and they are no where near right. why trust a $7 an hour flunky with no car knowledge and let him diagnose a car. AZ is the best adverti*****t for N.A.P.A.
He said "**** Stick".........LOL i thought i was the only one that said that, great minds think alike.....................
simple solution. If a mechanic makes a mistake, break his legs. If you think your mechanic made a mistake, and it turns out to be you, break your own legs. If a mechanic ****s you, kill him. That'll stop him from doing it to somebody else. If you try and **** over an honest mechanic, kill yourself. That'll stop you from doing it again.
LOL... this one is great! Who's the judge and jury? After we're all dead, who'll be working on the cars?
My balljoint story, my GMC 3/4 ton truck needed balljoints (upper and lower) the original ones were shot. I've done cars and half ton pick ups frontend work but I didn't want to mess with the heavier stuff. I took it to a good shop (I asked around) they changed out the balljoints, when I picked it up the steering felt tight but I figure they are just new. A few months later I'm driving down the freeway and the truck is wondering all over the road something not right. I took it to another shop and asked them to check the alinment, a few hours later I get a phone call and the guy said I better come down and look at my truck. When I get to the shop the tech takes me to my truck then grabs a pair of big channel locks and show me the upper balljoint is about ready to fall out (the NEW balljoint) I checked my paperwork and it's still under warranty from the other shop. The other shop took the truck back and replaced the upper balljoints again no charge. A few days later I went over a bump and the frontend makes this sqwak noise (like a dry balljoint) so the next day I tried to get it to repete the noise again and it does it once. A few days later I was working on another car and thought since I have the tools out I'll check out my truck . I got my grease gun and tried to lube the upper balljoint but my gun hose would not snap down over the zerk so when you went the grease it the grease would just squeeze out around the zerk and not in it. I changed out the zerk and then it greased fine the zerks were different. So what the shop did was install the upper balljoints then put a grease gun on it give it a few pumps and think the joint was good to go (both uppers had globs of grease around the zerks) . So the first upper balljoint job they didn't get greased and died then the second balljoint job I was riding around on dry upper balljoints till I caught it. I even had to tap out the threads on the new balljoint to screw in the correct zerk. I felt the shop made a honest mistake they just bolted in the part and thought they lubed it.
You are right....it is a 97 Ford Super Duty. I know the owner of the shop and fully expect him to fix it. I had not heard of the type ball joints you are talking about. But you have to admit there are a few mechanics arround who will take advantage if they think you are not familiar with what it takes to fix their car or like my second example about the service manager who told me I needed to replace the fuel filter that I had just replaced. I have a lot of respect for mechanics who go to school and take the time to learn how to work on the type cars on the road today. I consider myself a pretty good backyard mechanic but I don't have the equipment or the knowledge to work on a late model car. I think picking a shop with a good reputation to work on your car is very important, especially with the costs of repairs these days.
As to the widow and gas tank flush. When the service writer tried to sell my wife the work she tried to call me and couldn't locate me. She felt confident enough to tell him "no thanks" on our car but wasn't sure enough to get in the middle of a brawl on someone else's car. There's no question that a woman is more apt to get taken on auto repair. I agree about there being a lot of great mechanics out there. If you find one tell everyone you know and try to keep the guy in business so he'll be around when you need him. Finding good independent mechanics is getting harder and harder as cars become increasingly complex and require major investment in diagnostic machines and specialty tools.
i have a few but the best one is. Back in 1983 I bought a new Mustang Gt. with Free inspection. i had the car for about a year when I took it back for inspection. When I came back to pick the car up the service writer told me that is p***ed inspection but the rear brakes were bad and I should have the brakes replaced. He ask me if I wanted to make an appointment to have it done. The car had just over 3,000 miles on it and I ask him why the brake were gone already. He told me that the Gt motor and the stock rear brakes that was common. I told him that I would take care of it and left. 6 months went by and I remembered that I needed back brakes so I went to the parts store and pick a set up. Got home pulled the wheel and drum. Guess what The Brake were like new. The salesman that sold me the car and the owner did not like me after I went back and told him what I thought about his dealership.
I have good luck at the Monro Muffler/Brake up the road. They treat me great and I'm an infrequent customer, have put on tires and even fixed a hole in one - for free - on a state inspection. When I first got the truck I had them bleed the brakes a couple times - $20 a shot was well worth versus the h***le of the disc/drum with the safety switch in the prop valve - and had them do rear axle seals when they let go. They hit me for $60 on that, but both replaced C-clips they broke (a dealership part they said) no charge AND I had bought new brake shoes to put on to replace the last set which was all gummed up, I got it back they put those on free too. I was so happy with one of the things they did I tossed the guy an extra $20 and said buy pizzas for everyone, or something. And I'm a cheap *******! I posted in the bias ply/radial thread when I was 19 and the guy told me it wasn't safe to run two different size tires front to back on the same car. I just drove in in a then 24 year old car - you think I know nothing about cars, haven't seen thousands of cars by now with big tires on the back and little ones on the front? If the fronts are 70s and the rears are 75s.. so what? It drove great when I installed some myself. That's about the only bad experience I've had personally, but my folks have gotten burned a few times on things. Then again they do it to themselves, my sister wrecked her pickup on black ice 2 or 3 years ago, they went car shopping and bought like the first car they even looked at - a '99 Mercury Sable with 50,000 miles on it from some dealer. It's been in and out of the garage a bunch of times - an ABS sensor failed, which is probably normal given the road salt, but the trans slips off and on and it never will do it when the techs test drive it. Plus it has the V6 that's prone to blowing head gaskets. I spent a tenth the money on my truck, maybe tripled my initial investment fixing things, and it's never let me down to where it wouldn't run and I was stranded.
About ten years ago, my mother took her nissan to a stealership for it's 100k mile scheduled service work. She paid for it and got home, and I noticed a $70 charge to "adjust the clutch"... Hmmm,,, hydraulic clutches dont have any sort of adjustment. So the next day I took her car back to the dealership, and played dumb, I said "the clutch didn't feel right", and asked them if they could adjust it. Service manager tells me to my face that a hydraulic clutch cant be adjusted, and it must be a bad clutch cylinder, slave cylinder, or possibly a bad clutch.......HA!!! So I whip out the receipt from the previous day and ask him to explain why we were charged to adjust something he had just told me could not be adjusted. I got the run-around for a few minutes. I ended up in the office of the owner. Talking to him, and he's trying to "smooth over" the situation when the service manager sticks his head in the door and says "I talked to the mechanic who did the work, and he says that charge was for changing the fluid in the hydraulic clutch"... Oh, ok, I can buy that,,, except we didn't ask to have the fluid changed. The owner is still trying to sweet talk me. I'm not happy, but at least I got an explination, so I head back out to mom's car. Pop the hood and have a look-see at the hydraulic clutch ***embly. It's a front wheel drive, so everything is in plain view. I follow the line from the firewall down to the bellhousing, and see the bleeder screw dry and covered with 1/4 inch of 5 year old road grime. They didn't do a damn thing to it. Now I'm pissed! Right back into the owners office, and I asked him to come see what I had just saw. We get out there, and the mechanic [who serviced the car the day before] is standing there talking to the service manager. I got 'em all together and showed 'em... Dry cylinder, years of road crud on the bleeder screw,,, no work had been performed to justify the $70 charge. All 3 of them are still trying to BS me when I pulled the ace out of my sleeve.... You see, at the time, I worked for a local TV station driving a camera van, so I pulled out my "press I.D." with the name of the TV station blazened across the top, and I asked the owner of the dealership "Would you be willing to repeat the bull-**** you just told me on camera?" Talk about an awkward moment.................. The owner says to me [after picking his lower jaw up off the ground], "Am I on camera now?" I said "No, but you will be in 15 minutes unless I get a $70 refund." 5 minutes later, I walked out of the dealership with a refund check, not for the $70 we had been overcharged, but for the WHOLE $535 that we had been charged for the entire service visit. On my way out, I told the owner that "I'll be watching this dealership very carefully, so you better be carefull about screwing people in the future or you will end up on camera!" I laughed all the way home, and my mom 'bout **** a brick when I handed her the check. I told my boss [at the TV station] about it, and he got a good laugh as well, and said it was a good idea for a news story. I quit the TV station and went to a higher paying job a couple months later, but [amazingly] later that fall, there was a news report about dis-honest car repair shops, and the same dealership DID INFACT get busted on camera.... Some fools never learn
i am a service writer at a freightliner dealership, and we do not get comission on any work that we write up. for one thing, there is no way that i could sell someone something that they do not need. but if i do happen to see something obvious that needs to be fixed that the customer did not make mention of, i will show them. i will not insist that he has to have us fix it. i will make mention of it, so the customer is aware but i will not sell someone a service that they do not need. there is nothing in it for me, and doing that is just wrong. the word about bad business travels faster at a semi truck dealership than at a car dealership because all of the truck drivers have c.b.'s. if someone gets screwed, the word travels really fast. here, if someone is dis satisfied with the service / repairs that they had done, the service writers have the authority to cut the price on the labor. the dealership that i work at is the largest freightliner dealership in the midwest, and keeping our image clean is very important. i know how those weasels at the car dealerships work. the service writers get comission on the services they sell, AND comission on the parts needed to fix what they sell. so naturally, they are going to try and sell anything and everything weather it's needed or not (which is just wrong). pn top of that, they get a regular salary, so it isn't like they are working soley off the comission. i don't know about car dealership service writers, but here, we have to be certified, and we have to be up on all the newest stuff so we actually know what we're talking about. things in this business change every day.
What is it with ball joints that alignment guys always try and sell them to ya? My dad told me in the 60's he got the same treatment LOL I took my car to a shop that my friend said 'all the hot rodders' go to to get an alignment. The shop calls me later and says I've gotta show you something while it's up on the rack, and then shakes the living hell out of the tire to get the upper a arm to move and says due to the play in it he needs to replace the upper inner and outer bushings, and the other side I got lucky it just needs new upper inner bushings Nice touch! So he does the back of the envelope calculations that look su****iously like contractors and car salesmen do, typing up fictional **** on a calculator to make it look like they're not just pulling a number out of their ***. He comes up with $900. I said thanks and paid him $40 for inspecting my car and left. I get the car home and there's play in the suspension alright, but you don't need to shake anything. Just barely move the wheel at 12 and 6 and you can see the play in the kingpins. So this guy would have soaked me for $900 and not fixed the damn thing! I ended up spending $400 on a complete front end rebuild kit and $400 to a machine shop to do the kingpins and a arm bushings(they fleeced me for $200 for the kingpins then called me and said it'd be another $75 cuz they were so badly rusted in. It seemed well practiced to me, but maybe it was legit) I still have to get it aligned, but at least for my $900 I'll get a complete new front end.
I for one have to thank dishonest mechanics. If not for them I probably wouldn't know as much as I do. Last time I brought my car to a mechanic was when I was probably 17 and didn't know much about cars. My check engine light was on and I didn't know how to fix it. My mechanic, who at the time I thought was my buddy, said the carb needed to be rebuilt so I let him do so. Charged me $150 but the check engine light was off so I was happy. Driving down the road later that day I look down to see how fast I was going and to my surprise I could not tell. My speedometer needle was missing! Now I'm thinking what in the hell happened to it. Then it hits me. I pull over, shut the car off and then turn the ignition to accessories. Do I see the check engine light come on? nope The son of a ***** took the light bulb out to "fix" the problem. From that point on I did all repairs myself. "Dad what does that light mean?" "That just means the tape fell off honey"
Just had the 4L60E trans rebuilt in my 2002 Z-71...$1300.00 but, i took it to the dealer first to get an idea ..they wanted $2800.00 to rebuild it..or $3600.00 to replace it with a re-man Trans. The Trans Shop I took it to..replaced the torque converter (Because it was screwed up) and rebuilt the trans and even tweeked the shift points and installed Corvette Servos..all for the 1300 bucks.... im done dealing with dealers..If i cant do it myself. im going to look to the little guy shops and keep them in buisness.
We have two good shops close to the house. Have to give each one some of the work. Don't want to loose them. I don't go to the dealer unless it's a big ticket item the manufacture is going to cover in warranty.
The more complex they make cars, the harder it is to find people that know how to fix them. It is getting worse all the time. I'll bet that most mechanics now in their 40's and 50's didn't start working on cars because they loved computers. Hell, computers in cars didn't exist back then. Now, vehicles have computers to controll everything-it ****s big time. "I'm sorry sir, you're dome light controller has failed. I'm afraid that it will cost $275.00 to repair." Wait till OBD lll comes out. It is rumored to be wireless! That means big brother can access your cars computer via satelite! Old cars and carburetors rule!
" It is rumored to be wireless! That means big brother can access your cars computer via satelite!" I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that is in already in place but not applied.When I scan a vehicle a homologation I.D. number sometimes comes up.This is for that particular vehicle for identification by satellite.They probably already monitor some vehicles for test purposes....Chrysler told me that vehicles will be checked via satellite for polluting,check engine lights on etc.Just think...how does Onstar know where you are?
Just wait until they get better involved with the obdIII technology to the point when they can tell if you are speeding according to the speed limit of the road you are on and you get a ticket in the mail, or when you drive for extended periods of time with your check engine light on and you get another ticket for contributing to pollution.
I'm lucky in this regard. The wife almost always has a car under warranty so there isnt generally many oppertunities for fraud there. There are many times I do not have the time or the need tools to do something on my car. We have three places in town that does mechanic work. I'm very good friends with two of them and know the third well. I generally take my older stuff to one guy who allows me to use his tools and stuff in his garage. He knows his old stuff really well and I pay him for his knowledge and use of tools. (he does need to make a living). Or if I have him do the work I have absolutely no doubt that it will be done right and only what is needed.
as a wrecker operator, i'm at several repair shops every day. i try to let people know when they are going into a bad shop but some just want the closest place. at least i usually get to tow the car again after the bad mechanics couldn't fix it. there are only 3 independent repair shops i will recommend and i do bring them many cars. i don't get any discounts off of my work done on my personal vehicles or a bribes. i just tell people to go there since the car will be fixed properly.
I have a good one. My mom as a little mazda that seems to eat balljoints. It used to be my car and had mazdaspeed balljoints, shafts, and springs, koni yellows, and I installed them myself. When I owned the car before her, I drove it very hard and broke a lot of stuff, but always upgraded what I broke. I broke 1 set of balljoints in 100,000km running in a rallye. She was getting a new set every 6 monthes. $300 a pop. I just did the clutch on the car for her and checked the balljoints since the front end was loose, and there was a noise that she said was the balljoints going bad again, and the car had not been drive 1000km since she had the last ones put in because she got a new car and this just sat in the garage. The balljoints that were in there were the same madzaspeed balljoints that I had installed 5 years earlier. They are held in with two bolts, and the outer bolt was 1/8" from being tightend and lock-***ed that way. The inner bolt had no lock tight and had loosened from being driven around and only the one bolt holding it and was letting the joint move around slightly, making a knocking noise on occasion and making the car wander on the road. I tightened them both up with lock-***e, torqued them to spec, and greased them - the car drove like new. The ***holes had soaked my parents for 4 sets of balljoints they never replaced and had tampered with the ones that were in it so they would start making noise and wandering after a few monthes of my mother driving. It only took me 2 days for them to loosen up on. The worst part is that my dad is a Cop and they knew it!
I have nothing good to say about 90% of all mechanics. I'd rather drive a ****box and spend my money on my troubleshooting mistakes than get blatenty ripped off by ***hats. (I love the word ***hat. I learned it here on the HAMB)
I took my truck back to the allignment shop this morning and they fixed it. In the process of checking everything they had put bad grease fittings in and could not grease the upper ball joints. They also told me they loosened the upper ball joint nut 1/4 turn because it was too tight. Not sure that helped but greasing the upper joints had to help. Anyway they fixed it and were very appologetic because I had to make two 40 mile round trips to get it done. Drives great now. Now that I have that solved I guess it's back to buiding my wife's 55 Buick. Turned into a real chore but it is fun and I can do all the work myself....even tho all my friends credit her with doing all the work. Actually she does help a lot and deserves a lot of credit for helping.Only took 2 weeks to put the Chrysler taillights in. Thanks Jerry [/IMG]<p>[/IMG]
my girlfriend a couple of months ago took her xterra to a shop in memphis to see about having brakes put on, they printed her a quote with all the things she supposedly needed. The guy told her she needed everything from master cylinder, rotors, pads, the whole 9. She called me and asked 'why does my car cost so much to have brakes to put on?' my reply 'well it is a nissan' she then said well dont you think $1500 is a little ridiculous Needless to say we ended up changing out the pads having the rotors turned and all was well. I would much rather drive an hour to fix them myself than to have her get burned. Guess thats the price you pay for not having time, just have to make time now after that incident
Just wanted to relay a couple of experiences I've had with good people. My daily is a Volkswagen golf and I have put a lot of miles on it - has been a great car. 1) Oil filter is connected to the engine with a sort of cast aluminum manifold which has several lines connected to it. Seal between manifold and motor goes bad and I blow all of my oil out on the main drag. It won't hold oil at all. Thought I would be stuck an hour away in St. Joe (where I was working at the time) until who knows when. Closest place to push it was a Toyota dealership. They ruled. They knew I had to get home and those guys - at 4:45 - instantly had my car on a lift and were calling everywhere trying to find the proper seal. Everyone including the VW dealership told them "special part... it would have to be ordered." The mechanics didn't even slow down. They had the bad seal in their hand and started pulling parts from their shelves trying to find a match. And found it on a specific size of oil filter. Basically a flat o-ring. They let me make the final call on using it. None of us could see any reason it wouldn't work so in it went. They had everything back together quickly and the charge was minimal. I don't even think they charged be their full labor. Manager even called me at home later to make sure I made it home alright. I'll never forget how good they were. And not a problem with it since. 2) Had problems just this week with the daily - strange clunk followed by a sort of grinding noise if I gave too much gas. Had visions of everything from transmission issues to CV joint to possible clutch issues. Took it to a local place owned by a HAMBer (John Swander). Turn around was fast and I was treated very well. Turned out to be a busted motor mount. It is officially the only place I take my daily from here on out.
The Buick is looking good Jerry....when I skimmed over that first pic, I wasn't paying attention and thought it was a Chrysler! Had to look again to see it was your car. The tail lights look cool!
I took the '50 Burb to Brake Max ( a local chain ) for an alignment. They have really nice equipment. Anyway, young kid, I forget his name, spent 3 hours aligning and rechecking everything to make it perfect. He really went beyond the call of duty. The shop didn't mind me in there with him either. Car runs and drives beautifully! Keep in mind this thing has a Corvette rear and El Polacko's Dakota kit on front.
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