Life today in the car biz, and why GOOD mechanics hate it now: the real truth

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

Edited Tuesday at 03:26 PM by Ace-Garageguy

[RW033]

I believe in the next 10 years or so cars will diagnose themselves and most shops/dealerships will be just replacing parts that the car tells them to

[Ace-Garageguy]

2 minutes ago, RW033 said:

I believe in the next 10 years or so cars will diagnose themselves and most shops/dealerships will be just replacing parts that the car tells them to

That's pretty much the way it works now, and it doesn't work well at all for anything that actually takes some knowledge and insight to diagnose.

Self-diagnostics and scanners only point a "technician" in the right direction, and there are literally millions of instances where shops replaced every single part the car  "told them to" and it still didn't function right.

I've been in the business over 5 decades, it's badly broken, and shows no sign of getting better, ever.

[Goose1957]

My best friend owns a repair garage. I'm always asking him how he's able to fix today's junk. He's about ready to give it up too. Example, a couple of months ago, the starter in my Chevy PPV went out. No biggie, starters fail. He installed a brand new one and 2 days later, it failed. Borrowed the rollback again, took it to the shop and installed another starter. So far, it's been good. But my friend was out the labor of replacing the starter and the transport of the car. He's a good friend and wouldn't even think of charging me any additional time. But he's a fellow bourbon enthusiast so I bought him a good bottle for his troubles.

Jeff

[Ace-Garageguy]

23 minutes ago, Goose1957 said:

My best friend owns a repair garage. I'm always asking him how he's able to fix today's junk. He's about ready to give it up too. Example, a couple of months ago, the starter in my Chevy PPV went out. No biggie, starters fail. He installed a brand new one and 2 days later, it failed. Borrowed the rollback again, took it to the shop and installed another starter. So far, it's been good. But my friend was out the labor of replacing the starter and the transport of the car. He's a good friend and wouldn't even think of charging me any additional time. But he's a fellow bourbon enthusiast so I bought him a good bottle for his troubles.

Yup. First instance I encountered of "new" parts being defective was in the early 1990s. Replacement cylinders (made in China) for a Porsche 914 engine were so porous, you could hear air puffing through the cylinder walls when you rotated the thing by hand on the stand. My first thought was that my guy had somehow failed to get a good seal at the top of the cylinder where it plugs into the head, but I found the real problem when we tore the engine back down.

Next time was in the early 2000s. '86 Ford pickup, brake master cylinder, made in sunny Mexico by highly skilled, smiling workers.

Seals were put in backwards, just like they were in the next three I got from the parts store. Last one I got, I just took the seals out and put them back in the right way...after which it worked as it should.

Had I known what I'd be facing, I'd have just bought a rebuild kit and fixed the old one, but of course that was around the time parts stores stopped selling rebuild kits for brake parts.

Next one was a couple years later, a new radiator for a 2001 PT Cruiser was so poorly made and out of spec, I had to spend half the day partially reengineering it so it would physically fit the vehicle. And yes, multiple trips to the parts store to double-check the part number and physically compare it to another one they had in stock, and one we ordered. ALL MADE WRONG. (Trying to save the owner some bucks by not buying a factory part, so who got hosed? Me.)

And it's been going downhill from there.

I buy OEM parts when I can get them for repairs these days, whatever the cost, but that's no guarantee of decent quality anymore either.

Edited Tuesday at 11:50 PM by Ace-Garageguy

[1972coronet]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

"technician"

I still scoff at that "title"... same scoff today as the first time I'd heard it. Soooooo many ostentatious job titles anymore...

[Rodent]

56 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Trying to save the owner some bucks by not buying a factory part, so who got hosed? Me.

Depending on the make of the car, be sure to check OEM before you buy aftermarket. There has been a flurry of Teams messages at work this week from colleagues working on their own vehicles and checking parts prices.

Aftermarket RAM radiator hose from brick and mortar - $96-129

Aftermarket RAM radiator hose from popular online reseller - $45-60

OEM - $55

Name brand aftermarket from Walmart.com - $40

 

Mazda stabilizer bar end links from brick and mortar - $55-60 each

Popular online retailer - $16-40 each

OEM - $26 each

 

We owned a U.S. built Nissan years ago and I bought everything at the dealer. Brake pads, hoses, belts, etc. were all half or less than aftermarket. Anything maintenance or wear related was dirt cheap. I remember that one belt was $7 from Nissan, $50 aftermarket.

[Tim W. SoCal]

42 minutes ago, 1972coronet said:

I still scoff at that "title"... same scoff today as the first time I'd heard it. Soooooo many ostentatious job titles anymore...

Well, after all the tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds upon hundreds of hours I've invested in advancing my skills and keeping up with VERY rapidly changing technology, as well as maintaining my reputation as an honest maintenance, repair and business man, "grease monkey" is a bit of an insult...

[Tim W. SoCal]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Yup. First instance I encountered of "new" parts being defective was in the early 1990s.

  Also in the early 90s, my first was disc brake rotors from the C.H.Ina Co, posted all over their box "Factory Finished - Do Not Machine". Finished the job, head out for the test drive, hit the brakes and the rotors are so badly warped the shimmy nearly rips the steering wheel from my hands. Take the front brakes back apart to cut the rotors, doing shallow cuts, mind you, and run into all the air pockets in the casting. These were name brand rotors from a long time, well established parts chain.

 

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Next one was a couple years later, a new radiator for a 2001 PT Cruiser was so poorly made and out of spec, I had to spend half the day partially reengineering it so it would physically fit the vehicle.

Had that experience too, then after drilling the radiator mounting holes in the correct locations, couldn't get the trans cooler line fittings in the radiator to stop leaking, until the FOURTH radiator (delivered next day from the same parts house's warehouse) was installed.

 

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I buy OEM parts when I can get them for repairs these days, whatever the cost, but that's no guarantee of decent quality anymore either.

And on top of that, many OEM parts for cars less than 5 years old are already obsolete and discontinued...

[1972coronet]

20 minutes ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

Well, after all the tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds upon hundreds of hours I've invested in advancing my skills and keeping up with VERY rapidly changing technology, as well as maintaining my reputation as an honest maintenance, repair and business man, "grease monkey" is a bit of an insult...

I'm not speaking of the personnel , only the title. 

I'd never entertain the idea of calling one a "grease monkey" (unless they want to be called as such... haha). 

Even the position I hold at work has an ostentatious title : "Delivery Service Specialist".

Scoff !

[rattle can man]

I marvel at the lousy engineering of aftermarket parts. I still need to get back to the brake job on my Ford Festiva. there are no OE parts out there. New drums, hardware, and shoes. Can't get the drum over the shoes with the cylinder compressed and the hand brake adjuster backed all the way off.

[johnyrotten]

18 hours ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

Also in the early 90s, my first was disc brake rotors from the C.H.Ina Co, posted all over their box "Factory Finished - Do Not Machine". Finished the job, head out for the test drive, hit the brakes and the rotors are so badly warped the shimmy nearly rips the steering wheel from my hands. Take the front brakes back apart to cut the rotors, doing shallow cuts, mind you, and run into all the air pockets in the casting. These were name brand rotors from a long time, well established parts chain.

I've gone through that on my wife's vw. Replaced the rear rotors, a year later they are showing rust voids. Swapped them for oem, been good since. No longer buying rotors from that particular chain.

[johnyrotten]

2 hours ago, rattle can man said:

I marvel at the lousy engineering of aftermarket parts. I still need to get back to the brake job on my Ford Festiva. there are no OE parts out there. New drums, hardware, and shoes. Can't get the drum over the shoes with the cylinder compressed and the hand brake adjuster backed all the way off.

Do you have the shoes swapped? 

[Ace-Garageguy]

18 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

Do you have the shoes swapped? 

I thought something similar...and then remembered I DID get a set of aftermarket shoes for the rear of the Neon that had linings that were in fact too thick to allow the drums to go on over them....yes, with the pistons fully compressed and the parking-brake adjusters backed all the way in and slack in the cables.

Happily for me, the shop had an ancient Ammco Safe-Arc machine, so I was able to correct them.

And I was the only guy in the shop who even knew what the thing was at the time.

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Ace-Garageguy

[johnyrotten]

7 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I thought something similar...and then remembered I DID get a set of aftermarket shoes for the rear of the Neon that had linings that were in fact too thick to allow the drums to go on over them....yes, with the pistons fully compressed and the parking-brake adjusters backed all the way in and slack in the cables.

Happily for me, the shop had an ancient Ammco Safe-Arc machine, so I was able to correct them.

And I was the only guy in the shop who even knew what the thing was at the time.

 

I've yet to run into too thick of material, when I went to change the shoes on the gmc due to noise last year the frame was the same, the WIDTH of the material was narrow. Nope, not running that. Scuffed up the old ones and back on. I'll deal with the squeak. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

I've yet to run into too thick of material, when I went to change the shoes on the gmc due to noise last year the frame was the same, the WIDTH of the material was narrow. Nope, not running that. Scuffed up the old ones and back on. I'll deal with the squeak. 

It's amazing what those guys'll do to eke out a few more rice-grains of profit.

EDIT: It's also pretty funny to see all the apologists for this kind of thing, citing differences in measuring systems being the problem rather than incompetence or greed.

Edited 9 hours ago by Ace-Garageguy

[johnyrotten]

Just now, Ace-Garageguy said:

It's amazing what those guys'll do to eke out a few more rice-grains of profit.

Yeah, I hear that. I wish I had a picture of them. There was about a half inch of the steel shoe on either side of the friction. Just imagine what that would do to the drum.

[bytownshaker]

After 40 plus years as Ford mechanic I laugh at those pocket sized scan tools that will give a code and what part to replace. I wish I had a dollar for every time a customer wanted a part replaced and it  didn't fix the problem, it usually turned out be wiring or something else, for example code said to replace a transmission shift solenoid but the band was broken. 

We tried to not use aftermarket parts as we found OEM fit and very seldom got defective parts. 

[Rodent]

There are good aftermarket parts out there and there are poor ones. There are junk OEM parts out there too. If any of you are in the business and work on GM trucks, look no further than the knock sensor and harness debacle of not too long ago.

I have a dear neighbor who has a hobby of knocking the side mirrors off her vehicles. The last one she did, she took it to a body shop and they quoted her around $700. I checked, and the mirror was a little north of $400 from Ford (power, heated, puddle lamp), plus she obliterated the body color cap so paint was needed. And it was a Ford, so the wiring connector was way down in the door, so the trim panel had to be removed. Fast forward, we have a local distributor of "offshore" body parts and they were offering the mirror for $40. I figured it was junk, but I looked at it and it was either made by the OEM supplier, or it was a very detailed fake. I bought it. Popped the cap off of it and installed it on her car. This was long enough ago that DupliColor was about $9, so I snagged the Arizona Beige. Using DupliColor primer and clear from my model stash, I laid down a concours quality paint job on the cap, let it dry for a day and installed it on the mirror. She reimbursed me for the mirror and gave me a bottle of Glenlivet 18 year 🙂

I still have the rest of the can of Arizona Beige. I can't decide if I want to paint a model with it or not.

[Ace-Garageguy]

28 minutes ago, Rodent said:

...I still have the rest of the can of Arizona Beige...

What about the Glenlivet?  

[Tim W. SoCal]

1 hour ago, bytownshaker said:

I wish I had a dollar for every time a customer wanted a part replaced and it  didn't fix the problem, it usually turned out be wiring or something else

  You and me both. (and I'm sure there are others on this forum) I get really frustrated and irritated when a potential customer goes to the parts store for a "free check engine light code read", gets sold a sensor, usually of dubious quality, brings the part to a repair shop and then gets very angry at the repair shop for refusing to install the part, or if they do install the part, refusing to guarantee the repair. I try to explain to the "customer" that a code reader is kind of like a road map, but it isn't a taxi cab. It will tell you what road to take, but not get you to the final destination. I have also seen several fuel evap system parts sold when the cause of the problem was actually a loose gas cap.

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 minute ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

  You and me both. (and I'm sure there are others on this forum) I get really frustrated and irritated when a potential customer goes to the parts store for a "free check engine light code read", gets sold a sensor, usually of dubious quality, brings the part to a repair shop and then gets very angry at the repair shop for refusing to install the part, or if they do install the part, refusing to guarantee the repair...

Or they install the part themselves, wrong if there's any possible way to do it wrong, then bring it to you saying "there's nothing wrong with it now because I put a new part in that the man at the parts store sold me after checking everything with his ($25) scanner, so all YOU need to do is MAKE IT WORK !!!"

And they think we're  morons because we have multi-thousand dollar scanners and still can't magically pinpoint the problem in 30 seconds.

Yeah, I hate the repair business now, which is why I only build custom stuff.

[Dragline]

The parts biz is almost a complete wasteland of the incompetent and the useless. The parts have slowly become junk. American parts no longer exist and that's all I need to say about that.

[Rodent]

3 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

What about the Glenlivet?  

Nope. Thanks for asking though.

[Rodent]

2 hours ago, Dragline said:

American parts no longer exist and that's all I need to say about that.

Went through a few U.S. made Delco brake lamp switches for my GM vehicle before I landed a "Hecho en Mexico" switch that would:

1. Not illuminate the ABS lamp

2. Not sound like a wine glass stem snapping when I stepped on the brake pedal

Of course, your mileage may vary. And mine may also vary the next time I spin The Wheel of Parts.