Free Brake Inspections!

[Caractacus_Potts]

If McB would have said "Hey, we fucked up. Bring the car back and we'll fix it," I wouldn't have been nearly as mad. However, after a year of leaving messages, the owner constantly ducking me, I was pissed. They damaged my car, didn't want to own up to it, and I'd had enough.

Had a similar problem with my last mechanic. They installed an alternator and two days later I'm back there again. This time it's a problem with the belt tensioner and they claim it had nothing to do with the previous work. I decide to accept that and give them the benefit of doubt. Next repair is a new timing belt. I picked up the car after they closed on Friday and it was clear that no one had test drove the car and the timing belt had been installed incorrectly.

That was the last straw. I brought it somewhere else on Saturday (this place was not open weekends) and had them re-install the belt correctly. Never went back to that place again.

[NCO]

i was always taught that if you want a free diagnostic you use the TM for that vehicle. and do your own PMCS.

and welcome to the boards sarge.

Thanks redleg! Hooah!

[Gizmo]

Final straw came when the car somehow passed its state inspection...yet had *several* things that would have failed it. The horns, windshield wiper jets, and hazard lights didn't work. Any of those things would have caused the car to fail. Turns out the 'mechanic' just slapped the sticker on it.

I had a friend who had that in the UK. She had a courtesy car from a garage that sold her a lemon and took his time replacing/repairing it. in the meantime the courtesy car she had needed its MOT. Somehow the garage owner managed to put it through its MOT whilst she had the car!

Unsurprisingly that car started breaking down as well. She finally has a decent car and has had it fully checked by someone else who is trustworthy.

[SpyOne]

I'm near Pittsburgh PA, and around here I've seen multiple shops that post a sign saying that if you bring your parts in rather than buying from the shop directly, they charge 2x for labor. I never argued with it because it made sense to me, but don't other places do this? Wouldn't your old shop have done that too?

I don't see this being a good program. Might as well just put up a sign that says "We're gouging you on the parts, just so you know."

I'd much rather have a mechanic who charges me what the parts cost him (most of the shops I've dealt with got their parts delivered from NAPA or some other parts store) and his fee for labor was his fee for labor, whether the parts came from him or me, new or used, period.

That way I could actually trust him when he said "those parts you brought me are crap, and will break in a few weeks".

I always have a laugh when I see a car with rims that are worth more than the entire vehicle. Why? My tagline for watching someone burn their little pos out of the parking lot is "Make your car louder; I can't hear how small your penis is!"

Shouldn't that be "I can still hear how small your penis is"? As if his car being louder could conceal his small penis?

I once saw one of those pro-street cars with the big old loud exhaust, and I started giggling, and the friend with me asked me to explain.
So I explained that the things that muffle exhaust noise also rob the car of horsepower, so that an easy way to make a car faster is to remove them, or replace them with less effective versions, but that this has gotten some people to equate "louder=faster" to a point where they do stupid things.
"That guy," I said, "has done something to his car that only makes it louder. I know this because my car has the exact same engine as his, and I drove it for several weeks without any muffler at all, and it wasn't that loud. He thinks louder means faster, so he did something to make it louder without making it any faster at all."
And I started giggling again.

I also used to LOVE to humiliate those guys at stop lights. They'd sit there in their cop-magnets trying to look all awesome, and be left in the dust by an economy car with 100% stock factory body work and paint.

Can't make money on labor alone. Labor pays for the techs salaries as well as the tire/lube guys. Parts have to be marked up to cover warrantying them as well as provide income for the business. Trust me, the parts suppliers don't pay much in the way of labor claims if they pay them at all.

The mechanics I've dealt with handled these problems this way:
They warranty their parts, not yours.
They deal only with parts stores that have a good warranty policy, and only with brands that they are pretty sure won't give them faulty parts to begin with.
There is a considerable mark-up on that labor. When I was paying $45 and hour for repairs, I know the guy doing 90% of the work was making under $10 and hour. In fact, the guy who did most of the work on my car when I was 17 was the owner's 17 year old son, who was in my graduating class.
And that "10 hour" job I got billed for actually only took 6 hours to do, but the manual says it will take 10 hours so that's what it takes. I know a mechanic at a dealership, and they get paid based on the hours they bill, not the hours they work. He says it is quite possible to bill 20 hours in an 8-hour shift, and gave as an example that an oil change is a 1/2 hour job on the books, is possible to do in 10 minutes, and is quite possible to do in 15 while doing something else at the same time.
He would also gladly stop by after work and replace your wheel bearing for $20 and some pizza. On anything but a Honda. "They're nearly impossible to break, but once they break they are a bitch to work on."

[protege]

So I explained that the things that muffle exhaust noise also rob the car of horsepower, so that an easy way to make a car faster is to remove them, or replace them with less effective versions, but that this has gotten some people to equate "louder=faster" to a point where they do stupid things.

^This. I was always told that as well. If you want to extract a few extra horsepower, the exhaust (from the headers on back) can be switched out for a slightly larger-diameter system. Too large though...and you can lose back pressure...which actually *hurts* performance. Easy fix though--just weld a 'reducer' made from a smaller-diameter pipe on the end and your good. If anyone is wondering how I know this...I had to read up on exhausts when the MG was in bits. There are several firms who supply parts, and I wanted one which would offer the most benefits. In the end, I chose an exhaust that was pretty similar to the stock system. It's a bit on the loud side at highway speeds, but that's how the cars were originally.

But, quite a few people, usually in shitbox economy cars...don't bother to read up on what they're doing. Rather than do the job correctly, they think that a "fart can" on the tailpipe is the way to go. Do those things add horsepower, or any other performance benefit? Hell no. All they do is annoy the shit out of people at traffic lights...and possibly draw unwanted attention from the police. Otherwise, there's no benefit for making your car sound like an angry wasp. Other than the two I already listed. But, there is one thing--it paints the driver as an idiot who doesn't know jack about performance

[Geek King]

There is a considerable mark-up on that labor. When I was paying $45 and hour for repairs, I know the guy doing 90% of the work was making under $10 and hour.

To be fair, what the worker gets paid is only part of what he costs the business. You also pay insurance (both liability and unemployment), matching taxes, any benefits offered, compliance costs for the paperwork the government requires, plus anything I've missed. The cost of labor is more than what an employee gets paid.

Now, as to the rest, yeah, some dealerships do the charge by the book instead of actual time thing. Some don't. Most independants don't, but then you've got to find one who's honest and good.

[AccountingDrone]

I'd much rather have a mechanic who charges me what the parts cost him (most of the shops I've dealt with got their parts delivered from NAPA or some other parts store) and his fee for labor was his fee for labor, whether the parts came from him or me, new or used, period.


I also used to LOVE to humiliate those guys at stop lights. They'd sit there in their cop-magnets trying to look all awesome, and be left in the dust by an economy car with 100% stock factory body work and paint.

The garage we use for anything more than what hubby can do himself is owned by a local family and we have used them for the past 20 years we have lived here. Amazing to have a trustworthy place. They will refuse to do work if it can't be done properly - when my scout needed tires, they refused to do the alignment until they got some damned little part that without which the alignment would have gone wonky in a few weeks. They had us bring the scout back for the tire mounting and alignment a couple days later after the part arrived.

And I had a stock 79 scout with the 345 V8. At the time it was 15 years old, cost me about $250 a year to insure and I croggled the mind of an officer from the Sub base once ... there is an entrance ramp on rt 395 S that is fairly long, and one lovely day I turned onto it, and blasted up the ramp and beat out the porsche that was already at highway speed. When the both of us finally got into the parking lot at the exchange on base, the guy asked me what the hell I had done to it. I had done nothing other than maintain the damned thing. What helps is the size, horsepower and relatively light body [even though that year scout was solid i-beam body, solid steel body, nothing lightweight about the thing at all ] Actually I really miss the thing it got 20 MPG just running around town, and 24-25 highway, could pull stumps, 24 foot trailers, great driving in snow. Loved the high or low options for the transmission, and 2 w or 4w drive options. I could even pop the top off and have essentially a kubelwagen It was definitely a non sport utility truck. It died when hubby hit a patch of black ice, put it through a stacked stone fence, and over a 4 inch diameter baby oak tree, killing the tree and trashing out the radiator and oil pan. Rob drove it home the 4 miles with effectively no oil or coolant, and what killed it was not the engine damage, but the broken frame on the right side. People can keep their new penismobiles, I want a scout.

On the odd sidenote, we are probably going to try and find a scout to replace our pickup when it finally decides to shuffle off this mortal coil.