The workshop floor in Sharjah, with cars waiting on and between the two-post lifts.

Notes from the workshop

What we get asked in the bay, written down properly. Every one of these is about a car living in this climate — the heat on the forecourt, sand in the condenser, an air conditioner that never gets a day off. Nothing here is written to sell you something; where a piece touches work we do, it says so and links to it once.

Written here, from manufacturer and engineering sources. Each article lists what it was written from at the foot of the page.

Latest

A coupe shell on axle stands in the Sharjah workshop with a technician working inside it.

Diagnostics 14 September 2026 9 min read

A diagnostic scan is where the work starts, not where it ends

A fault code names a circuit or a failed test. It does not name a part. Everything that goes wrong between “the scanner said P0420” and a bill for a catalytic converter lives in that one sentence.

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Everything else

14 September 2026 Parts Genuine, OEM and aftermarket: three words, three different claims They are not three grades of quality running from best to worst. They are three statements about who made a part and whose name is on the box — and once you separate them, most of the argument about parts disappears. 9 min read
14 September 2026 Tyres Tyres in this climate: age, pressure, and the four digits nobody reads A tyre with plenty of tread can be finished. Tread measures wear; it does not measure age, and in this climate age is the one doing the damage. Here is how to read what your tyre is actually telling you. 9 min read
14 September 2026 Buying Buying a used car in the UAE: what the paperwork shows, and what it hides The documents on a used car in this country cover less than most buyers assume — and the most important sentence in the official record is the one that says what is missing from it. Here is each document, what it proves, and where the gap is. 9 min read
14 September 2026 Climate What the heat actually does to a car here, system by system Everybody knows the summer is hard on a car. Almost nobody is told which part of the car is being damaged, by what, and how fast. This is that list — built from measured temperatures rather than from the word “extreme”. 9 min read
11 September 2026 Buying a car What a pre-purchase inspection actually catches — and what it cannot Accident repair under fresh paint, structural damage, a fault code cleared in the car park that morning. All of it is findable. An intermittent fault that only appears in the fortieth minute of a drive is not, and any inspection that tells you otherwise is selling you something. 12 min read
4 September 2026 Electrical Why car batteries die so fast in the UAE A battery in a temperate country dies of old age. Here it dies of heat, and it dies years early. Once you know that, most of what people believe about car batteries turns into a footnote. 11 min read
28 August 2026 Air conditioning Air conditioning in a Sharjah summer, and what “just a regas” misses An air conditioning system does not use refrigerant up. If it is low, it is leaking — and the charge that gets put back by feel rather than by weight can leave the car blowing colder air while the compressor quietly cooks. 11 min read
19 August 2026 Diagnostics Reading the warning lights that matter Some of them mean stop, now, on the hard shoulder. Some mean book it in next week. One of them means both, depending on whether it is steady or flashing — and that is the single most useful thing on this page. 11 min read
12 August 2026 Paint Ceramic coating, PPF, polishing and detailing: four different things They get sold interchangeably and they are not interchangeable. Two of them are processes and two are products, only one of them stops a stone chip, and one of them permanently removes a layer of your car that does not grow back. 10 min read