I recently started a new job which is 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with 4 days off at the end of every month (this becomes important in a paragraph or so) and arranged for the bike to be collected on monday 23rd june. i went into the shop and explained exactly what needed doing (based on the fail sheet, what had been done to the bike and parts that i took in with me) in total i needed one gasket (from the collector box to end can)which i was assured had been ordered, two screws for the rear indicator lense (more about them later...) brackets for collector box to end cans and the wiring problem investigated.
before this i went to a honda main dealer in castleford (castle motorcycles) who were excellent, the guy behind the service counter was friendly, courteous and bent over backwards to find me the gaskets i needed. he went out to the office and came back with a fist full of microfiche pages to try and find the correct sizes and when i told him i had measured them rummaged in the desk for a vernier and measured all the odds and sods to find the gaskets i wanted. unfortunately i cant remember his name (to my shame) so apologies to him for that but he really knew his stuff and sold me a lovely crash helmet to boot!
anyhow, i took the 3 gaskets to pete smith and explained that i needed 1 gasket ordering and the screws for the indicator lense, describing them as "long black screws". I was then told that the screws i needed were short, and had a pointed end, to which i replied that the ones i took out weren't short and were flat ended. pete smith told me that superdream screws were as he described and i was mistaken...... (with hindsight i should have walked out then)
i explained that the bike i was bringing in was a CM and not a superdream and he replied with "i know what a cm looks like"
it is now over 2 weeks later and i have had to loan money off my wifes family to buy another bike so i can keep my job -because public transport isnt able to get me to work, and my mother and father in law have been using their week off to drive me to and pick me up from work- all because, despite several phone calls from me, my wife, and my wifes mother, and being told that "its in the workshop", "its next to be done", "its on the bench", "i havent had chance to look at it yet" and having been basically lied to several times, it finally got onto the bench and they found a leak on one of the carbs and said they couldn't do it because new carbs would cost more than the bike is worth.
the worst thing about all of this is that when we arranged to pick the bike up it became obvious that the bike had only been put on the bench that morning (july 5th) they got the price they quoted for collection wrong, forgot to add any labour on the bill and (this really proved the incompetence) brought the bike out to me with a kawasaki key in the ignition...
all in all i would recommend avoiding them altogether and if you live in the pontefact/castleford area going to either castle motorcycles or mallinders motorcycles which are both in castleford.
thanks for reading this monster of a post.
Regards.
Chris.
