Taxi Driver Online

I have been a taxi driver for 10 years now and there is only one local and authorised company we can go to for meter installations and callibration, consequently we tend to pay "through the nose" as there is no competition. Does anybody have any tips or pointers as to how I could go about aquiring the knowledge, know how, qualifications??? to install and maintain taxi meters. Thank You.

You could try contacting some meter manufacturers and ask them how you could become an agent for their equipment. I would think that the wiring is fairly straight forward and you would need a laptop and interface to download the settings.

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Grandad,

Thats sound advice.

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

There are a number of meter dealers, and I suspect some aren't in your area, so as the old fella says ring them up and see if they want to do a franchise deal.

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IDFIMH

Give Cygnus a ring, they are always after agents around the UK. It's easy to fit a meter nowdays, all you have to do is locate the pulse wire round the back of your radio it's usually the white stripped wire, attach the connector fit the meter and your away.

For a road test, insert your chip into the meter and find a straight road round your area, go one the measured mile. Once you've done that your up and away.

For every tarrif chage you can charge £10, if you've got 100 drivers round your way your going to get yourself a nice holiday out of it.

£10 for a tarrif change... they charge us £25 here!!!

Try Maurice at Aquilla, it's a good unit and the bloke is helpful as it's his company.

You will be minted in no time.

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Grandad,

Thank you all for your help and advice, much appreciated

older type mechanical speedos require cutting and a sender inserting, modern fly-by-wire systems should have a plug somewhere just like fitting a tachograph (now theres a thought)...

not sure how they input rates but it cant be difficult

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

No you don't have to cut anything just get a transducer that fits onto the gearbox where the speedo cable goes then fit the speedo cable on top of it.
The pulse wire is normally yellow and white and normally you can get access to this behind the car radio, or in all VW, Skoda red and yellow access behind the speedo

We use a chip to input our fares, I can phone Cygnus for a chip and it's there the next day.

As for the older speedo cables I think all of them have gone out of the trade, they were on older cars like the Cortinas and Sierra. The speedo cables had a transducer fitted, that used to send a pulse to the meter and made it turn over, these were swines for seizing up and not clocking the fare up.

Ha i wish... its not just a case of bung in a few wires... in the same way that taxi driving isn't just driving a car around town. it is a little bit more compicated...

Also a good plan is to have some sort of working insurance.

because when you install a meter into a new £15K motor and the CAN BUS screws up, the car won't start and the franchise dealer won't honour the warranty, you suddently find yourself very alone!

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its not a top light, its a beacon for all the friday night, kebab freaks!!!

http://www.ccabsprestatyn.co.uk/aquila.html This a good local guy quality fit![/url]