [my camera is an hour out] and took a photo of benny taking my new pride and joy into the workshop

within an hour benny had the cam cover off and chain cover off including the chain and was showing me the components, to my surprise though it was a late 02 plate it had the early unmodified oil jet amongst several other parts :shock:, he also advised me that the cam cover had never been taken off since being manufactured - some 6 years and 102k later, i personally think that is a good sign of a maintained and well looked after engine dunno.., here is the pic of the old oil jet - notice how small the jet is where the oil comes from the block and the size of the outlet - i seen bigger jets on 1.0 ltr nova carbs notsure.gif

Here is the new oil jet - the size of the hole in comparision is prob 2 or 3 times greater drool.gif

I took a photo of the exposed cams and boy do they look a nice shade of gold - most of my cars are usually much darker so it shows that previous owners have made sure it has had regular oil changes and hasn't been abused, no nasty scratches on the cam lobes either but i found there is little rollers under each lobe on top of each tappet dunno..

Here is a photo of the old cam chain before being taken off - once again a nice shade of gold and a fully lubricated set of chains

This is the closest i got to taking a photo of the lad as he was not camera friendly, he was resetting the ecu with a tech2 as he said it was vital due to the new chain,

Benny took approx around three hours considering he had to fit a new crank seal and manifold to cat gasket, whilst the car was ramped up I noticed the centre section was on its way out and blowing, I was advised to buy a remus centre section from LMF as they are only 60 or 70 quid

Oki here's the important bit, I will try and make this as detailed as possible concerning possible clients for benneh

Location

Very simple either a few miles off the m6 or basically 1 long straight road from the hagley road in Birmingham town centre, took me 35 mins from the NEC this morning

Efficiency

Benny dont mess about, he can do the job with his eyes shut almost and knows a hell of a lot about veccys and 2.2 engine, he got to work within 10 mins of me arriving and was starting to fit the new gear within an hour, I admittedly slowed him down with probing questions in general about the 2.2

Customer Friendly

Sometimes when you go to a specialist like a vxhall dealer they are not very interested in making sure your comfortable and confident in allowing someone to work on your car, the first thing they want off you is your money and dont care about how long you have to wait or how much hassle it might cause you tel.. noth. , benny might argue the toss with me but I found the dicks at lookers yardley completly lacking any sort of customer service or people skills, as i am in retail management i know what customers want and how to be treated, I have been on various courses as I was pleasantly suprised with how benny came across, I was a complete stranger to him and many people feel anxious and defensive about being in this position , i.e cost and customer care, Benny made the effort to ensure i was happy and comfortable whilst he worked on the motor, I personally believe the bloke is too good to work where he is and should look to start his own business as his personality attributes will make a hell of a lot of customers happy, it is about word of mouth when small businesses are growing and I personally cannot fault the bloke - my god if only some vxhall service managers had the same attitude as this bloke then vauxhall would be rolling in the customers

Price and Part

I found him very very competitive, infact the cheapest quote i got was about 150 quid more than what i paid today and they were reluctant to do the work, he came across like a true salesman when asking to be paid and I had no hesitation in handing over my hard earned cash, I think he even felt sorry that he had to charge me for the work, well that's how he came across to me cheers..

Summary

I would not hesitate to go back to benny if I needed work doing and i am thinking of persuading him into doing the cam belts on my family's vectras, if someone asked me to give him a score out of 100 then it would be in the high 90's !!, the only thing that lacked was the executive leather chair for me to sit on and read the sun this morning munchies..

Cheers for today benny - thank you !

8) 8)