I had a preachers wife cuss me out one day, she brought her car in for some repairs . When ask what the problem was she said " my turn signals are on the blink" Well I thought it was a joke and laughed out loud. She was offended and called me some names, the boss even laughed when I told him.
Many years ago, there was a gas station down the road from me. This was back in the days when gas stations [service stations] still worked on cars. One day a customer brings in his VW camper bus. The mechanic puts it on the lift, and procedes to jack it straight into the roof of the service bay. It hit one of the roof trusses, and fell off the lift, wedging itself between the lift pole, interior wall, and under the other lift that just happened to have another customers car on it [up in the air]... Long story short, they had to cut the van into pieces to get it out, and it took 2 days for the "other customer" to get their car back. Me and a couple other kids from the neighborhood went up there to watch. There was an excessive amount of yelling, screaming, and ass kissing going on there. Apparently stuf like that does not make customers very happy.
Late '80's we were in the shop working on some 5-6 yr old GM car. Some tech tells a new kid to check a vacuum cannister for a leak. The kid takes the canister (one of the black plastic balls GM used for years) and grabs a blow gun hooked straight to shop air - 120 PSI. BOOM!!! it sounded like frickin cannon went off in the shop. I look around and veryone (me too!) is getting up off the floor wondering what the hell just happenned. I look over and the kid is standing there holding 1/2 of the ball with a look of sheer terror on his face. laughed our asses off
Reminds me of the Lotus story that made the rounds a few years back. http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1131195
2 quickies 1.buick dealer..opel gt (little corvette) black detailer size 13 shoes, drive the car through the auto car wash, comes out...gas pedal stuck on the floor, takes out about 6 cars before he gets it stopped. 2. dumb ass cop leaves his gun in his consol when he brings car in for service, picks up car, no gun, raises all hell with everybody at the dealership..gonna do this gonna do that...nobody knew what happened. 2 months later on a monday morning service dispatcher dos'nt show up for work...wife calls in and said he got pulled over during the weekend and guess what they found...
I worked at a place where a mechanic was putting a car on the lift to change the shocks. While he was setting up the lift, the lady who owned it opened up the driver's door and took something out of the back seat to put in a car that was waiting for her outside. She had her hands full and was coming back to close the door. In that few seconds, the car was in the air. The open door clips a tire rack on the way up. All we heard was this loud CRUNCH and see the car slip on the lift. The guy raising the car up darts over and grabs the car by the back bumper, which saved it from going off the lift. A bunch of us ran over and got the car down safely. The lady was more concerned about someone getting hurt than her car messed up. We had a local body shop that we dealt with and they fixed it. Bob
Similar theme - I once saw a van that had fallen off a 4 post lift and it was lying on its' side on the ground. One of the posts went up through the side windows. It was at my uncles garage, and a dopey apprentice had been working underneath it. I think he had replaced a clutch and propped the engine up with a stout piece of wood. He bolted everything up then lowered the van, forgetting to remove the wood. It pole vaulted the van over. When I arrived the apprentice was looking very embarrassed, my uncle was looking pretty pissed off and the heavy forklift driver was trying not to laugh.
I've got a couple for you when I was in sales at a Pontiac GMC store back from 99-03. 1. The very first vehicle I sold was a new 00 Sierra extended cab pickup to a long time customer of the dealership. I sold it to them late on a Saturday afternoon and they wanted a bedliner and some accessories installed on Monday before they took delivery. Well, I was scheduled to be out of town the entire next week for training so I left instructions with the body shop manager with what was to be done. I got a page about lunch time on Monday. It seems a body shop guy had side swiped a steel pole beside the body shop and destroyed the bed side. Needless to say, the customer got a perfect repair (guaranteed for the life of the vehicle) and the bedliner and accessories for free. It was ready for me to deliver the next Saturday. 2. I had been out for about 2 months with back surgery. On the first day back I was helping the GM park some cars on the lot. I was backing up a new pickup on a concrete pad that was raised about 2-3" above the asphalt, with the tailgate against the doors of the cars. As I gave the pickup enough gas to get upon the rise of the pad, my foot missed the brake and hit the gas and as you can image I backed right into the side of a new Pontiac Montana van. I paid that $800 repair out of my pocket! Oh, and I sold a new GMC Denali XL to the wife of a well known young evangelist. He is still all over the TV today. You should have seen her crawling all over that SUV, bending over and showing her thong underwear. She was a very attractive lady!
#1 Late 70's-worked at a Lincoln dealership. A local farmer bought a new Continental, brought it back a few days later with brake problems. He had nailed rubber mats to the floor with roofing nails and clipped a brake line, no rear brakes. I asked why he was nailing rubber mat into his new Lincoln,he said,"So the pigs don't mess up the carpet when I haul them to market!' #2 I was checking over a used car purchased at the local car auction. Started to raise it on the hoist. The back tires where six inches off the floor, front tires hadn't moved. Opened the hood and discovered the whole front clip was held on by maybe half a dozen spot welds. Very carefully set the car back down and told the sales manager. Next week the car went back to the auction and some other poor sucker bought it.
I have a "wall of shame" in my shop. There are some interesting parts that I pulled from auction cars and customer cars over the years. Like the "finned" brake rotors, exhaust patches that are welded up with the two flanges welded 1" overlapped, a ball joint fixed with JB weld and a nickel and various other items that we couldn't just toss in the scrap pile. I drive past the New Ford dealer every morning. A few months ago I was coming up to it and saw a crane in the parking lot. It was picking a new F150 off of the roof of the tractor cab. The guy on the transport put it in D instead of R and drove it right off the front. I was told that by law, there is no time limit or mileage limit for a test drive. We heard a story about a guy who took a test drive on a new car from a local dealer. Brought it back a week later with 2500 miles on it. They called the cops and reported it stolen. The cops didn't do anything about it because the dealer willingly gave them the keys. The guy took the car on a family vacation to Florida for the week. I personally have had customers who test drive a car for an hour or more and use it to run errands or to drive all around town looking at other car lots instead of using their own gas. How rude is that.
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My buddy is a tech at a dealership. A couple months back an apprentice lost control of a Honda CR-V inside the shop and hit the car my buddy was fixing along with his Snap-On toolbox. The dealer`s insurance cut him a check for about $10k,let him keep the damaged box,and he went out and bought a brand new one for $3k.
My dad always likes to tell this story . Late 60's in Altamont illinois . Buddy of my dads bought a brand new ford pickup , within a week the throttle started sticking on it . He took it into the dealership and they said they fixed it . Couple days later it starts doing it again . I guess after about 3 attempts the dealership told him that the throttle wasnt actually sticking , he just wasnt taking his foot all the way off the gas , and they refused to work on it anymore. So the guy waits a few days and then lines the truck up across the intersection from the dealership , Scopes up a couple new mustangs and some tbirds . The guy opens the door and stomps the gas pedal to the floor , which stuck to the floor. He sent that new pickup right through the showroom windows and took out 3 or 4 new cars.
Not a car dealership, but a Harley Davidson dealer. I got a call from the HD shop requesting a very strange custom paint job to be done on a new wide glide. Seems a guy came in the shop, paid cash for a new bike and wanted a personalized paint job. I get the job done, deliver the bike to the shop, and the new owner is there. He is ecstatic, super happy and ready to ride. Well, ride he did. This cat had never even been on a bike before. He gassed the shit out of it, right into the ditch across the highway, back onto the road, and hit a parked wrecker at full throttle. Bike was totaled, dude was in a upper half body cast for a long time.
My brother worked a Toyota dealer here in St. Louis. They got a call from Las Vegas p.d. saying they had found a stolen Camry of theirs in a tow away zone at a casino. The car had been stolen for 1 year at that time. The thief had a the glove box full off reciepts of every oil change and car wash on the car.
I've been doing the dealership drill since my high school years, mid 60's. I've got stories of every working day I've been thru. My first day on the job at a medium size Chevrolet dealer, spring of 1968. The service manager directs me to the truck shop where he tells me to take a large by huge new Chevy with a massive dump body and drive it to Lacy Truck Body in Medford for some repairs. He neglects to tell me what's wrong with it but assures me Lacy knows about it and to wait for it while they service the dump body. I never drove anything like this animal I'm thinking to myself. Away I go, scared shitless about driving anything so intimidating. One block down the street I stop at the light, wait for the green and off I go again. Only problem is I leave the light in creeper gear low. Doh! I hit the brakes hard in the middle of the intersection almost sending the driver behind me into my rear. He's honking and pissed! While trying to find 2nd gear my right shirt cuff catches the vertical floor lever for the dump body. Out comes the clutch, I'm on the 396's gas, I'm rolling good when I hear a deafening crash behind me and more honking and swearing. I turn my head to the Chevy's cab rear window and all I see is the bottom of the DUMP BODY. Up she went! This get worse. Inside the bed WAS a heavy steel tail gate at one time. Was at one time are the key words here. Said mentioned several hundred pound object, tail gate, had bad hinges and was placed on the floor by our Chevy techs and their fork lift to be welded together and modified by Lacy. Said several hundred pound object now lay across the front end of the angry man behind me driving his brand new black and white Ford police cruiser. The cruiser still had the window sticker on it and the cop's hot coffee spilled all over him to add to my problem. Tough way to start off your 1st day on the job as a fresh college graduate who thought he knew it all! I'll relay some more tales as they come to my mind. This thread is surely going to be interesting.
I think this incident happened around the summer of 1964 or maybe 1965. My brother Doug and I both worked that summer for our dad who owned a busy little used car lot on Main St. in Waltham. He pointed us both to a '63 Bel Air 2 door post parked out back Told us to drain all the oil out of it and fill it with as many cans of STP as we could fit in it as the motor was weak and he was going to take it to the auction the next day. I went to the parts store and bought a case of the goo while Doug got down on his back and dumped out the old stuff and pulled the filter. I returned with the medicine and a new filter, handed it all over to my brother and went inside the office to have lunch. 20 minutes roll by and I put down my sandwich and Playboy Magazine I'm reading to see my brother come running up to me, eyes all bugged out, arms all whipping about and stuttering like a machine gun. "Come on outside , quick, Dad's gonna be pissed!" There sits the poor Chevy, smoke belching out from under the hood, engine still running, and STP all over the entire backyard. All that glue poured into it's engine was too much for it's tired system and it blew it's oil filter clear off. It was like walking on greased ice with a layer of marbles on top for days afterwards in that back yard. There were even strings of the glop dripping off the tree branches over the top of the Chevy. It rained STP that day.
I wish I could contribute a good story to this thread, but I do occasionally go to the state surplus vehicle auctions and watch the stuff that sells. Some dealer out of Jersey that specializes in Crown Vics buys all the cop cars and I wonder if people ever find out when the buy one just where they came from - he pays about the same money whether they run or not. Once in a while one turns up wrecked bad, or with bullet holes in it. And even when they're just a couple years old, they're pretty well worn out. From overhearing people talk, the biggest money players (who seem to be high bidder on a lot of cars) turn out to be dealers who take the cars directly to another auction - apparently a dealer wholesale auction - and dump them. I assume eventually they end up for sale on a car lot someplace. A lot of them are ones I'd pass up for half what they sold for from the state. By the time someone buys them to drive they've changed hands four times and no one's really checked them out for problems -
Not really my story, but my dad bought a brand new 2006(?) Dodge 1T pickup to tow his fifth wheel around the US. At the time of purchase he was given a one year supply of prepaid service coupons. Well mom&dad were somewhere down south that first season on the new truck, and needed to get it serviced at a 'participating dealership'. The young and apologetic service writer at said participating dealership wiped out the driver side of the truck from the rear door to the back bumper, pulling it into the lube bay. My parents ended up staying 3-4 extra days in a town they were just passing through, until the damage was fixed.
Lot and lots of ex-police cars go to taxi service. Same HD components package on both and the old Crown Vic cop cars are kept running for years more. I do see a fair number of them in 'civilian use', though, seems a lot of young guys like 'em. Ray
Ok here goes mine, i worked at k-mart automotive it was k-marts store but it was the auto repair shop section. I was new there maybe 4 months in the job. So my fellow employee tells me if i can roadtest a car for him that he was aligning the front end on. Just to see if it was pulling or not. Its a nice grand prix 85 or 86. So i pull it off the alignment rack to drive it. I am driving it around with the sound system going loud checking out the girls by the park not paying attention to the time. Well i am out for about 30 minutes. I said to my self maybe i should drive it and check to see if it pulls. Duh what i should be doing!!! I drive it around the k-mart and well i said to myself let me back it up and take another straight run at it. I am in reverse 10, 20, 30 miles an hour in reverse!!!!!!!!. My thinking cap came on!!! Man i think i might be going to fast in reverse i say. So what do i do. Hit the brakes the car locks up and i slide into a gaurdrail that is right next to the wall of the k-mart building man i hit that car hard the quarter panel is really fucked. The left brake light lense is cracked. Shit!!!! Being new i dont want to lose the job so i just pulled it right back on the alignment rack and told my fellow employee that it pulls to the left a little. The customer walks out to the repair shop area from shopping at the k-mart and sits down at first. Then he looks toward his car. I was sweeping up the floor and i hear this guy jumping up and down saying i knew it!! I knew it!! I knew it!!! I knew i should have not parked that car there last night. I looked at him he tells me. I should not have parked that car at that night club see some guy must of backed up into my car. Look at it. So me being a honest guy i say to the guy. Man tell me where you parked it because i sure dont want to park my car there!!!!
One of my managers likes to tell a story that happened at a dealership where he'd previously worked. A used car manager drives a trade-in into the body shop on a Friday afternoon, something like a then 5 year old '65 Impala. The paint looked pretty sad on it so he tells the body shop manager to run it into the booth, shoot some paint on it so it can go on the lot Monday, but don't spend any real money on the job, of course. The body shop manager had apparently heard too many of these requests over the years but said he'd take care of it. The used car manager left and the car was pulled into the booth and the work began. By the end of the day the painting was done and the booth was left closed over the weekend for drying. Then the body shop manager came back on Saturday, loaded up his tools and apparently moved on to greener pastures. Monday morning the used car manager opens up the paint booth to check out his new "creampuff" and finds out that the job had been done exactly as he requested; roll it in, squirt it and don't spend any money. Nothing was masked and it was painted. Bumpers, tires, grille, lamps and glass included. And even a couple windows that were rolled down were left rolled down.
Early seventy Small town Ford dealer. He's a friend of my Dads. We have noticed a certain red pickup on the used lot is missing. Has been on the lot for a long time. We figured someone bought it or it went to the yard. We walk in the service bay, there's the owner of said dealership, suit, jacket off, painting the roof on said pickup white. We stroll over and ask him what's up? Seems the truck was owned by a local farmer and everyone knew how hard he was on equipment. Dealer says, they'll never recognize it. He sold it in a couple days. LOL. Just the sight of him in a suit with a paint gun in his hand on the wash rack was a hoot. Lippy
interesting thread. kind of sad to hear of the dishonesty and deception, though. the stories about honest mistakes are always fun. especially when the person that made the mistake owns up to it.
Since someone put the KMart auto center into play, I'll do the same for the Sear Auto Center... In the late 70's, early 80's I was a service writer/salesman at a Sears Auto Center. These are just a few of the stories I can remember... It wasn't uncommon for husbands to send their wives to have preventative maintenance work done on their cars. One woman informed me her husband told her to bring the car in for a front end alignment. After verifying the year & model car, I told her it was $19.99 for a front alignment. "That's all?" was her reply, 'Then go ahead and do the back ones while you're at it, also'. Another woman with the 'my husband sent me...' story walked up to the counter telling me she needed a new muffler (remember Muzzlers?). I reached for the muffler parts book and asked her what year & model car she had. "It's big and green, and has four doors", she replied. When I thought I could get away with it, (I was young and thought myself charming), I replied "Silly me, I'm in the blue car parts book." She didn't even flinch... One Saturday, I had sold four new radials to a guy driving a '55-57 corvette. The following Saturday, he was back and he was wound up - big time! I asked him what he was so fired up about and he wouldn't reply, just insisted that I come out and look at the tires I had sold him, the week before. I paced around the car looking for bulges... splits...anything! I asked him again what the problem was, he wouldn't give me a direct answer, so I paced around the car again looking for whatever his problem was. I noticed that the whitewalls were a bit dirty from roadgrime and perhaps I wasn't able to see his problem clearly because of this general use dirt. So I pulled the car in the garage, and personally cleaned each of the four tires, hoping that would illuminate the problem. I still couldn't find anything. I asked him again what the problem was, but his mood had completely changed, he was now happy. His whole problem was the dirty whitewalls. I was concerned that I had perhaps just signed up for a lifetime of whitewall cleaning, but I never saw him again, after that... Once in a while on busy days, like Saturdays, we would fall behind in the service area, so when things were slow I got some training to help out with a few things like doing the free charging system checks that went along with each battery sale, etc. The thing I wanted to do the most though, was learn how to dismount and mount a tire on the tire machine; and how to balance it. I eventually learned, and had the opportunity to do so a few times. Until... A local guy had just finished beautifully restoring a '66 or '67 gold El Camino (SS?) with a black bucket & console interior. It was gorgeous. The last thing to do? New tires to replace the shop tires on this dog dish capped beauty. He came in on a slow evening, and I sold him the tires. I somehow convinced the service crew to let me bust, mount & balance the tires on this car. As I went to dismount one of the old tires on the freshly black painted rims, I wasn't paying close attention and put the bead breaker part of the machine down right on the lip, and proceeded to destroy that beautiful rim. To make it worse, that rim was some hard to find factory coded original that we had to find a replacement for. DOHHH! I can't remember if I was allowed to 'bust' tires after that, or not... To say that the owner was unhappy would be a huge understatement... Scott/Gotta56forme
Actually, when I went to college the school had a lot of donated vehicles, mostly GM, usually damaged in transit. They got a then new Chevy 1/2 ton 4x4 extended cab pickup that had two light drag marks on the top of the roof - you had to stand in the bed to even see them - while I was there. They ran the gamut from that, to a '91 or so Buick that the whole back was mashed down pretty bad, but still ran and moved. Sometimes they got cars with other damage, too - one Corsica had come in with 61 miles on the odometer and a thrown rod in the 2.8. All the GM donor cars got a big sticker on them saying how they were never to be registered or driven on a public road, and that when the school was finished the cars were to be scrapped whole with no parts removed. Now the body lab bought or had donated insurance company wrecks, that they could then fix and sell to use to buy new equipment. So when a wrecked Corsica came in, along the way it got a nearly new engine that had one sleeved cylinder to repair where it had thrown a rod.... I forget where the replacement body panels came from, but there were like three more that went to scrap after that car was finished. And of course the road between one shop and the other, was public, cars seemed to come and go from the storage lot at the one shop to the other shop all the time -
The Jalopy Journal
