With quality comes the customers
Tucked away among wholesalers of industrial equipment, stationery, auto accessories and warehouses, is a nondescript shop front with a signboard that reveals its kooky name and if you are looking for a car workshop that will do a good job, then Autochild in Glenmarie is the place for you. White painted floors; neatly organized tools and a row of special machines will definitely boost your confidence in the workshop’s ability to take care of your car. The floor itself is painted white and repainted every six months to make sure that it remains intact to do a decent impression of an operating room.
One of the owners, Brendan O’Gorman, looks more like a love child than an “autochild” with his very large and frizzy head of hair, tattoo and tee shirt, with only the black grime under his fingernails that gave away to his connection with the workshop. This former stainless steel fabricator and installer of industrial kitchens to many well-known restaurant chains in Canada and the United States came to Glenmarie via the software industry. He, together with a partner spotted a gap in the market for workshops that promise to do everything about a car properly and with the highest level of business ethics.
Autochild began as a service center and since it was a service center and not a repair shop, they service all cars from changing fluids to doing routine maintenance. They do not experiment with customer’s cars, but would rather go through lengthy shop manuals and also do research first before they start working on any cars. Most customers were pleased with the work thus far that leads to some asking them to do repairs, modifications and stuff. “After awhile many customers kept asking us to do repairs for them but I told them that we don’t do repairs but they were persistent. I suppose they liked our work and trusted us because we took more care about what we do and this is what makes us different.” said Brendan.
How different can you be when draining oil and changing transmission fluid? According to Brendan, many mechanics do not take the necessary care to ensure that the fluids and lubricants used for a particular car are correct for the given vehicle. “When a manufacturer specifies that a particular engine needs a 5W30 engine oil or GL5 gear oil, then you must use that oil and not something else. A mechanic needs to know his oil just as an engineer needs to know his numbers,” he said.
As an example he quoted a particular customer who came complaining that the steering of his Jaguar XJ-6 was vibrating due to some fault in the power steering system. It is quite common for mechanics to simply pour automatic transmission fluid into a power steering reservoir because the majority of systems run on that blood but Brendan was skeptical. He consulted a 15-cm thick fluids and lubricants reference and learnt that the XJ-6’s power steering system ran on Jaguar HSMO. What? Well, that was exactly his reaction so he looked it up on the Internet and found out that it meant Hydraulic System Mineral Oil so he called up parts suppliers in the city to look for the same stuff and was met with some confusion.
After slowly repeating his quest and taking time to explore the parts rack with his supplier they found an equivalent and proceeded to pour it into the customer’s car. Worked a treat, the vibration went away and the customer was well chuffed. “We do not claim to do things that others cannot do, in fact we do what others simply claim. We just take better care of our work and make sure that things are done properly.
During Autoworld visit, a Honda Lagreat was up on a hoist with its innards on a service trolley and a mechanic was busily fiddling with various parts. This JDM model is a rare car in Malaysia and its owner was having a hard time finding a workshop he felt comfortable enough to look after this particular grey import. He checked it in with Autochild and after a thorough inspection the owner was given a three-page report of the various faults in the car and a brief description of what work needed to be done to resolve each of the problem.
Autochild did not quote an exact price because certain things could not be determined until the work was underway and some parts on the car may be hard to source due to its rarity and tentatively stated that seven days was needed to sort everything out.
The owner was then free to take the report and hand it over to another mechanic, either for a second opinion or repair, but he was so satisfied with the professionalism at Autochild that green light was given for a cure-all.
The workshop itself is equipped with diagnostic tools that can suss out problems in 14 different brands of cars and they have a selection of special tools to make sure that cars are worked on properly. “I have seen mechanics use a hammer on a car and sheet metal is probably the only part that a hammer should be used on. They split ball joints with them, take out bearings with blows and use force to separate difficult to split parts. We do not do that, we use the specified tool to extract bearings, pull out ball joints and such.
To this day, 18-months after opening the workshop, O’Gorman admits that there is always a lot to learn and does not claim to know everything and still thumbs through a selection of reference materials, making sure that customer trust is not betrayed and lost.
Autochild Sdn Bhd is located at No.11, Jalan U1/35A, Hicom Glenmarie Industrial Park, 40150, Shah Alam, Selangor. Find out more about them at www.autochild.com!
