Why Are Manufacturers So Uniformative?

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I had luckily reached home this morning when my car’s cooling system sprang a serious leak from somewhere inaccessible, hidden by a lot of steelwork, but probably the water-pump.

My neighbour kindly ran me over to the local Halfords branch to buy a bottle of Holts ‘Wondarweld’ sealant.

Back home I studied the label carefully: lots of safety warnings,  no instructions!

Holts own web-site offered an instruction video, which failed. I found their ‘Contact’ form and sent this message:

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Please send me basic instructions for using Holt’s ‘Wondarweld’!
None were supplied with it (by Halfords).
Your website offers a video lasting over three minutes – but it would not run anyway.
It does need a video. Just a few simple sentences that previously would have been printed on the bottle label!

Thank you.

N. Graham

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Why are so many organisations so incapable of doing simple things, simply? Here it needs only a short .pdf page… or even instructions on the bottle!

The obvious is to pour it into the reservoir, top up with water and run the engine, but that might be wrong and simply waste the stuff, around £16 a bottle. Engine cold or still warm? Do I run the engine to normal operating temperature? Before of after?

It only needs seal the leak enough for me to take the car to whichever garage can identify the leak and repair it properly.

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Must be something your end it played OK for me. Don’t just pour it straight in.

 

Try this link straight to Youtube rather than Holts site

[MikeKParticipant @mikek40713]

On the flip side of this, I have seen bath tub drain plugs with instructions on the package.

[HOWARDTParticipant @howardt]

I think that it is a case of re-selling.  A company like Halfords doesn’t manufacture anything just sells other peoples stuff, whether that is with their label on it or someone else’s. The original maker will sell thousands of litres, or whatever units, of the item and supply one set of safety and use instructions with the first batch which is hidden within their computer system.  To retrieve that information and make it available to the user requires someone to be employed to do it, so there is the excuse.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

But if you use the sealer how will the garage find the leak!!!!

[Nigel Graham 2]

On 30 July 2024 at 14:11 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

…
Back home I studied the label carefully: lots of safety warnings,  no instructions!

…

Have another look at the labelling on the back of the bottle.  Not unusual to find it has two layers.   The safety stuff is on the outer layer, and it peels off to reveal the instructions below.    If it’s a layered label, one corner should have a ‘peel here’ marker of some sort.

Dave

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

If its the water pump seal I doubt that any gloop will fix it

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I think you have got it Dave, easy to see the corner peel marker and the layes below in the Amazon image

 

Better still

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, you can read the instructions before you even buy it, Wonderweld (Euro car parts)

You get these types of labels even on food jars, and they have been around for many years.

Regards Nick.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

wonderweld as it’s name implies is a product for sealing cracks in heads and blocks ! IT will NOT seal faulty seals or gasket or rubber or plastic components ! The most likely failure is a rubber hose of which on a modern engine there many. I used this product back in the 70s to repair a badly cracked cast iron block with wet liners, it was so bad you could hear the water running into the sump. To this day I still find it hard to believe it worked – but it did. It causes some sort of rapid corrosion between the crack faces that seal it up ! Not sure what it might do to a modern ali engine ? Noel.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Watch the video, says it does gaskets and OK on Ali

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Its own label suggests it will seal almost anything and the only warning is not to add it to oil.

Bernard –

I will explain where the water was trickling down but I think the leak probably would be obvious even with this magic stuff in it.

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Thank you for the tips on a double-skin label. I have now found it, but it was not at all obvious! I don’t intend driving the car except to a local garage and will advise what I have done. The cooling circuit will need flushing and refilling anyway.

Had I not put anything in, I would not been able to do that and would have had to have it transported there, which would be a difficult and disruptive process in my street. This leak was not a slow drip-drip-drip but a definite stream of water from something hidden from view from both above and below.

…

To return to my original question, I still don’t understand why Holts went to the expense and difficulty of making an instructional video when all that was necessary on the web-site was a pdf copy of the label!

Hence my comment about doing a simple job the complicated way.

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