A new Vintage VW specialist in St Ives Cambridgeshire. D W Mechanical Services

So, a few days ago I updated a sorry looking topic regarding the Beetle Barn in St Ives that did some work on my Camper last year, the waste of space 'specialist' did a right number on me, instead of repairing my front chassis properly he filled it with newspaper and filler and somehow got a MOT on it....
In the intervening year he has gone bust leaving a swathe of victims, including his workshop landlord..

Anyway, moving on, I have just had all the remedial work done by a chap called Den who has taken over the workshop and what a difference!! For a start he has done a great job in welding up my front chassis, gone over the Van and made a list that we can work down, he gave it a service, brake pads / shoes, fitted an exhaust for me ( JK stainless, lovely ) and generally made a vast improvement to how it steers, and stops, It really is like a different van.. He does bodywork too.
Den is very friendly and very likeable and I have every confidence that he will be looking after me and my van for a long time to come...

EDIT... I say 'new' in the title, thats not true, hes been around a while, but hes new to me...lol...

Thoroughly recommended ... Hes also mobile so thats a great help too..
You can reach him on 07920 842662 .

 

That's great news. I get a few of the old guys previous customers and I would guess he must have been seeing double yellow snowed (alegedly).

 

Im not suprised hes gone bust with shocking stuff like that

Sorry to hear you were conned by him but im glad your now sorted properly

 

Cheers guys, as you can imagine there are more horror stories to be told, but I'm only posting what I know as fact from my own experience..
Anyway, Den has stepped up and is going to be a great asset to the local VW crowd who need a fettler...
Cheers.

 

Don't get me started about Beetle Barn! We were also taken for a ride by Tristan.......
My husband and I bought our first '73 bay camper in 2011 after we spent our honeymoon touring Wales in a beautiful Westy. I fell in love with it and we decided to invest our savings and wedding present money into a van of our own. We realised our van would need some TLC and work doing to it before it would be usable and so took it to Beetle Barn for a quote. Tristan seemed like a good bloke who quoted what we thought was a reasonable amount for basically the bottom 12 inches of the van to be replaced due to it being rotten, sorting the electrics, installing a leisure battery, replacing the support structures on the chassis and a re-spray of the bottom half of the van. We decided to go ahead with the work in February 2011, and Tristan ensured us that he would be able to do the work and get the van ready for our summer holiday that year.
After a few weeks of not hearing from him, we popped into the garage to see how much progress Tristan had made ( or lack of)! He said he was waiting for a cradle he had borrowed from a mate so that he could turn the van over to work on it properly. This seemed like a fair enough excuse so we thought no more of it. A few more weeks passed and there was still no cradle present, and still little progress being made. Each time we popped into the garage, he seemed to be working on a different vehicle and had a different excuse why ours wasn't being worked on. Anyway..... The deadline came and the van wasn't finished. He gave us excuse after excuse, and we gave him another deadline just before we were due to go on holiday. Surprise surprise, this deadline was not met either so we didn't have our holiday that year. We then told him that we were going to need it ready for October as it was our wedding anniversary and we were going away in the van. This time came and went, but still no van. We had already paid a substantial amount of money ( several thousand) and so were stuck between a rock and a hard place. We finally got the van back completed nearly a year later. We had to return the van to Tristan a few days later, as the electrics he should have sorted were still causing a Christmas tree affect each time a light came on, and the battery he had 'fixed' in was floating around, not attached to anything! I'm not sure how he got the van to pass its MOT just days before!
Since Tristan and Beetle Barn are no longer trading, we have taken our van to Den at DW Mechanical services who has done a cracking job at identifying just how much of a shark Tristan was. The chassis and sills which Tristan had supposedly replaced have been patched up with filler and tin about the thickness of a drinks can! His welding is appalling and he has just wax oiled over anything not quite right to cover it up. Our van has so many faults that we have paid to be rectified, and so many MOT failures that we are not even sure if the MOT Tristan gave us was valid. The thing that I am most angry about is that Tristan knew that I was heavily pregnant and expecting our first baby when he finally finished our van. He knowingly gave an unsafe van back to us, and allowed us to drive it away, knowing that we would be transporting our new born baby in it. What a selfish idiot!
At least we are in good hands now with Den at DW Mechanical Services!

 

I'm glad nothing too bad happened Gonzo, that what made me the most angry too, Tristian knew we had 2small kids we were driving around with and he still let us believe he had made it safe... I'm certain the MOTs he got must have been well dodgy... Let me guess, it was from the Fiat garage in Warboys?

 

You can report these garages I think to DVLA they can then lose their license.

Back in the day I got a car with a worthless MOT which had been done at a ford main dealer. We took the car back threatened to report them and they welded the car up. At the time it was around 2-3k to get it done, ford done it for free.

There was another time, different car, different garage but similar story.

 

Hi folks, just like to give you my experiences with The Beetle Barn and subsequent one with Den. I bought my bus (allegedly) from a customer of Tristan who he was selling it on behalf of. It looked in very good condition and came with a full year's MOT from - you've guessed it a garage in Warboys. Not being wise to bus ownership I thought that the strong smell of exhaust gas inside it when driving was just part of the experience of owning an old vehicle. It wasn't until I went on a fairly long journey and was starting to feel quite ill that I started to think there was something wrong. The heat exchangers were rotten and allowing exhaust gas into the cab through the heater vents and I couldn't stop it as the heater cables were broken. I spoke to Tristan and he agreed this was probably the cause of the problem so I paid him to fit a complete new system which cured it. I accept that these things happen but he had been driving it so must have known. Next having been driving it for a few weeks including down the A14 I was reversing onto my drive and the steering stopped working. My neighbour works for VW and he had a look and the steering pivot mounting had snapped off the axle. It was held on by 4 small blobs of weld and had fresh underseal painted over it.I rang Tristan and told him what had happened and his initial reaction was to laugh and say "it normally happens in car parks". He gave me the impression that he hadn't done the work but there was no mistaking the still tacky underseal around it. I wasn't happy and told him I was going to call VOSA as the MOT Station should have seen it. His reaction was to say "I'll be round in 10" which he was and he took it away an re-welded it. Anyway having been driving the old girl regularly throughout the Winter without any problems this May I took it to Den for a pre-MOT expecting a few minor issues which he could sort out before having it MOT'd for me. Mechanically there were very few issues found and I'm guessing these were just wear and tear anyway. Structurally however there were far more serious problems, chassis parts filled or repaired with "tin can metal" and patches in various places either very badly welded or stuck on with bathroom silicone. When I bought the bus Tristan suggested I paid (a lot of money) to have it undersealed and being ignorant I agreed. Makes me wonder how much he knew about the problems or even if they were his own work. Anyway, I can't prove any of the above were down to Tristan so I have put it down to experience and moved on. I still can't help wondering how the garage in Warboys fits into this but again too late now to cast any blame. The good thing to come out of this is that I now have a full MOT courtesy of the work carried out by Den at DW Mechanical Services for a very reasonable price and the local VW scene has a new hero. I know you will be reading this at some point Den, you are a great bloke and I would recommend you to anyone.

 

Welcome 'Avenger' .... Tristian as a lot to answer for it would seem....
Perhaps I'll see you around, are you local to St Ives? I'm in Alconbury....

 

Thanks for the welcome, I am in St.Ives.
Would be nice to meet up sometime.

 

The Avenger and Jasonm please can we join in your meet. We are in Ramsey?

 

Me too please.

 

Of course! Let's try to set something up.....

 

Yes, let's do that.

 

Anyone still up for a meet?

 

Yes, weekend after next pretty please

 

Sounds good to me

 

Here's a plan. We should call it.....Plan "A".

kilmo sharpey Jasonm kenregency zed Lofty The Avenger Gonzo

Camping next weekend Sat 3rd Aug in Biggleswade. I'll bring the firepit, someone else needs to bring the marshmallows.

http://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/turnpike-farm-biggleswade.25147/

All the above plus anyone else who fancies a nice chilled weekend. Kids and dogs welcome.

I'll phone the site next week and get a nice big gap to circle the wagons in.

 

I'm in.

 

Excellent!