Our work, on real driveways

Pads and discs on all four corners of a Toyota RAV4 in Cambridge. Booked in rather than urgent, which is the easier way round to do it.

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Brakes are done per axle, both sides together, because a pair wearing at different rates pulls the car to one side when you brake. All four corners is both axles in one visit.

Pads and discs together, rather than pads on their own, is the call once the disc itself has worn or its face has gone. A new pad bedding onto an old disc never gets full contact across its face, so it wears unevenly and the braking never quite comes right.

This one was booked in, not a breakdown. So the whole job on the day came down to turning up when we said we would and doing what we said we would do, which is a low bar that is worth clearing.

Most brake work does not have to be an emergency. Caught while the pads are getting low rather than at the point where something is grinding, it is a planned visit rather than a problem.

The car had failed its MOT on the airbag light. A dash warning light for the airbag system is an automatic fail, so nothing else about the car mattered until whatever was behind it had been found.

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A clock spring is what keeps the wiring connected to everything that turns with the steering wheel: the airbag, the horn, the buttons on the spokes. It is a flat ribbon of wire coiled inside a housing so it can wind and unwind as you steer, and it is a wearing part. When the airbag circuit through one goes open, the car lights the warning and stops relying on the airbag.

The light on its own only says the system has a fault, not which part of it. Reading what the car has stored narrows it to the circuit, and a worn clock spring is one of the common answers.

An MOT failure on a warning light is an awkward one to be left with. Nothing looks broken, the car drives exactly as it did the day before, and it still cannot be used until the fault is found and cleared. The waiting is usually the expensive part, not the part itself.

It is also the plainest argument there is for a pre-MOT check. A light that is already on before the test is a fail you know about in advance, at a point where it is still an appointment rather than a problem.

A front brake service on a Ford Courier in Huntingdon, wanted at short notice.

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A brake pad is a block of friction material on a steel backing plate, and it wears down until there is not much block left. Held edge on against a new one, that is the whole thing in one look.

The other half of a brake service is the part nobody takes a photograph of: cleaning out everything the pads sit in. The carrier and the slider pins collect rust and brake dust, and as they tighten up the pad stops moving freely against the disc. That is where uneven wear and most brake noise come from. New pads bolted into a seized, dirty carrier do not stay good for long, which is why this one was cleaned out properly before anything new went near it.

James's own summary of the result was quieter and smoother, which is what new pads and a clean carrier should give you.

Short notice is the part worth saying out loud. Brakes are not the thing to keep driving on while you wait for a slot, and this one did not have to be.

A full service on an Audi in Soham, with an engine flush and a new set of spark plugs. Changing the plugs is the part of that job that has you taking the top of the engine apart, and that is where the other thing turned up.

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With the coils out, there was oil sitting down in the spark plug wells. The seals around the plugs and the rocker cover gasket above them had started to let go.

A rocker cover gasket is a cheap part doing a simple job: sealing the lid on the top of the engine. When it starts to go the oil escapes slowly, and because the plug wells sit inside that lid, the oil ends up exactly where the plugs and the coils live. Coils do not last long sitting in oil.

It was not at the point of having to be done that day, so it was not done that day. What the customer got was a straight description of what it is and a recommendation to have it sorted before it got worse, which is a better position to be in than finding out when the engine starts misfiring.

That is most of what a service is really for. The oil and the filters are the straightforward part. The value is in somebody having the top of the engine apart and paying attention to what is around it.

A customer in Huntingdon broke down the night before a working day. The car was recovered that evening and they got in touch the same night. The thermostat had failed.

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A thermostat is a valve in the cooling system. It stays shut while the engine warms up, so it gets to temperature quickly, then opens to let coolant through the radiator. When one fails it tends to do it in one of two directions: stuck shut and the engine overheats, or stuck open and it never properly warms up. The first of those is the one that stops you.

The car had already been recovered, so there was nothing left to move anywhere. That left the part, which is the bit that usually decides how long one of these takes. We got hold of one and fitted it on the driveway the next morning.

The customer had work. That was the actual deadline, not the repair, and it is the reason the call came in at night rather than the following week.

A customer in Red Lodge needed a full service and new front brakes on an Audi A5, with the MOT coming up. The local garage could not fit the car in for three weeks. We did it the next day, on the driveway.

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Brake discs wear down where the pads sweep, which leaves a ridge standing proud around the outer edge. That ridge is the thickness the disc started at, and everything inside it is what the braking has taken away. Worn brakes tend to show up as an advisory on a test long before they fail one, which sounds like the good news and is worth treating as the opposite.

A full service is also a proper look over the car, and this one turned up more. One of the rubber boots underneath had split open, with the grease it is meant to hold thrown out around it. A split boot is an MOT failure in its own right, and once the grease is out and the grit is in, the joint it was protecting does not last.

The air filter was the other one. The box it sits in had filled with leaves and straw, and the filter had done the same. None of that fails a test, but an engine that cannot draw air freely does not run as well, and it is the sort of thing you only find by taking the box apart.

None of the extra work had to happen that morning, so it did not. We went through with the customer what needed doing before the test and what could wait, and in what order. The brakes were the part that would have failed it, and they were done.

The three week wait is the part worth noticing. There was nothing difficult about this job. It needed somebody who could come the next day.

We worked on a customer's Ford Transit in Cambridge with a wheel bearing that had failed badly. A wheel bearing is what the wheel actually turns on, and it carries the weight of whatever the van is loaded with, so they wear faster on a working vehicle than on a car doing the same miles.

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A failing bearing usually warns you first. A drone or a rumble that rises with speed and changes note as you turn a corner is the classic sign, and it is not one to leave: left alone, a bearing can seize.

For a business that is not just an inconvenience. A van off the road is a day of work that does not happen, and unlike a second car there is rarely anything to fall back on.

It did not come off easily: that is an impact wrench and a pry bar on the floor beside it, both earning their keep. We tracked the part down and fitted it the very next morning, at the van, and it was back in action.