Anyone see the new Wheeler Dealer prog last night at 9 pm? I wondered what the cognoscenti thought of the new lad, and the relationship with Mike.
A bit soon to make a judgement perhaps ?, as They were both on their best behaviour.
My comment would be “INTERESTING”, however, time will tell.
Gales
Hi,
Yes I watched it. China is a tough act to follow. Yes, the Cosworth was a great car, but were so many gushings and ‘man hugs’ really necessary to emphasise the point.
I’ll stick with it as the new boy knows his stuff, but will miss Ed.
Oh, and can we please come home, my head’s aching from doing dollar exchange conversions.
^^^ I think the company doing the show are USA based hence they are there. Ed had a moan on Youtube about the delay in getting all his tools back to this country when he supposedly chucked the towel in over how the show was being produced/presented.
I’ve yet to watch it, it was on record and I hope I like it, do prefer the UK based one’s though.
$5000 yes five thousand dollars to stick an extra spoiler on the back of the car so it resembles " The Orville" , change alloys to white ones fix turbo and oil leak ,ruining the originality of the rare car then selling it back to the original owner for an extra $20000. I would have sent it back to the UK , fixed oil leak and turbo registered it then sold it to europe as it is LHD. No man hugs or fake smiles just profit. Which is why they don’t let me make car shows
I agree the spoiler would have been the subject of some debate had I been involved in the making of the programme.
I’ve met Mike Brewer and questioned his dubious ‘profit’ which never takes account of Ed’s labour or state-of-the-art workshop equipment, and his response that what Ed does is only what you could have done in your shed at home so should not enter the costings. If only! Laser wheel alignment, exhaust gas analyser, you get the idea.
Whilst watching the 100 mph wind tunnel test I wondered if the cost of this would feature in the costings and was answered with the final spoiler costs of $5k which reflected this. And I agree, it added nothing to the looks and 25kgs downforce is not great.
How much were the wheels? $1650? I wouldn’t have bothered.
And what’s Ed going to do now?
P.S. Totally unconnected, but was the bent pushrod on the Brabham Alpine ever replaced? I must get out more, but it was holiday time.
Well I got around to watching it, I’m not a fan of these types of cars so I couldn’t get all wet and warm as Mr Brewer over it. When they discussed the extra wing I completely went numb and reached for the remote to cancel watching. I continued though but they lost my attention earlier when Brewer turned up with his normal blingy wheels. Remember the snakeskin pattern ones on the RX7?
I’ll still watch it because I love car shows but I FF the gushy bits.
Have always really enjoyed this show, in particular the skills and explanations of Ed China who I think will be missed. Re the profit, clearly this is all very unrealistic and underlines the point you are unlikely to make much money by doing a car up and selling it on. At the end of the day this is an entertainment programme and I view it in that spirit.
BTW what channel is it on as I would like to watch the new series and when I searched the WD website before it didn’t say?
Cheers
Matt
I watched the latter part of the show; I found it as I was channel trawling. It didn’t do much for me, but then fwd Ford Escorts never did much for me either.
Silly money for that spoiler, all it seemed to spoil was the looks.
Btw, I’ve watched many of the WD programmes over many years and often check the MOT history of cars that they have “repaired”. Comparing this info to the dates the individual programmes were made, it’s quite easy to see “before and after” WD have had them in their care, especially when they have repaired very obvious faults on the programme. It’s not all good news… I’ll say no more.
Each to there own but …
Ed china wont be missed by me , some of the stuff he used to do was awful
straight off the top of my head was that he was renewing a track rod end and counted the turns off and replaced with a new end and said that if you turn it back on the same amount of times then the geometry wont need doing ,
well that sums him up for me a bloody cowboy, no track rod end is exactly the same and also how does he know the geometry was good before he started
he is just a face in front of a load of people working in the background i would think he met his limits with motorised skips and chairs
now from what ive seen in the past from Ant Anstead he seems to know his stuff im sure he also has a big team behind the scenes but i havent watched a program with him in yet and wanted to throw a brick at the tv
As for the program in general its a good job its not a real buisness because the amount of money they make on a lot of the cars wouldnt pay the rent let alone the wages for all them people .
Thanks,
Have put on series record
Matt
Yes, I viewed it as entertainment, some of it being unintentional entertainment. A workshop equipped with thousands of pounds worth of equipment and there’s no ball joint splitter? No, just whack it with a big hammer. Just screw this item back on and don’t worry about the rusty panels underneath. Some very dubious styling upgrades too.
The programme happily ‘lost’ plenty of costs. Virtually every car not resprayed must have had a full machine polish and various bits of replaced shiny items to look as they did. There were few sets of uncosted new tyres in there too. and RHD lights on some imports. Amazing how Ed always manged to fix ‘expensive’ problems so easily. How about the Porsche gearbox fixed by a fluid and filter change? I wonder how many cars were purchased that didn’t make it to the show because the problems were terminal?
JS
I wonder how many cars were purchased that didn’t make it to the show because the problems were terminal?
JS
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If my memory serves me correctly they did a Suzuki type jeep some years ago, spent the whole programme working on it only to have it fail its MOT at the end.
Terminal floor rot, how do you miss something like that?
The programme is trying to appeal to a wider audience - mostly USA where every mechanic gives fist bumps, fake looking bro-mbraces etc. It’s just not British. That stuff aside, it’s still a good programme and probably the best in that genre…along with Car SOS - which has it’s own thing to appeal to a wider audience.
Edd’s stuff on you tube is very in depth (I’ve only seen the one film - fitting new discs and pads). I hope he makes more and keeps up the good work.
Wheeler Dealers has been around so long that it’s likely being viewed by a second generation. That’s not a bad thing.
Haven’t yet watched last night’s episode but I wasn’t convinced by the first one. Just seemed like they skipped over much of the technical bits. One second he’s starting on a job, the next it’s all done with barely any description. At least with Edd you got to see how he took things apart and put them back together. I can only assume the new ‘light touch’ version is due to American viewers having very short attention spans…
I watched the 2nd of the latest WD, how Brewer misssed the cracked exhaust manifold on the test drive baffles me, it wasn’t half noisy.
Anyways if you’ve not seen them Bitchin’ Rides or Kindig Customs (same show, different names) are very good car resto shows. Another I’ve recently found, Iron Resurection all are on 250 or 261 Discovery channels. They do some serious work on the cars with fantastic results. They don’t prefess to get it done in a few weeks either, something Car SOS does, not!
The censor worked above, substitute the censor for the word you call a female dog and add “in” on the end of it.
Finally watched the second episode. Not great.
Mike: “So did you put a new exhaust on?”
Ant: “No, I cut the old one off and fitted a new custom exhaust”
So he did fit a new exhaust… Think I’ll go back to watching re-runs of some of the early series…
I watched the latest episode last night. So interested I actually took note of length of time Ant did any spannering, yes sad I know.
They showed him fixing the suspension and brakes, he repalced the whole lot for new, 2 mins, he then tinkered with the engine, 4 mins then took it to the dyno shop another 3 mins but he didn’t do anything there. He then spent 1 minute doing some trim, someone else had completely retrimmed the inside (not shown) Apart from Mr Brewer then taking 4 minutes to show him helping a guy detail the paint on the bonnet that was it. So all in Ant spent 7 mins on air showing his skills, the rest of the time he was either talking up the job explaining what needs doing or how the engine works etc.
Of course they go through the process of buying the car and testing the finished car with Mr Brewer dribbling and doing his wah hoos whilst driving, advert breaks, recapping on what they’ve done before the breaks, take all that out there ain’t much left to show the spannering etc, very watered down from the shows involving Edd China.
Once recall an earlier show fettling a mk1.
No mention of what to watch for underneath, Ed basically chopped in a bit of metal on the a-frame and clagged up the rest.
Brewer then proceeded to shop like his usual excited child for some interior bling, and Ed clipped it in place.
Not seen the new one but Ed definitely knows his stuff.