Arable farm, about nine hundred acres
The combine that stopped three times in one week
The machine cut out at random and restarted after ten minutes.
An illustrative composite, not one job
Haulage, general freight
The yard that kept flattening batteries over a weekend
Nine tractor units, one yard
What was happening
Three units in nine would not start on a Monday. Batteries had been replaced across the fleet twice in eighteen months and the supplier was being blamed.
What was done
A drain test on two of the affected units and one that was fine, each left overnight so the modules settled. Six hours over three visits.
What it turned out to be
The three affected units were the three that had been fitted with a camera system by a different supplier, taken from a permanent live that never allowed the system to sleep. The supply was moved and fused, and the yard now measures quiescent current on any unit that comes back with flat batteries instead of ordering another pair.
Every case study on this site is an illustrative composite assembled from several jobs. No customer is named, no vehicle is identifiable, and there is not a single testimonial on this website attributed to a person — a fabricated one would be the one genuinely dishonest thing a workshop's website can do.
The piece of work
Parasitic drain test
The battery that is flat on Monday morning. Slow, because the vehicle has to be left alone long enough for its modules to go to sleep before the reading means anything.
How that figure is arrived at
- Workshop hour× two$290
- The same rate, at the long end× four$580
- Parts, if any are neededcost + 20%separate
- Labour for this jobtwo to four hours$290 to $580
The workshop hour is $145 and it is on the rates page. That multiplication is the whole of the labour charge: no callout fee on top of it, no shop supplies percentage and no environmental levy. Those are the workshop figures. Done where the vehicle stands rather than here, the same hours are at the on-site hour, $185. It is the cost of the work — it is not a quotation for a vehicle nobody has seen.
The first hour: Connecting the meter without breaking the circuit, then waiting. Pulling fuses to find a drain wakes everything up again and resets the clock, which is why that method finds nothing and takes all afternoon doing it.
What you are left holding: The measured quiescent current, how long it took to settle there, and which circuit the excess is on.
The other three
More of the same kind of thing
Plumbing and heating, four vans
The van that was booked in for an alternator and did not need one
The battery light came on intermittently and the previous shop had replaced the alternator eleven months earlier for the same symptom.
An illustrative composite, not one job
Agricultural contractor
The module the dealer said was no longer available
A control unit had stopped driving one section of the machine.
An illustrative composite, not one job
$145 a workshop hour · $185 on site · agreed before it starts
Describe the symptom, or just telephone
The symptom check takes about three minutes and gives you a written summary of which circuits would be tested first and why, with the hours and the published rate against each. It is an indicative scope and not a diagnosis — nobody has seen the vehicle — but it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works.