Frome · Since 1979

We fix what the main dealer quotes to replace.

Ashcombe Motor Works is a four-ramp independent garage on Tannery Lane. Every fault is photographed and sent to your phone before a spanner moves, every price is agreed in advance, and the same two technicians look after your car for as long as you own it.
Booked in · Diagnosed · Priced · Agreed
Book the rampSee what we charge
Trading since1979
Diagnosis by5pm same day
Parts & labour3-year warranty
Bay 2 — Tannery Lane

What the common jobs cost

Published in full, because the first question on the phone is always this one. Labour is £68 an hour, charged in quarter hours, and nothing is added to a bill that was not agreed first.
Job sheetRev. 04 · Frome
Interim serviceOil, oil filter and a 32-point check with photographs of anything we flag. The right service for a car doing under 8,000 miles a year.
1 hr£145
Full serviceEvery filter, brake fluid tested, plugs where they are due, and a 61-point inspection written up as a report you keep.
2 hrs£245
MOT test — class 4Tested on our own lane, so a fail becomes a conversation rather than a second appointment somewhere else.
45 min£54.85
Diagnostics, one hourLive data and stored codes on the ramp. If the repair follows within a fortnight, this hour comes off the bill.
1 hr£72
Cambelt and water pumpBelt, tensioner, idlers and pump together — doing the pump separately later costs the same labour twice.
4 hrsfrom £480
Recommissioning, older carsBrakes, fuel system, cooling and wiring brought back to a car you can drive rather than a car you can start.
Stagedfrom £1,850
Courtesy car free on any job over three hours, booked with the work. Collection and return within four miles at no charge.Prices held to 31 March

A garage that kept its bench

Ray Ashcombe opened the first bay in 1979 with a pit, a compressor and a Bedford van. Forty-seven years later there are four ramps, an MOT lane and a diagnostic rig that reads modules Ray would not recognise — but the bench is the same bench, and the rule he ran the place by has not moved: show the customer the fault, quote the repair, and never sell anybody a part they can drive another year without.
On the ramp

Everything we look at, and how we look at it

Point at any station on the drawing. This is the same order we work in, front to back, on every car that comes through the door — and the reason a service here takes two hours rather than forty minutes.

Engine, oil and fluids

Oil and filter to the manufacturer’s grade, never a universal 10w40 out of a drum. We check coolant strength with a refractometer, brake fluid with a moisture tester, and photograph the dipstick before and after so you can see what came out.
Included in every full service — no station is ever skipped to hit a time.
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