So I have yet to encounter a shop in my area that I would do business with. I guess it's the way I came up with respect to working on cars. I was taught by folks that one might call extremists from a very early age. I was putting cars on lifts at 8 years old, lol, which now that I think about it was a little insane but the guys teaching me knew where I was and when. I installed a car stereo in my mom's car at age 6 all because I watched someone do it that explained everything to me as they went. At age 7 my mom's car wouldn't start one winter morning, so she called my uncle down the block. She told him I was outside under the hood. He said "Give him a minute". I propped the choke flap open with a screwdriver and started it right up. I was also taught to wipe down my tools every day, and put them back in the box where they belong. Then wipe down any work areas because grease doesn't evaporate. I briefly worked in the field and realized there just wasn't enough money in it. So I moved on. But I still practice the same things I was taught, and unfortunately that created expectations from others that often just aren't there. So when I visited the local shops it was mostly walking in, looking around, and running like hell. Either I'd see a complete mess, low end consumables in the shop destined for customer machines, or just general disarray.
YOU sound like you have a shop I'd love to send my equipment to, so I can do others things. Sure enough, all I see for you is "Torland". My guess and luck probably means that's Scotland, but I know for sure it's unfortunately nowhere near here. That's too bad. I'm never gonna get a weekend off, lol.
When I was in college we would spend an hour to mount & polish a near perfect microscope specimen
Then I went to work in industry where you had to make a profit & I was expected to do around 15 an hour.
Scratches & facets mean nothing just so long as you can see & photograph what you need to.
A pristine workshop is nice eye candy but in reality some one has to pay for all that clean clear workspace and it is not the mechanic.
I am a mobile mechanic so breakdown work is done where the mower sits, in the middle of a lawn, in some ones shed , on their dirt driveway.
Friday I repaired a JD franken mower used as a tow motor in the middle of a pile wood chips .
Thursday it was the same story except it was being used to spread manure in the form of poultry shed scrapings .
Scheduled servicing is done at the workshop , again out in the open under a 2 ton yard crane .
There are some who can not abide leaving their mower in my "scrapyard" they are welcome to take them into town and pay $ 150 / hr to cover the costs of those big work bay and rolling tool boxes full of snap ons.
My work comes with an unconditional 12 month warranty, the big box gives 3 months .
I charge scheduled hours which of course are always less than the actual time taken to do a job
The "operating theatre " workshops charge actual hours and because it is computerised, every nut, bolt, washer, grease , cleaning solutions, shop rags & shop fuel and one even a used oil disposal fee .
However we are getting a long way off topic , as these threads often do .
When I was doing my 1 month evaluation before buying the run the vendor would wack me on the back of the head and ask "what time is NASSA coming for this job? "
It took a long time to come to grips with the fact that these are mowers and for the bulk of them they have been made as cheap as possible with the cheapest materials that might possibly do the job.
So getting ulcers about the brand of oil , spark plugs or filters is a waste of time & energy.
If the customer wants you to use some thing that is way over specked for their machine then just do it & charge them for it .
