Automaintenance Avis 

Nice to find a proper professional workshop at last

2 weeks ago I called my local Indy garage and asked them about replacing the timing belt on my beloved, but due-for-a-new-timing-belt-any-day-now 159 (2.4, TI), it's been 65,000km since Gerry and sons replaced it. They called back the next day and said, sorry, "we can't get the parts" ( job sounds too hard), "try a specialist". But I didn't, AMS is a long, long way from where I live.

Last week I was driving Serena to the shops with my toddler and in a puff of horrible smoke and a dramatic loss of power steering, something was clearly very wrong. I wrestled 1900kg of obstinate Alfa into a parking bay to inspect. The timing belt was still tensioned, phew, but the aux belt was floppy, so something's let go. A decent poke around revealed what looked to be the crankshaft pulley just resting on the undertray, seemingly made mostly of rust.
A few panicked searches, and a depressing video about replacing said part later I admitted I couldn't fix this myself and had her towed from Sandyford to the airport.
While she was with actual experts, I lashed into the boot the exhaust mid-section, aux belt and associated pulleys I'd planned to install 'when I got time'. If I have to sell a kidney to get the crankshaft pulley sorted, I may as well get rid of that squeal it makes above 3000rpm too, and that increasingly-large hole in the exhaust that somehow the NCT lads missed.

A nervous few days passed while I waited for the very busy lads at AMS to have a spot on one of their ramps for her, but when that call came, and it was all done, I was beyond relieved. Then Ciaran asked me to guess how much the job was. I was very apprehensive; the last timing belt job was adjudged to be a pig of a job, €700 by itself, and the whole bill for that visit to D7 came to over €2k. The crankshaft part on Micksgarage was €205 with no trimmings.
When he told me the final price I was delighted, I was bracing myself for 50% higher and I'd be telling my wife it could be as much as 100% higher than the amount I cheerfully paid today before they realised their mistake.
The place is full of Italian exotica having traumatic surgery that other garages might shy away from; at least 3 boiled engines by my count, a clutch, lots of holes where engines used to be.
High quality work, fast turnover on a laundry list of jobs, including some that had to have left knuckle skin in my engine bay. Decent lads to a man, and they could have made a lot more money off me now that they're the only specialist in the Dublin, with an order book that looks like it'll take through into next year, but they didn't.
I'll trust them with my pride and joy the next time she has a wobble, and I'd be confident they'll get her back on the road with a bill I can live with.