There are times when I wonder whether I want to be in business at all. I dream of being able to clock off at 5pm and just forget any responsibilities. Then I am woken up by the phone telling me a bus has broken down. The problem is relatively minor and if it had been anywhere near our depot we could have sent a van out and had it fixed and running again in a couple of hours. But oh no... the repair industry is full of sharks and incompetents who want to charge you expert pricing for amateur ability. Here is an example.

Our driver complains over a period of time the following symptoms:

• Engine idles roughly
• Sometimes it idles really fast before slowing down
• Sometimes it stops completely then after a short period of time will start again - this is totally random and can happen several times a day or not at all.

Well we go through the obvious routines and suspect fuel starvation but the fuel tanks and pipes are clean and diesel is getting to the pre-filter just fine and the main filters are clean. Bleeding shows the diesel is getting to the injectors OK.

So we change the number #1 injector which electronically communicates with the computer that controls the diesel throughout called an Electronic Diesel Controller (EDC). For a while it all seems to be working OK for a few tours although every now and again it would go lumpy. We did call out a competitor who had the correct diagnostic software and they cleared the memory which was full but could not get it to fail so we were none the wiser. Our local dealer could not analyse the computer the evening we made it available.

Then we start on our long tour for a hard working US band. Oh dear....

Suddenly the bus breaks down at the side of the road several times on the way to Glasgow. We call out a mechanic but he can not find out what is wrong although he does find a leak from an airline which he fixes (mechanic 1). Still the problem persists so we book in at the main Mercedes dealer in Carlisle so they can put their laptop on and read the engine management memory. This takes a little time so meanwhile I put the passengers on to a seated coach that can pull their trailer which takes them to Glasgow (coach 2). The laptop shows a fuel pump error. I get excited when they tell me there is a workshop on the same trading estate that repairs fuel pumps and the Mercedes dealer (mechanic 2) is prepared to take off our fuel pump - except the man who runs the fuel pump place can't be bothered to do it before the weekend (it is a Friday of course) and will not commit himself the following week. Frantic calls are made to find a new fuel pump (they are massively expensive at around £9,000 but none are in the country although one is found in Germany - this from a major manufacturer) ! I call a company that recently rebuilt one of our engines and seemed to do a good job and they agree to pull our fuel pump apart on the Monday ready to be on the road for the Tuesday so I manage to arrange for a replacement coach to go from Liverpool to Glasgow and take the band around until Wednesday (coach 3).

Come Wednesday the engine rebuilders (mechanic 3) find no fault with the fuel pump although they rebuilt the lift pump (which is useful). Unfortunately the driver who came to collect was delayed as they managed to damage the end of the pipe that sends diesel to the cold start solenoid which they brazed up. We are all excited and the driver picks up the bus that had been test driven for miles by the engine rebuilders but 30 miles down the road it starts playing up. Long story short, it just about made it to Southampton later that night.

I decide to get involved and drive to Southampton to do a test drive and manage to suffer the symptoms and broke down. Our friends at Phoenix kindly sent out their mechanic who spent some time doing some tests and predicted a fault with the EDC mentioned above. (Mechanic 4 but the first one to get it right). This sort of made sense if there was a faulty motherboard, perhaps a dry solder, or other bad connection. That night we arranged with Coachservice to send a coach from near Cologne to Calais while we got our people and their trailer to Calais using a seated coach (coaches 4 & 5). The next day we ask if we can take the coach to the dealer in Fareham for repairs but they have mechanics on courses and can not look at it for some time. Meanwhile our bus limped to Phoenix yard while we try to get a new ECD controller.

Guess what. No EDC controllers are in the country but our local Mercedes agent ordered one on the Friday for delivery the Tuesday. On the Tuesday it turns out that Mercedes cancelled the order as they did not have a chassis number. Meanwhile I am pulling my hair out but someone tells me one of our coaches had a similar problem a few years previously and it turned out to be a faulty relay. Great! I send our electrician down to Phoenix' yard with relays. He changes them but no improvement. Then he decides to dig deeper and pulls off the plug to the EDC and finds it bent but also a little corroded. He manages to damage the plug unbending the bent pin but voila !! the engine will not miss a beat.

Next morning our driver attempts to get the plug repaired at the local Mercedes dealer who say they have no plugs and would have to order a complete loom at around £500 but Phoenix have some pins and sort out the plug more or less although we still want to replace it eventually.

Of the driver goes without missing a beat. Fantastic. he gets to Luxembourg in record time and takes a well deserved rest period in a big truck stop. Well that is until 3 hours later a truck reverses into the side of the bus and bends some panels and breaks an upstairs window.

I get the call and put another call into our agents who handle mechanical breakdowns throughout Europe. We do not expect anyone to have the correct glass but in the UK the glass people would create a temporary repair using Plexiglass which is a plastic. After many hours a man turns up with a van and little else other than a roll of floppy plastic and some sticky tape. Despite him being told it is the top deck of a double deck coach his ladder has only 4 steps. He decides to depart without doing anything useful and tells the driver to follow him to the workshop where they can start again at 2pm that day which is no good to us as we MUST leave by noon for Basel. Anyway, driving is impossible as he had not made the window safe so I phone the agent to complain and ask they send someone else out. They can not find anyone but a friend of mine in Belgium contacted Carglass (a company I will use again in the future and who have a Europe-wide presence). They turned up in time to get us away at noon. They did not have enough Plexiglass but brought an undersized window from another brand of coach and used what Plexiglass they had to fill in the gaps. It actually worked.

So we get to Basel on time. All is good again and we take over the tour so become coach 6.

Until 1000 miles later when the bus breaks down on the Italian Autostrada with diesel pouring out of what turns out to be the repair to the diesel pipe made by the engine rebuilders when they damaged it while replacing the fuel pump. On the Autostrada you have to use the concessionaires, you can not use just any repairer. Eventually a man turned up and "fixed" the leak which failed several times until we reached Milan. (Mechanic 5). In Milan I call Mercedes who send out a garage 7 hours later. We are upset because the man seems to be doing the same repair as the Autostrada guy and I had specifically called Mercedes so they could replace the whole pipe. Mercedes gave me an assurance that it was a "decisive and permanent repair" so we relaxed. (Mechanic 6). Except that next day it failed several times on the way to Marseilles. So I call Mercedes and ask them to send out another mechanic. There we get into politics. Since MAN upset Mercedes by buying the Neoplan coach brand a few years ago, Mercedes have got very childish and each country can reserve the right to refuse to call out for any coach with a Mercedes engine that is not on a Setra or Mercedes chassis - ours is an Ayats. That means they can leave people who were loyal Mercedes customers dumped on from a great height if they decided to specify Mercedes as recently as 5 years ago. I shall never buy a Mercedes engined heavy vehicle again as a result of this attitude. Anyway the French people refused to send anyone out as it was not on a Merc or Setra chassis despite us offering guarantees of payment from our local Merc dealer, from Evobus (Setra) in Berlin and Evobus's main agent in Ireland (MUTEC) who to be fair are VERY helpful (and competent).

Now as it happens, we do not actually need that diesel line as it only does anything useful in the coldest of weather so I instructed the driver to flatten the pipe as much as possible to reduce the pressure on the plastic pipe repair the previous two mechanics had installed. This actually seemed to work on the way to Barcelona. Hoorah ! We will send out a new pipe our people made in around 30 minutes with the double driver flying out to Spain in a few days time.

Unfortunately our pleasure was short lived as that night the driver was 30kms short of Barcelona when he reported a large oil leak coming form near the back of the engine. I suspected a turbo oil feed pipe could be the culprit and our mechanic confirmed that pipe would have had to be removed when the fuel pump was taken off. OK we usually carry those pipes as spares on the bus but guess what - they were missing. So at 8am I phoned up our agent and requested that a mechanic turn up in Barcelona, take off the old pipe and take it to Mercedes to buy a new one or else to repair the old pipe.

Our agent (who were not to blame) were possibly embarassed by the fiasco in Luxembourg with the broken window and between us we had arranged for a new window to be collected by a Barcelona company from the nearby coach factory and installed at 3pm that day. They assured me the same company had a mechanic who would also come at 3pm and take off the pipe and make his way to Mercedes who closed at 7pm. An old guy turned up at 5.30pm and against our driver's wishes, started fiddling with our broken but stable diesel pipe instead of the one suffering the oil leak. That really screwed up the diesel pipe that put out clouds of diesel over the engine, Then he eventually looked at the oil pipe but just mumbled something and wandered over to the other side of the car park muttering, shaking his head and smoking a cigarette. He landed up helping the jokers fitting the side window. They had never done a bus before and were making a helluva mess of the job including smashing the old window and smothering the bus with tons of rubber compound so we are going to have to remove the window when it gets back to the UK and do it all again.

Meanwhile we are going crazy over trying to get the broken pipes fixed and ask our agent to get someone competent out BEFORE Mercedes closed. (Mechanic 7)

So our people find a fellow who apparently does mobile welding. That sounded great and we got a call that he would be coming in around an hour. Meanwhile I was desperate as we MUST be ready to roll that night so called Mercedes without much hope. At first the Spanish refused to come out like the French did. Then they changed their mind and said that if we provided €400 cash they would come out and replace the pipe. I was waiting for a call back to confirm how they would accept payment when I got a call form my driver. The mobile welding guy had turned up and said he could not do the job (mechanic 8) and was leaving just as a Mercedes one turned up (mechanic 8) which surprised me as I had not agreed payment terms. Any way to be fair he got to work, removed the pipe, demanded €400 cash and did a pretty good job rebuilding the oil pipe and refitting it in around 60 minutes total. There are times when you are prepared to pay for service and this was one of them. Except he refused to repair the damaged diesel pipe made worse by the old man earlier that day - OK he was doing a bit of private work and just wanted to do the minimum work possible for his €400 but it got us out of trouble. We were ripped off but happy.

So we are back on the road again with an extremely exhausted driver to Madrid.

OK - I had had enough. My own mechanics had made a new diesel pipe so our fine mechanic, George Newberry, flew out with that pipe as well as a new turbo oil feed pipe and guess what - both were fitted in under 2 hours. Now why can't people on the road do this instead of all the time-wasting, and messing around with half baked amateur jobs they try to get away with ?

This is typical of problems on the road where what at first appear to be a minor fault turn out to be disasters in the making (example: call out mechanic to replace two thermostats in the centre of Amsterdam. Man turns up many hours later with a car transporter and refuses to even look at the job. We call our regular agent who gets it sorted in 2 hours. Meanwhile the driver has not had any sleep and I am under stress all night with no sleep. This is fairly typical.

However despite the lack of interest and incompetence of many of the people sent out to us, we managed to get the band to every gig, and at the day that hopefully counts for something.

At the end of the day I would like to thank the following:

• Phoenix Bussing for being so helpful to a competitor
• Crewe Engines who really put themselves to get our bus back on the road quickly. It is unfortunate they damaged the two fuel lines and perhaps lessons can be learned here.
• EBTS who are our agent and are based in Belgium. Their people were always conscientious and always very polite when they must have had a very stressed customer on the phone every 10 minutes but never seemed to waiver in their attempts to get us back on the road despite some of the people they sent out not being up to the job.
• Our great mechanics George Newberry and John Clark who can always be relied upon to get a broken down coach moving when others have already tried and failed. They are ably assisted by our electrician Rory Budge who is still learning on the job but somehow manages to shine through, from our paintshop guys John Gormley assisted by Mike Jay and Richard who keep our coaches looking immaculate outside and Swavik and Clive who keep them looking good inside, Wendy who handles the accounts, and last but not least, Stew Scott who when we can pin him down makes sure the buses go out looking great and who I miss when he goes on holiday so must be doing something useful !