Years ago, I flew (piloted) into an Indianapolis, IN airport and was standing in the pilot lounge admiring photo's of local airplanes; a kind of brag board. Turns out, this airport supported a company that specialized in preserving/restoring WWII war birds, specifically the P-51 Mustang. Some of the photo's were local airplanes, some airshow, AND some were featured wrecked airplanes. The photo's also indicate the date they are taken outside the restoration facility, plus a few extra, before and after photo's.
Looking at photo exhibit #1 =pristine restored P51Mustang. Ohhhh, this is nice... oh, -- now looking at photo exhibit #2. "What happened to this Mustang?" sort of looks just like 'photo#1 except for the bent prop, and lots of bent metal. cough. $600K rebuild and the owner would not take 'flying lessons' for something he did not have the experience to fly...'I paid for it, by gum, I will fly it.' Well, not very far...didn't get it very far... never got it off the ground. They were able to identify the (final) landing site, by the wreck and the smoking hole.
Hire a crane, truck it back to the hanger, 'yeah, it can be rebuilt.' Well, we fast forward 2 years, and see another photo...#3 Same Mustang, new skin and prop; it is a beauty. ~$600K later, same guy/owner, same runway...(wait for it) Photo #4..."What is this picture?" Same guy, same airplane...got just a little further down the runway before piling it up.
The restoration company refused to do business with him a third time. and so it goes. m1.
On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 1:03 PM, 'Norm Keller' normkel32@... [DSN_KLR650] DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
These service counter anecdotes reveal much about the riding public but I'm willing to bet that others hold back stories even more "face palm" worthy than "letting air into the engine". IME, many of these stories simply cannot be related because people won't believe us. When ever I hear someone bashing a dealership or shop over stupidity or incompetence I have to bite my lip. I've been aware of both sides of many of these stories and usually it's the customer who deserves the face palm. Most often they have no idea at all as to what they are saying. Honda ST & KLR groups seem to be by far the most sensible, IME, which is the reason I like to hang out there. Watersports, don't even get me started and I'll bet that you have 100x the experience.
Boats aren't quite as silly, IME, but wow. We had one customer who ran his boat under the Lion's Gate bridge and hit a log which wiped both legs off the boat and did transom damage; repaired, took boat out again same way, same result; repeat the third time...."Why not slow down through there?" he was asked. "But that's the way I always go through that area.", was the response. Face palm....Oh, and the problem was that the legs being made today are cheap junk, just in case someone wasn't aware. He was a lawyer so knew lots about boats. Face palm....
------ Original Message ------ From: "Martin Earl" To: "DSN KLR650" DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com>; "Norm Keller" Sent: 2015-02-16 10:31:38 PM Subject: Re: [DSN_KLR650] Re: We don't need no stinking air filter foam