Cheap Motor Owner Gets Pwned

[ADeMartino]

Any way of getting a policy that incompatible items will NOT be sold on the same bill? In other words, he would have had to make 2 transactions - ring up the master cylinder, then ring up the ATF separately? Alternately, before giving the customer the receipt, write on it "Customer has been advised that ATF is NOT a suitable replacement for brake fluid". You can be sure that the customer (or their lawyer) would try to use the receipt as evidence "you guys gave faulty advice, saying that he could use the ATF as brake fluid" - and it would look awfully bad to have the receipt showing brake parts and ATF. The handwritten notation would be a simple CYA.

No need. The boilerplate on the warranty paperwork stated clearly that the company was not responsible for any damage arising from the customer's inability to perform a proper repair. It saved us a lot of grief on several occasions.

Like the guy who hooked up his battery BACKWARDS. Not OUR fault he couldn't take the time to check which cables were which.

Or the guy who thought that the automatic-transmission dipstick tube was the place you put motor oil in.

Or the one who forget to reinstall the oil pan drain plug while performing an oil change. He poured four quarts of oil into that engine, it drained right out the bottom, and much heartburn resulted when he started that engine.

One fellow limped onto out lot, hemorrhaging automatic transmission fluid. He'd struck something in the road that had ripped a hole in his transmission's oil pan.
He insisted on trying to get the car home under his own power. That didn't work so well; he scarcely made it back off the lot before the car stopped moving completely. Gee, who would have thought that the pink fluid in a transmission is actually NECESSARY?

[Shalom]

This, of course, reminds me of a car my godfather once owned. Leave the door open, and you get something like this:

"Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar." [repeat ad infinitum, or until...]
[close door]
"Thank you."

" . . . I got it in my neighborhood, now it got a different rhythm to it. You leave the lights on, the car say "Ding!! Say man, you left your lights on. . . . I say your lights is on, man. . . . Yo, what the f***, you blind and deaf?! . . . Turn out yo' m*****f****** lights!" " -- Eddie Murphy

[Jetfire]

"Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar." [repeat ad infinitum, or until...]
[close door]
"Thank you."

How very Butters.

"it gets sort of Zen after a while, Life is a journey, time is a river and the door is ajar."

[BPFH]

My Sedona has a graphic representation of the car that shows which tire is under, as well as a light. I miss the cars of the 80s that had the little car graphic that would also show which door was open.

This, of course, reminds me of a car my godfather once owned. Leave the door open, and you get something like this:

"Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar. Your door is ajar." [repeat ad infinitum, or until...]
[close door]
"Thank you."

[Ironclad Alibi]

My Sedona has a graphic representation of the car that shows which tire is under, as well as a light. I miss the cars of the 80s that had the little car graphic that would also show which door was open.

My 2013 car has the door/trunk open indicator lights. However, I don't think they updated the tire pressure sensors when they last rotated the wheels. But I check them all anyway.

[dalesys]

... I miss the cars of the 80s that had the little car graphic that would also show which door was open.

In my day we just listened for which kid's voice dropped out...

[Ophbalance]

If I remember correctly some manufacturers have certain models designed with this technology. Not only to tell you when a tire's pressure is low, but *which* tire is the culprit. I'm pretty sure Audi has a few models like this.

Honda (to my knowledge) just has the basic "your shit's low, tough luck finding out which one bro!"

My Sedona has a graphic representation of the car that shows which tire is under, as well as a light. I miss the cars of the 80s that had the little car graphic that would also show which door was open.

[CorneliaMarieRocks]

heh, yeah no not exactly what I was thinking of, but hey, to each their own...I'm sure the Bering Sea crabbers would rather think of your acronym than the one I was thinkin' of

Hint: the one I was referring to mainly green, green & white

[Kit-Ginevra]

BOAT-Beautiful,Outgoing,Amazing Tits?

[CorneliaMarieRocks]

hey OP, you do know what BOAT stands for right?

highlight for answer: Break Out Another Thousand

tell that one to your next customer to bitch about needing maintenance, sit back & laugh when their head BSOD trying to figure out what the hell you're talking about

[mhkohne]

The trouble with this is that the way it knows which tire is the culprit is that it's been programmed to associate a sensor ID with a wheel position. If it's not reprogrammed when you rotate the tires (i.e. flat-rate mechanic saves a couple minutes on the job) it will report that the WRONG tire has is low. I've read about a case where it reported that the front tire was low, but the pressure checked out on a gauge. Mechanic figured the sensor had gone bad, so he replaced it ($$$ for parts, plus labour to dismount/remount tire). The last step in the job was to reprogram the system (since there was now a new sensor in place that the previous programming wouldn't know about), at which point it started reporting that the rear tire was low (i.e. thanks to the reprogramming, the system now associated the sensor reporting low with the wheel position it was actually on) - and a gauge check confirmed this. Wasted money due to a lazy guy doing the tire rotation.

Well, Mechanic should have checked all tires manually before he started swapping sensors, too. He knows how it works and he knows not everyone is smart.

[wolfie]

Dealers aren't all they are cracked up to be sometimes....

Can vouch for that - many years ago (it was replaced by a '78 Horizon, which was replaced by a '94 Axxess, which was replaced by a '09 Patriot that outlived her) my mother owned a Fiat 128. She took it to the dealer to get the snow tires installed (this was back in the days when it was normal to only put snows on the driving wheels). When she came to pick up her car, its stance looked odd - the dealer had put the snow tires on the rear wheels (128 was a front-drive that superficially resembled a 124, which was rear drive). Cue the service advisor rounding up a mechanic to re-do the job RIGHT NOW.

I had a customer years ago who insisted that automatic transmission fluid was suitable for a brake system. He was buying a brand-new master cylinder for his car and came to the register with both it and two quarts of Type F automatic transmission fluid.

Until those brakes utterly failed on him and resulted in a pretty bad accident - FOR which he tried to blame US.

Any way of getting a policy that incompatible items will NOT be sold on the same bill? In other words, he would have had to make 2 transactions - ring up the master cylinder, then ring up the ATF separately? Alternately, before giving the customer the receipt, write on it "Customer has been advised that ATF is NOT a suitable replacement for brake fluid". You can be sure that the customer (or their lawyer) would try to use the receipt as evidence "you guys gave faulty advice, saying that he could use the ATF as brake fluid" - and it would look awfully bad to have the receipt showing brake parts and ATF. The handwritten notation would be a simple CYA.

If I remember correctly some manufacturers have certain models designed with this technology. Not only to tell you when a tire's pressure is low, but *which* tire is the culprit. I'm pretty sure Audi has a few models like this.

The trouble with this is that the way it knows which tire is the culprit is that it's been programmed to associate a sensor ID with a wheel position. If it's not reprogrammed when you rotate the tires (i.e. flat-rate mechanic saves a couple minutes on the job) it will report that the WRONG tire has is low. I've read about a case where it reported that the front tire was low, but the pressure checked out on a gauge. Mechanic figured the sensor had gone bad, so he replaced it ($$$ for parts, plus labour to dismount/remount tire). The last step in the job was to reprogram the system (since there was now a new sensor in place that the previous programming wouldn't know about), at which point it started reporting that the rear tire was low (i.e. thanks to the reprogramming, the system now associated the sensor reporting low with the wheel position it was actually on) - and a gauge check confirmed this. Wasted money due to a lazy guy doing the tire rotation.

[sms001]

Well, the UI from the driver's point of view is a single lamp saying 'pressure low'.
If the car would at least differentiate between the 4 real tires and the spare, that would be VERY helpful.

lol. I thought the same thing myself, Chromatix. Extra frustrating in my case as it's a 4x truck, so there's already a visual of the four tires on the dashboard. Wouldn't have been that much more work/money.

idk, mhkohne. I can SEE the four on the ground. I might not be able to tell if one is a pound or two low, but once it gets in the sensor's range (3lbs?) I might be able to. I would LOVE knowing that the one I never look at is nice and full and holding pressure though; nuthin' worse than going to change to the spare and discovering that it's flat too.

[pzychobitch]

Part of the fault for that last one has to lie with the manufacturer - the computer must have access to the individual pressures in order to report any of them, so why not do the obvious thing and report *which* one is low, and also indicate any others that are *near* the low-pressure threshold?

I see a lot of these short-sighted UI decisions, unfortunately.

If I remember correctly some manufacturers have certain models designed with this technology. Not only to tell you when a tire's pressure is low, but *which* tire is the culprit. I'm pretty sure Audi has a few models like this.

Honda (to my knowledge) just has the basic "your shit's low, tough luck finding out which one bro!"

[protege]

Although I'm starting to think a blood sacrifice may be required to get the hydraulic disc brakes on my fiancees mtn bike to work correctly.

Nah, you need to sacrifice a live chicken, turn around 3 times....