Warkworth Motorcycles / Vehicle and automotive servicing, repairs and mechanics

I have previously used this company to purchase a tyre, had it fitted and… also bought some parts, oils and riding gear there.

The first time I had a tyre fitted there in 2009, I was quoted around $ 250 for a rear tyre, but after the mechanic had already removed the rear wheel and tyre, he went to the store to get the new one.

Suddenly it turned out that they didn't have the required size and type, only a bigger one about $ 80 dearer. As I wanted to get the job finished, I agreed to have it fitted on my bike.

No apology for the mishap, but the mechanic Aden was very helpful and even made a special trip to replace the rear wheelbearings.

All up nearly $400, wasn't really in my budget, but at least my bike was finally ready for the road again.

After that I went back on occasions to purchse filters and oil etc because the are in a handy location for me, even their prices appeared a bit higher than in shops on the North Shore.

I other words, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

That's for that part. Back to the tyre job today.

After I arrived at the workshop, I couldn't find anybody there to attend so I walked around and entered the showroom, again, nobody at the counter.

I managed to have a sneaky look around the corner in a storage area where I found Tim, the Manager, who told me that they were having their morning break.

He asked me if I wanted to wait and offered me a cup of coffee. After about 20 minutes, the mechanics went back to work and I found a young guy getting onto the job with my tyres.

He removed the old tyre reasonably quick and with some care off the magnesium rim, then inspected the other used tyre and fitted it.

I had to point out that it was a directional tyre and that it still had a red dot marker to be positioned at the valve area of the rim to minimize the need for too many weights when balancing it later.

The rim still had a few old stick-on wheigts from the previous tyre when he started to balance the tyre on a static frame and showed quite a large imbalance.

In order to locate the spot Kieran used some clamp-on type weights normally used for car wheels.To my astonishment and horror, he hammered these onto the spokes of the magnesium wheel which caused some scratches in the black paint and in the metal itself.

He ruined the still quite reasonable looking wheel and I told him I wasn't very impressed with his actions.

He apologised and said that they didn't have any stick-on type weights, so he was going to hammer some of the clamp-on weights into the side of the rim ! By that time I thought i wasn't going to believe what i saw and heard. I told him that I did not want that type of weights on my wheel, firstly for the safety factor as they are known to fly off and also because the ruin the sides of magnesium and alloy rims.

I desperation to get the job done as good as possible, I offered to drive to a nearby tyreshop to get some stick-on weights for him.

The nice guy there gave me a few for free, what a bonus !

With these weights, Kieran managed to get the wheel finally reasonably balanced, even so I believe he would have needed a lot less if he would have done the job properly from the start, in other words, he should have removed the old weights and start from scratch.

I have a 25 cm long row on the right side of the rim now, looks really impressive I must say ! I was holding my breath and my fist in my pocket. When I went upstairs to the counter again, I asked Colin, apparently a part time partsman at WWMC, how much for fitting and balancing.

He had to work this out on the calculator and demanded just under $40 for this miserable job. I paid in cash and left, never to be seen on these premises again !

I have to say that I am a A-Grade Mechanic with more than 35 years experience in the trade, usually do all my work on all my vehicles by myself and only used this service because they have a tyre fitting machine, but what I saw today made me change my mind forever and I am not going to go back to this business again.

I believe that they have one capable and competent mechanic which is Aden, but he was busy on another job.

They seem to deal with farm and dirtbikes a lot, but even on those a little bit of TLC is requiered. Overall, a very unprofessional job and a pathetically equipped and stocked workshop.

They seem to fit quite a few tyres, but haven't even got a few proper balancing weights at hand. On top of all that the clumsy mechanic ruined the rim of a classic motorcycle ! And the icing on the cake is the outrageous price for that unqualified messing around.

The Management should have taught this mechanic in particular to take more care with customer's parts and vehicles and maybe spend a few bucks on some simple accessories like need in my case here.

But sometime one can't blame just the mechanics themselves for a bad and unprofessional job.

For my part, I would never ever trust this lot enough to work on any of my motorcycles, it seems to allmost certain something gets messed up, broken or fitted wrongly !

And they are not the only ones worth mentioning, there a a lot more and very few and far between who know what they're doing !

What worries and annoys me the most is the seemingly "I don't care" or "I allways done it like this" Attitude as soon as some kind of criticism arises ! Signs of the times ?

Don't know what to say, I was brought uo and trained in a different way, for sure ! Where are all the good and qualified tradespeople New Zealand is "so famous" for !?

In Australia ???

A Mickey Mouse Outfit, simple as that !

There's an old saying: "The fish allways stinks from the head !"

I had to report this to NO COWBOYS to get rid of my anger and frustration of today, every time I look at my bike's rear wheel and because this company seems to have Cow-****ies working on bikes, not mechanics !

Very unprofessional service, never again ! And I don't care if they read this either, they might very well know where it comes from !"