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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.

Three people, and you will meet all of them

Nell Ashcombe — Director, MOT tester

Took the keys from her father in 2016. IMI Level 3, MOT tester for classes 4 and 7, and the person who signs off every job before a car leaves the yard.

Tomas Beck — Master technician

Twenty-two years, eleven of them at a main dealer before deciding he would rather fix things than replace them. Hybrid and EV qualified to IMI Level 3, and the one who finds the intermittent faults.

Priya Raval — Service manager

Books the ramp, orders the parts and rings you back when she said she would. If a job is going to run over, you hear it from Priya before lunchtime, not from the invoice.

Out of the bays this month

Why we still take on older cars

Most garages quietly stopped around 2010 — no plug, no profit. We kept the tooling, the manuals and Ray, who is in on Thursdays and can still set up a pair of SUs by ear. A 1972 GT6 and a 2024 hybrid share a ramp here most weeks, and the older car is usually the one that teaches us something. It also means the cars we look after tend to stay looked after: our oldest customer car has been through this workshop since 1988.
“Another garage quoted £2,400 for a gearbox. Tomas found a £38 sensor, sent me a photo of it on the bench, and charged me an hour. I have not been anywhere else since.”
Marcus H., Beckington — customer since 2019

What people say afterwards

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The questions we get asked on the phone

  • No. Block Exemption rules mean a manufacturer warranty stays valid as long as the service is carried out to schedule with parts of matching quality — which is exactly what we do, and we stamp the book and keep the invoice trail to prove it.

Book a slot on the ramp

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Tannery Lane, Frome

Tell us the noise. We’ll tell you the price.

Describe it however it comes out — a rattle over speed bumps, a light that only shows up cold, a bill from somewhere else you would like a second opinion on. You will speak to whoever is on the ramp, not a call centre in another county.
Book the ramp01373 470 118
Open 7.30am – 5.30pm weekdays · Saturday mornings by arrangement
Find us

Ashcombe Motor Works

  • Unit 4, Tannery Lane, Frome, Somerset BA11 1QY
  • 01373 470 118
  • Mo-Fr 07:30-17:30, Sa 08:30-12:30