Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert, Producer of The Pawlik Automotive Podcast and Video Series, and of course, we're here with Mr. Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 38 years maintaining and repairing vehicles in Vancouver, and 20 time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver, including this year, as voted by their customers. How are we doing this morning, Bernie?
Bernie: Doing well. All of that good news, it's hard not to be happy.
Mark: We're talking about a 2014 Range Rover Sport that had a gear shift head repair. Sounds like a pretty simple process, but I bet it isn't. It's a Range Rover. What was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: The vehicle, the owner went to shift the gear. There's this little button you press with your index finger and move your gear shift around to park and it wouldn't work. The vehicle is towed in and we had to look at it, and what we found is that the actual knob, the little button was broken.
Mark: What did you do next?
Bernie: We were actually able to... we need to move the vehicle around, we were actually able to just kind of glue the broken plastic piece back together temporarily until we were able to receive the proper part. We did that, at least verified that that's all that was wrong with it, moved the vehicle around, and then we proceeded to repair it once the parts arrived.
Mark: What was involved in the repair?
Bernie: Land Rover sells a kit for this, of course, the part is only available from the dealer. Land Rover sells a repair head kit, which is good. Not very expensive. You can buy a complete shifter, but that's a very expensive repair and very time consuming. This is a pretty straightforward labor-wise repair and parts come in a kit. I'll just get right into the picture show here because this is where it's kind of cool, the parts kit.
We should be looking at a nice black Range Rover Sport model, Supercharged, and there's a picture of the gear shift head, basically what you'd be looking at from the driver's seat. Press that button, of course, the vehicle goes into park, not while you're moving, but when you're sitting still, you push that, the vehicle goes into park. To move it out of park, there is a button... I apologize, the picture is very fuzzy. The camera wouldn't focus that close, but that is the button right there that caused the issue and it was all floppy. You could tell something was wrong. That button must be pushed in order to move it out of park and into the other gears and this is a-
Mark: Sort of like a park lockout, basically.
Bernie: Yeah, it basically locks the vehicle from moving, just like in traditional gear shift where you move it right up to the P position and lock the vehicle. This is also kind of neat. It's illuminated, so there's different colours here depending on which gear you're in. This is the repair in process. This is basically the gear shift head removed. You can see there's a little electronic circuit and quite a few items in here. There's two buttons and switches, but the neat part of this job was the repair... was the parts that we got.
This is the... this came in a nice little boat, a 3 inch by 3 inch box, and when I opened the box up this is what came out in the box. Here's our new switch, that's the park switch, that clips in place, a new, this is ... I wouldn't call it the face plate, but the cover over here, comes with a new screw. And a new face plate with, it's actually attached an adhesive, so it's got new adhesive. But it comes with a little pry bar and then these gloves. These are electrostatic gloves. So it comes with this kit. Like everything's included, I thought this is really neat. This is a sign of a nice, high quality vehicle, and a very thoughtful repair procedure. Obviously I'm guessing in the beginning they may have had a few of these repairs they did where they blew the circuit board from static electricity. It's very easy to generate then where you're doing a repair inside a car. Just slipping across the seat will generate static electricity and sulphur.
Whoever's working on the car, just one little touch of the component you can blow it just with that. So these are static protection gloves. And by the way they were actually too small for my hands. I don't have massive hands, but it took a lot of work to fit those gloves on. They could've made them a little larger. But that's my only complaint.
Mark: So it's a difficult and expensive repair.
Bernie: No, not really. Not saying you should necessarily do it at home, depending on your skill level. It's not a very time consuming repair, and that's a rare feature for a Range Rover since a lot of things are expensive. But this is a, it's a nicely thought out kit to repair an issue that probably, a part that probably shouldn't have broken at this age, but did.
Mark: And the car basically won't move if that lockout won't work.
Bernie: Won't move. It used to be there would be shift lockout buttons and things you can push, and in this case it's all electronic which is the way everything's going, more and more so all the time, things just don't move unless the electronics and electrical items function. Will this is actually a mechanical failure of an electrical part. Everything's got to work like it's supposed to.
Mark: Is this something that you've seen before? Or often in the shop?
Bernie: This is the first repair of this type we've done. But I'd say it's probably fairly common because the parts in stock at the Range Rover dealer, and that always tells me, whenever we have an issue with, if the part's in stock, that means it's a somewhat common item. They don't tend to keep inventory on things that don't move off the shelf at a reasonable pace.
Mark: And what's your overall impression of Range Rover vehicles?
Bernie: I like them a lot. But they are expensive, they're expensive to buy new. They fortunately, if you're looking for a used one, they depreciate very nicely. I'd say fortunately, if you're the buyer, if you're the owner, you'll throw away a lot of money in depreciation, a hell of a lot of money. But they're extremely nice vehicle, in the luxury SUV category. Very popular around Vancouver, many part of the world.
Good vehicle, generally pretty reliable, but there are a few issues, and some of them are ... things like timing change, we discuss a lot among this podcast, that probably shouldn't go so soon. So some things, the build quality on some items isn't perhaps as good as others. But in other areas, they're pretty good. So just expect if you buy one, you'll pay a fair amount of money to repair it, more than you would for an average vehicle.
Mark: And maintenance is of course paramount to keep it running well.
Bernie: Maintenance is very paramount. I mean things, we get people a lot, occasionally with the luxury European cars, and any car, and they neglect to do oil changes and things, and I just shake my head because if you can't afford an oil change or the time to do an oil change, you really can't afford the time to replace the engine. They're just so expensive. So you're really, doing proper maintenance, and service is just key, it just keeps the cost way down.
Mark: So there you go, if you're looking for service for your Range Rover, Land Rover, in Vancouver, the guys to see are Pawlik Automotive, you can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment. Check out their website, pawlikautomotive.com. Hundred of blog posts on there about repairs of all makes and models of cars. Of course there's our YouTube Channel, Pawlik Auto Repair, again hundreds, over 300 videos on there. And of course thank you so much for listening to the podcast, we appreciate it, thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thank you Mark, and thanks for watching and listening.
