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Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
Sorry said i wouldnt post anymore on this subject but…..trouble is you show one member of the public, how to do something,this gives him great confidence.then next thing you now he/she is telling the neighbours how clever,he/she is. and saying you dont need to get an engineer,ill do it for a tenner……. its a downward spiral chaps,and yes i am speaking from experience.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
How to change a fan oven element
Loads more if you want to go looking.
So please, pick the right targets before you pick a fight. Chris stuck up one video, Martin posted that it was on You Tube and loads of people go off on one saying that UKW is the big bad wolf as well as having a dig at Chris when, we’re small potatoes in this area.
K.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
just cause other people are doing it does this make it right
some people tend to be like sheep and follow suit because thats what other people are doing.
some people seem to put themselves on a pedastal and end up hell bent on doing what they want to do, and nobody else is right except for themselves.
some people are only interested in profit, even if it is detrimental to others involved.
some people believe in what they are doing is for the benefit of all,but do they wear blinkers.
some people are like sheep as previosly mentioned,and at the end of the day they end up getting fleeced.
some people wake up and smell the coffee, and realize what is happening around them.
some people dont give a damn about anything,and we can talk till the cows come home, to them it wont make a difference.
kwatt i thought this was a trade site for engineers and not a retail site. like where your examples seem to be taken from.Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
ddirect wrote:kwatt i thought this was a trade site for engineers and not a retail site. like where your examples seem to be taken from.
It still needs funding and that’s not taken from the engineers. That requires an involvement in retail.
A few might be willing to pay for access, most would not and would rather the resource remained free to them.
You are however most welcome to leave at any point if you do not like the way things are.
But there’s also some people that don’t believe in helping in the any shape or form on here, even for trade help, but are quite happy to accept all the free help that they are given then whine and bitch that we help the public. In my book, that’s hypocrisy.
You left out all the “some people” that doesn’t sit well with your argument, I thought I’d offer a starting point for that list. 😉
K.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
i am a member of this site and i do frequent different areas and use the facilitys you offer,but it does make my blood boil, when i look in the puplic section as i did this morning and see someone giving a blow by blow account of how to totally strip a wma to do the bearings, this guy said he was a mechanic so appeared to have a bit of knowledge, but do you realy think he would be so graffic in detail if you asked what was up with your car. please dont get me wrong i am NOT against this site and never have been it is a usefull tool, so surely being a member i have a right to an opinion, i was only trying to get a feel for other peoples thoughts on the matter, and hoped someone could come up with a solution, theres a difference between being helpfull, and being to helpfull,
it is not only my livelhood but everyone on this site including admin and moderators, surely there has to be a more common sense aproach to giving out information in the public forums.
i repeat
i am not hear to cause trouble, i myself use this site, it needs to continue and grow, but please everyone put some thought into how you reply on public forums, lets not massage our own egos,because it feels good to help, maybe if we all paid a subscription, a list could be offered to the person with the problem, local engineers in there area, just a thought,im sure i would subscribe to be on there.
Darrenim with kwatt on this one
theres massive amounts of info on the net, be that on here or other sites
the wma bearings thread was a typical example of that, the blow by blow account was evidentally from a non proffessional.
whatever we’d have done, there was little any one could do to stop the individual pulling that machine apart.. he wasnt prepared to payim sure theres a good take up of people using this site who take on good advice and use the online shop to assist them, thats the point, isnt it better to get SOMETHING back, rather than lose out completely?
ull never stop the public, you gotta try and get what you can from them, by whatever means…
you need to google, and see some of the other, badly moderated sites,allowing dangerous, bad information, which means ukwg stands head and shoulders above them all imho
helo_75 wrote:
im sure theres a good take up of people using this site who take on good advice and use the online shop to assist them, thats the point, isnt it better to get SOMETHING back, rather than lose out completely?Whooaa boy! ….. UKWG “get SOMETHING back” and all the rest of us “lose out completely” Can you not see this?
I think Kwatt shows his true “Black Duck’dness” by his “if you don’t like it *ugger off I’m doing it anyway attitude.
No problem with this, it’s his site he can do what he wants, but anyone who helps to shovel coal onto our funeral pyre has to need his head read … IMHO.
Don’t forget, those who run the site also benefit hugely from the info it contains … hard earned trade secrets shared willingly among service engineers. But when these are leaked to all and sundry alarm bells should be sounding.
I don’t care what anyone else is doing or how they’re doing it … if amateurs want to show how clever they are on youtube by fixing their Bosch on camera, good luck to ’em, but if our trade has any integrity, we should remain aloof!Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
turbodry wrote:Whooaa boy! ….. UKWG “get SOMETHING back” and all the rest of us “lose out completely” Can you not see this?
In what way exactly?
turbodry wrote:I think Kwatt shows his true “Black Duck’dness” by his “if you don’t like it *ugger off I’m doing it anyway attitude.
I’ve no clue what “Black Duck’dness” is.
But I’m just sick of trying to get across the points to people that clearly don’t want to understand or simply have a polarized viewpoint to mine.
I’ve explained why and I’ve explained how the site works and, if that’s not good enough for you or it doesn’t suit you then it would perhaps be best if you didn’t participate.
turbodry wrote:Don’t forget, those who run the site also benefit hugely from the info it contains … hard earned trade secrets shared willingly among service engineers. But when these are leaked to all and sundry alarm bells should be sounding.
Oh yeah, we’re out there spreading trade secrets all over the internet and robbing the food from your table! :rolls:
Like I even have the time to read all the posts these days let alone compile all that into something to actually “leak”.
Ludicrous.
turbodry wrote:I don’t care what anyone else is doing or how they’re doing it … if amateurs want to show how clever they are on youtube by fixing their Bosch on camera, good luck to ’em, but if our trade has any integrity, we should remain aloof!
That’s your opinion and, obviously that of a few others, I think we all get it.
But I would warn you, do not make accusations about myself or UKW without having facts to back it up. In other words to be clear, to the point and simple, put up or shut up.
K.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
From my own experience motor brush fits are few and far between.
For example I recently used the last set of hotpoint carbons from a bag of 25 that I bought from Wash Vac Services!Does anyone remember them?
I have taught myself to repair simple faults on pcb’s which can double the profit on these jobs.
eg. fridge freezer pcb repair cost 18p,fixed same day customer more than happy to pay £75 repair bill.And before anyone asks NO I’m not going to post on utube! 😉
Steve
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
EFS wrote:From my own experience motor brush fits are few and far between.
I still do between 5 or six sets of 1600474 carbons every week, including other makes about 10 to 12 brush changes a week.
Jim.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
iadom wrote:
I still do between 5 or six sets of 1600474 carbons every week, including other makes about 10 to 12 brush changes a week.Jim.
Well, Jim, 10 to 12 brush changes a week would be enough on its own for me to have made my living. (Albeit that my middle name is Frugal).As it is I’m lucky if I get one or two. The rest are(looking back in my diary for the last week) Zanussi grill element, AEG dw module repair, DF23 no fault found(nff), WHP gas t/d -job withdrawn, T/Bx wm nff, Creda t/d reversing timer, WMA bearings & spider, BSH wm nff,Indesit old wm on/off, BSH dw poss module repair, Zan t/d belt & bearings, Servis module repair. (A fairly typical week – at least it was interesting).
No brush jobs, no door seals (although a bloke did call me about doing one but then did it himself, I was gonna charge him £20/25 labour), no pumps, no filters (well I usually do those over the phone anyway but I’m wondering if I should change that policy) and no oven elements. (Not had an oven element for a couple of months now!)
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested to know what percentage of your work load the brush jobs represented and whether that has changed over the last six months, year?
Mike.Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
I can throw you an interesting statistic or two Mike.
When I started in this industry in the late eighties it was doing Candy authorised service among others. I also was working with my old man in the main Zanussi agency for Glasgow and most of the west central belt of Scotland. Between them we covered almost 20,000 service calls a year.
The low rates that we got for service under warranty was made worth doing, as it barely covered the cost of doing it, as we earned higher rates on extended warranty work. Between them that accounted for going on for 70-75{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the work we did, the rest was charge calls.
What we’ve seen in insurance labour rates being eroded to the point where they now pretty much match warranty rates. Or that could be, the warranty rates have risen over the years but the insurance rates have not kept pace.
In either event, the rates have not tracked with inflation.
The important one however is the bit that actually paid, the charge work and to some extent the spares sales.
Even holding an agency the charge work started to drop off quite remarkably through the 90’s as did the spares sales. The reason was, as I’ve already said, that machines got cheaper in relative terms.
In the latter days of the large agency work that 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} had dropped to about 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}.
Now it will constitute less than 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}.
That 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} generated more than 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the profit at the time but, more importantly, it contributed massively to the cash flow to keep the business going as we had a 30-90 day delay in getting paid for all the rest.
Spares sales just vanished pretty much. Again, they made a bit of money but more importantly contributed to cashflow.
These days, charge work is less than 3{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of out turnover and I’m expecting that to drop again this year. The only thing that may reverse that is that people don’t have the cash to go and just buy another appliance without at least attempting a repair.
With all that history in mind, along with the fact that I know this has been happening to many others across the UK you may perhaps be able to better understand when I say that the internet is not the cause of the decline of the industry. I will say again, it has played a part in it, but it isn’t the primary culprit as this all started long, long ago when the internet had absolutely no part to play.
Customers also have a part in all this with their obsessive desire to achieve the lowest possible price for anything and that has been accelerated by the internet. The bad thing for all the repairers is that it has led to a rash of very cheap imported appliances among many other consumer goods.
So, this argument that raises it’s head every now and then is, to me, just silly. It’s people trying to lay the blame somewhere, anywhere and continually missing the mark, failing to understand the complexity of it all and the history.
To try to say that a few video clips, even a full video on how to repair a machine, is causing the decline of this industry is farcical in the extreme. But it is an easy target to pick on.
When the original Haynes washing machine manual arrived the gloom and doom merchants predicted the end of the world as we know it. Everyone would just repair their own machines… blah, blah, blah. Well, 15 years or more later many of us are still here. Many of us that actively seek charge work still get it and some even still make a living from it.
Yes, it’s harder and yes, it’s not as easy or profitable as once it was. But it’s been headed that way for way over a decade, it’s nothing new.
Add to that we’re in one of the quietest periods of the year as people pay for their holidays and you have a marked natural downturn. Then, on top of that, we have a recession in which many are scared that they won’t have a job in a few months and you have to ask, is it any wonder that nobody is spending any money?
If the washer is a bit noisy, but they can live with it, they will. If one ring on the cooker is busted, well it’s salad and barbecue weather anyway so, they’ll live with it.
K.
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
iadom wrote:I still do between 5 or six sets of 1600474 carbons every week, including other makes about 10 to 12 brush changes a week.
1600474 brush changes down these parts is a rare even now. The last one I did was 8th April to a WM series. The old 95 series are all but extinct down here except for a few old biddies dotted about that are just as rare. Bosch brushes on the other hand fair much better but I only average around 4 or so a week of them at best.
Back in the 90’s I had a fair few people phone me to just buy brushes from me to DIY themselves and so shifted a fair few at my front doorstep. That little earner has long since died off and the local stores that used to flog spares across the counter have since shut up shop in that time.
The assumption being that around here at least few bother to DIY at all and those that do buy the bits from the Internet somewhere? The vast majority are buying new cheap junk and the local council pick-up busy trolling the kerbsides carting the old whitegoods to the recycle depot.
Such is the situation here in the sunny south!
Here’s just a thought, of those members of the general public that post questions on UKW asking for DIY help it would be interesting to learn from where their IP addresses are located? Where the ‘hot spots’ are around the UK I wonder?
I was once led to believe that 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the UK population live within 25 miles of Wolverhampton town centre. So presumably if a stats map could be drawn up from IP addresses the hot spots may well come from the most densely populated areas? Clearly Manchester fairs well work wise as does Leeds and there’s a fair few that live in those parts that must do a fair bit of DIY as well I would think?
I think the only DIY that goes on down here in the south theses days is fly-tipping!
Re: New way to replace Bosch brushes.
So far this week I have fitted 3 sets of 1600474 carbons, 2 in WM and 1 in a 95 series.
2 sets of 16004462 (bosch) carbons in WMA machines, plus a set of 1603910 FHP brushes in a WMA.
Also fitted a set of Hoover 97916670 carbons to a BEKO motor and one set in a Bosch machine.
Eight up to now.
Not fitted any ISE brushes this week but do change those on a regular basis now some of the machines are over three years old.
That really is a typical week but usually do more 1600474’s
There may be a few reasons why I still get a lot of older Hotpoint machines.
Together with my years at Hotpoint I have been on this area for over 40 years and so have built up a large customer base. A lot of them bought Hotpoint machines five, ten even twenty years ago because they wanted a machine that I could/would repair.
There were also several large GEC owned factories in the area, Osram in Shaw, Metro Vickers and one or two others in Manchester. Over the years they generated a huge staff sales base.
All sadly in the past but I still have many hundreds of 15 to 25 year old Hotpoint machines out there, together with my nice little stock of ISE customers it should hopefully be enough to see me over the next 3 or 4 years .
Jim.
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