Death of a VX800 or, How I Got Ripped Off

There was a guy working as a motorcycle mechanic in Madeley. (We'll call him Phil, because that wasn't his name - it's customary to protect the guilty.) He'd done good work for me in the past, including an engine rebuild, so when my VX800 began to smoke and riders following me at a rally complained of the smell of oil, I felt happy to take it to him to sort out. Conveniently, he'd just moved back into his old workshop nearby from the one he had taken on an industrial estate further away.

Mistake.

I took the bike in just after the Dragon Rally, in February 2000. We agreed a price, and about three weeks for the work, both subject to what he found when he got the engine stripped down. A couple of weeks later, I went to see how he was doing, and got the first bad news. The crank needed regrinding and new bearings. Up the price, extend the time, go away again - first paying for parts agreed to be necessary, as I've done before with Phil - he doesn't have a strong line of credit.

Weeks went by. There was never anyone there when I called. Eventually, I found Phil's landlord (we'll call him Dave - that wasn't his name either) in posession. It emerged that Phil had only borrowed the premeses temporarily, as a favour whilst he found somewhere, for storage: he wasn't supposed to be doing business there. Dave couldn't find him either, and was wondering what to do about his rent. My bike was there, though, the engine stripped to the last nut, bolt and circlip. Phil was nowhere to be found, and stayed that way for some weeks. When he surfaced, it turned out that he was driving a truck full-time for a living, and expecting to finish my bike, in his spare time, in a friend's garage. I considered taking it back - in bits - and getting someone else to finish the job; but, daunted by the difficulty of cataloguing all the bits and delivering them to someone else, and influenced by the quality of Phil's previous work, I let him continue.

Mistake.

He vanished again - and the bike with him. Dave, for excellent reasons, chucked him out, and he moved to that garage round the corner. I didn't even know where it was, but Dave did, and he assured me it was safe. He's a well-established and respected local character, and (correctly as it turned out) I trusted him.

Time went by. I missed Easter, I missed the BMF rally in May. I heard on the grapevine that a certain Suzuki dealer was owed for VX800 parts not paid for by a guy in Telford - the value of the order just happened to match what I'd paid Phil. Eventually - about June - I caught up with Phil. He'd been working on it, it was coming on. When would it be ready? He couldn't promise - waiting for the crank to come back. That in itself was another saga, involving the regrinders, the couriers, Phil and Dave in a complicated pattern of who-promised-what at which address. Eventually Dave took delivery of it, and passed it on to Phil, and reassembly started.

More time went by: by July or so I'd got the address where the bike was, and kept calling there until, one Saturday morning, I actually found Phil there, working on my bike, reassembled and running - badly. Missing horribly on one cylinder. At this point I lost patience and took it back - actually, I made him deliver it. I sorted out the duff coil myself (it had been OK when it went in, but what the heck?). I replaced a lead to the starter switch which had been working, but which was now shorting out, causing blown fuses every time you tried to start the engine. I rerouted the throttle cable correctly so that the throttle could, in fact close. I put various minor bits back on. I got it running smoothly. I sorted out why the tacho was no longer working; and I paid Phil most of what he said he wanted.

Mistake.

I ran it in very carefully, over 2000 miles, then took it to a rally in Germany. It went well - but it used a pint of oil for every tank of fuel. That's worse than before we started. And we had a list of other faults. There was a crankcase bolt that had snapped. Instead of getting the broken piece out and fitting a new bolt, Phil had simply filed the end down and glued it in to hide the fact. It didn't stay glued very long.

We chewed the fat at the rally, and Steve (that is his name - he deserves all the credit he can get) offered to take a look at it for me. So I rode it over to Leeds, and left it with him as a winter project. Well, Steve made me an initial list of problems, some of which were unrelated, one at least probably a result of standing for so long, and ... 50% petrol in the oil. And the clutch beyond wear limit, which Phil should have spotted. Then he started taking it apart. We hoped the problem was something silly like a torn or missing valve guide oil seal. No such luck. Phil had used instant gasket for a cylinder head gasket. There was water in the oil, oil in the water, both of them in the cylinder and a pretty fair mess.

Steve and I agreed it was't worth the cost of repair; then we had a resurgence of hope - a sort of mechanical terminal rally - and then in January it was finally condemned. RIP, old friend. Steve bought the bike, and broke it for spares for the members of the VX800 community (see http://www.vx800.net). And I'm well over a thousand pounds out of pocket on the value of the bike and what I paid Phil, not to mention new tyres and a new exhaust I'd had fitted.

Sue Phil? No point. He's clearly broke. I even heard a rumour that he'd never made money from his bike business and his wife had got sick of bailing him out with the profits from hers; but that might be a lie.

No - cut my losses, write it off to experience, give up biking, end of an era, save the money for something else.

That plan didn't work out either. Couldn't face it. I'm taking delivery of a second hand Diversion 600S shortly. See you on the road this summer.

Postscript: The engine was sold on, and broken to recover the new internal bearings and pistons. The buyer told Steve, who told me, what he found. The internal seals and gaskets were missing, and instant gasket compound used instead.

Wonder who got the gasket set I paid for? Ah well...

© Richard Foxcroft, February 2001