Pitstop Developments Forum Section!

As you may have noticed the Pitstop Developments Section of the forum is no longer available, this has been removed at the request of Steve himself.

Steve posted in the section yesterday to explain the situation to you all, so for any of you who have not read this, here is a copy of the post:

Steve is alive and well. First of all I’d like to apologise for the lack of communication over the last few weeks, I’ve been exceptionally busy and have been organising a lot of change. I appreciate this must be frustrating, but I’ve had to take the time to move things on.

There are a lot of rumours and speculation flying about, so here is the word from the ‘Horses mouth’. I took a step back too look at the bigger picture late last year and the reality of the situation was that the nature of the business, the customer base has very much changed over the last few years and as well as my personal perspective, it was apprent is was time to make important decisions.

A few years ago G40,G60 and Rallyes were all £3500 plus cars and were generally less than 12 years old and all in relatively good repair and customers were generally late to early thirties with the disposable income to carry out both proactive and reactive maintenance on the cars so issues were nipped in the bud. The quality of rare second hand spares such as G60 superchargers were decent and plentiful. Customers generally took advice and carried out work in a short time scale.

A few years on and the picture is very different. The cars are a lot older and the sporty genre of the cars ensure all but a very few have been driven hard and have covered many more miles. Regardless of the maintenance schedule the cars are all a lot more ‘fragile’ with age alone. Combine this with the prices of the cars dropping to a point where they are available to a lot wider audience and what your left with is the majority of cars being owned by folk who can afford to buy and insure them but have no disposable income to carry out proactive/preventative maintenance and reactive repairs when all goes wrong and a component fails. This is a bit of a domino effect as it inevitably costs more to repair a car that has failed though lack of maintenance as the failure of one component usually damages others when it catastrophically fails.

This has progressively made my life harder over the years and now it has reached the point that I’m presented with cars to do work on and ‘Tune’ and what I’m looking at are full restoration projects. I’ll advise a customer exactly what needs doing to a car, but it is rare that their budget extend to doing all the work comprehensively which leads to a car which is prone to failure or temperamental or letting a car go that we have carried work out on in one area, but still needs attention in other and people judging PSD for not doing necessary work, even though the owner has been advised of the work needed and has chose not to have it done for financial reasons. I also spend a lot of my time on the phone or replying to enquiries or quoting for work that does not lead to any paid work. I appreciate this is part and parcel of the work, but recently the % of enquires that are just general advise has got to the point that it eats into the day to the extent that you cannot get work done or are staying late using my own time to catch up with work. The whole VW scene has become a little fickle over the last few years and people are quick to complain or judge without stepping back to realise there is another world out their that goes beyond internet forums. A few years ago owners were a lot more eagar to work in unison and help it other rather than compete to be the best. It is also extremely hard to predict time scales for work as a car comes in for a simple work and it materialises that a rare or unavailable part has failed which leads to the work being delayed and headache of sourcing the part for the car to make it mobile. This makes effective management of a workshop hard work.

I was offered a consultancy position by another company in late January which I have taken as the long term security, less stress and free time available for myself are a lot more and salary are more attractive than continuing with PSD. If I were to continue with PSD I’d begin to hate something which I once loved and feel that now is the time to step back, enjoy my own cars and continue with another career.

I’ve made some very good friends over the years though the VW community and shared some good times and look forward to this continuing, but as an enthusiast and not as a tuner. I’ll still be offering some more bespoke services such as remapping, components for 1341cc/1473cc builds, camshafts etc personally as I appreciate that there is still a need for this as very few folk have the knowledge or equipment to carry out the work, but this will be as spare time allows.

I’ve moved out of my commercial workshop last week and will not be available on the landline anymore and my duties in my new role means that I’ll not readily be able to answer my mobile. If customers have any queries regarding this news and how it may affect them please feel free to contact me though e-mail. The usual ‘Steve@pitstopdevelopments.com’ and I’ll be sure to give you a first hand response rather than a second hand conquered up rumour.

Many thanks for taking the time to read and as mentioned before I’m happy to respond to anyone with queries though E-mail.

Steve

Sal. x