School Of Hard Knocks

  I was working on a 1997 Sebring JX, which is a convertible in case you don't
know Chrysler terminology. Anyway, I was looking for a noise that the owner said
was driving her crazy. Now, it's not unusual for me to try to check out a "noise
complaint." But this one turned out to be one of the most interesting ones that
I've come across. And when I finally did figure it out, it reminded me of some
of the wacky things I've run across in my many years turning wrenches.

Anyway, the owner says the noise is coming from somewhere in the dash-console
area. And it doesn't seem to matter if the car is running or not. The noise is
supposed to be there all the time. Sure enough, I hear the noise. This is an
important distinction. Quite often I just can't. Sure, it might be there, but I
just don't hear it. Maybe my ears are just too old or maybe I'm just not
familiar with the cacophony of sounds that the car normally emits, and the new
addition is just drowned in the background.

But this noise is distinct. It is a clear beep. And if you were to time it, like
with a stop watch, which is what I did, you'd discover that it beeps exactly
every 2 minutes. On the dot. And like most noises, it's damn hard to locate. It
seems to be coming from everywhere. Kinda' like a pager going off in a crowded
room and everyone looking down at the same time. And being a convertible made
matters even worse, because the noise was less confined than it would be if
there was a top on the car.

I have this cool tool that is essentially a pair of headphones connected to a
microphone. You can use it to hear teeny weenie sounds that are impossible
to locate. Just stick the microphone where you think the sound is coming from
and give it a listen. It hears valve tap, piston knock, and water pump bearing
noises really well. It also hears air leaks and hard to track down squeaks and
rattles. And you can turn up the volume and even hear your own heart beat!

So I grab the tool and find the beeper lodged between the passenger seat and the
console. The lady owner lost it a week before, and was absolutely grateful when
I showed it to her. Now how do you charge for a job like that? Anyway, it
reminded me of other strange jobs I've had. Like the 1991 Buick Regal that came
in with the red battery warning light glowing. Open the hood and there's a
brand-spanking new battery and alternator. Whoops. Something really wrong here.
Somebody's spent a bundle and isn't very happy.

It turned out to be a real hair-puller too. Turn the key on and start it, and
that light is there staring you right in the face. So I decided to do a little
detective work and pull the alternator connector, which should turn off the
light. Right? Wrong. This means there's something wrong in the wiring. Big time!
Further investigation with a razor into the wiring harness reveals a mass of the
harness wires melted all together. A real mess. But oh no! It just doesn't end
there. Not a chance.

I spend a whole day splicing and repairing the wiring harness only to find that
this doesn't fix the problem, which was a dead short. Further detective work
found aluminum foil wrapped around the courtesy light fuse. But that was not
all. No, it doesn't end there. Nope. The reason the fuse is wrapped with
aluminum foil was because of a dead short in one of the accessories, mainly the
cigarette lighter. And the kicker is that someone (maybe the same boyfriend that
was kind enough to wrap the aluminum foil around the fuse for her), has put a
brand-new shiny penny in the cigarette lighter socket.

Which reminds me of another weird alternator electrical one on a 1989 Cadillac
Deville, which was towed in with a no start complaint. After running the
standard charging and starter draw tests, it looks like the alternator is bad.
No biggie. Wham-bam thank-you-ma'am and it's done. Right? Wrong again, Charlie!

Two days later, it's back in my face along with the customer who's this
hot-headed 22-year-old military dude swearing that I'm a rip-off and he's gonna'
call the police. I say wait just a sec while I check this out, and lo and behold
I see that the battery cable ends are toast. Funny, I didn't remember them that
way before. How could I have missed it? So I slap on a couple of those
do-it-yourselfer battery cable ends and send him on his way.

Well, the Cadillac is back in my face a week later, hanging from the back of a
wrecker. And Mr. Military Macho-man is madder than ever. Well, this calls for
some further investigative work and I tell him to call a cab and I'll let him
know tomorrow what's the problem with his Deville. Now, mind you, this ain't no
ordinary Deville. The suspension has been chopped, the wheels are "stylin"
California super-chromed with tires the thickness of rubber-bands. The windows
are all blackened-out and the floor in front of the back seat is covered with
huge speakers. And there are more speakers mounted on the back deck and woofers
under each of the seats.

And this time, when I go to turn the key on, I'm greeted with an audio
bombardment of gansta-rap that is loud enough to loosen my fillings and give me
a concussion! It scared me right out of my wits, and I couldn't move fast enough
to turn the damn thing off. Which of the 57 buttons is OFF? You know, the kind
of lyrics-that-spew-expletives-every-two-words kinda' rap-music. Did I say
rap-music? Now that's a real oxymoron.

Oh yes, did I forget to tell you? There's a hole where the factory radio used to
be and stuffed in it and hanging half-out of the hole is a huge stereo. And in
the trunk, next to the pair of 27" speakers is a huge amplifier. Gingerly, I
grabbed hold of the stereo and pulled it out of the dash. There was a huge gang
of wires going to it, and the factory harness was severely butchered. The first
thing I noticed was that the orange wire with a black stripe that goes to the
Body Control Module was cut and spliced, and that the dash stereo was tapped
into it using common household electrical wire nuts.

While wire nuts are fine and good inside an electrical outlet box in the wall of
your house, wire nuts are not meant to be used in automotive wiring. Why? They
aren't shake proof. And I cringe any time I see wire nuts on a car or truck. I
can't tell you how exasperating it was to see literally dozens of them in the
wiring that was hiding behind the radio. I still shudder when I think about it.
More detective work reveals that the A/C fuse is missing, which just happens to
be on the same circuit as the alternator. Okay.

With the fuse happily back in place, the alternator begins charging again. But,
why was it removed? Did it blow? Further investigation and charging tests reveal
that when the stereo is cranked up, which I'm sure this brain-dead soldier must
do when he's cruising, causes the system to draw more than 80 amps. Now, this
alternator is only rated for 75 amps. You do the math and you'll understand why
the alternator fuse blew when I cranked it up (with ear protection this time).

The key to unraveling the mystery in the Gansta-Deville was knowing that we as
mechanics are having to deal with a whole new breed of customer. To solve the
riddle, it was necessary to crank up the stereo so that it became obvious that
the charging system couldn't handle that kind of drain. That lesson I had
learned the hard way, literally from the school of "Hard Knocks". It involved a
1994 Chevy Caprice that came to me with a low power complaint.

The reason this Caprice comes to mind is because it also involved one of those
high-powered stereo systems. But, I hadn't been to the school of "Knocks" and
didn't know that the stereo played a part in solving the riddle. Anyway, owner
had some other shop install a junkyard engine in the Caprice, and that's when he
said the problem began. But, this was one of those kinds of problems that only
happens for the customer. You know, it just wouldn't run right for him, but
purred like a kitten for me.

Finally, after trying and trying to do what I call "Put a wrench on his word
problem," I decided to make him show me exactly what he was talking about. So,
we jump in the Chevy and off we go for a spin. And we're not very far down the
road when he reaches over and turns on the stereo. Then, he proceeds to crank it
up to ear-shattering levels. Well, there I sit with my fingers sticking in my
ears while he is driving and sure enough, the engine starts to falter, surge and
buck.

"Whoa! What's happening here?" I shouted. He says, "Wait a minute," and proceeds
to turn down the stereo. And the moment he did, the problem vanished. "That's
why I couldn't find your problem. It's connected to your blasted rap music!" I
said. I never ran the stereo, nor would I think to run the stereo while checking
out his problem. In fact, I never touch anyone's radio while working on their
cars.

Oh sure, I've seen plenty of techs blasting their customer's radios as they
service their cars. And from time to time they get caught, as the customer gets
into the car, only to turn on the ignition and be greeted with a huge blast of
their stereo. And of course, it's always playing the kind of music they hate
most. And even worse, the volume is left turned to full blast. Now imagine a
little old lady who only listens to classical music, getting into her car and
being greeted by gangster rap at 130 decibels! Not a pretty picture.

And those car radio presets are an even worse problem. You know, the programming
feature that lets you set the stations to the ones you like to listen to. The
radio loses its presets when you disconnect the battery to service the
terminals, right? But even worse, probably Murphy's seventeenth-law or some
such, it will automatically program itself to those stations that play the kind
of music the owner of the car hates most. If the owner likes country, it will
reset to classical. If he likes classical, it will reset to rap, and so on.

And when the customer returns and gets in his car to drive away, he is convinced
that the mechanic purposely reset all the stations to the kind of music the
mechanic likes. As if we mechanics have the time in the day to sit around and
reprogram our customer's radios! Right! But, thanks to Murphy and his laws, it
sure does get us in trouble, or at least leaves us with some explaining to do.

And to make matters worse, the late model radios will just plain lock up and
refuse to work if you disconnect power from them. And boy, howdy-do, you take a
customer's music away and they'll really get hopping mad in a big hurry. In
those cases, you have to contact the dealership and get the unlock code to make
the radio work again. Talk about a hassle!

Anyway, as I was saying before I drifted away into radio land, this Chevy would
only run bad when the radio was cranked up. Talk about an odd problem! "Now what
can playing a radio loud possibly have to do with how a car runs?" you may be
asking. I sure was.

The very next thing I did was to monitor the computer with my diagnostic
scanner. Why? Because I had a hunch that the noise the speakers were making were
somehow rattling a circuit in the engine control computer, which is pretty much
in the vicinity of the right-hand radio speaker. I figured that this would show
up somehow on the data stream from the computer

Well, I was right and wrong. While the computer didn't show any problems with
the data stream when I cranked up the stereo, the engine knock detection system
did. In fact, when the stereo peaked with its "bump-and-thump" chest-pounding
rhythm, the engine timing retarded in perfect cadence. It was as if the engine
knock sensor was keeping time with the stereo!

Not believing that an engine knock sensor could be so sensitive as to be affected
by the stereo, I decided to do a little detective work. I would try another
knock sensor. That's called "test by substitution," and that's when the fun
really began. When I went to the side of the engine block to unscrew the old one
and replace it with a new one, it was gone. There wasn't any place for it to
screw it into the engine block, and the wiring harness that should lead to it
was clipped!

How could I be seeing a knock signal, if the sensor is missing and the harness
has been cut?" I asked myself. Well, to make a long detective story short, it
turned out that there was still a knock sensor, and it was still connected to
the computer. You see, in order for the General Motors engine timing control
system to operate correctly, the knock sensor must be present and accounted for.
If you disconnect it, the engine control computer will immediately miss it,
throw off the timing and turn on the "Check Engine" light.

So when the engine block had been swapped out with another one, the used block
didn't have anywhere to mount the knock sensor. The previous mechanic had
clipped off the wire, thinking that he could simply eliminate this little sensor
and no one would be the wiser. But then, when he started the engine and the
check engine light came on, he realized that he wasn't going to get away with
it. So what do you think he did? Well, I'll tell you. He traced the knock sensor
wire back to the computer, spliced in another wire, and added the knock sensor
back into the circuit right there at the computer. And when he was done, he
tucked the knock sensor out of sight, right behind the speaker! And that's why
the Chevy ran so bad every time the stereo was cranked up. The knock sensor
thought the engine was pinging and the computer responded by retarding the
timing!

Anyway, as I said when I started, this business of being a mechanic has
certainly turned into a challenge. You never know what kind of strange and
unusual problem is going to roll into the door next. I remember the time a fat
rat got into a Fiat timing belt and ruined the engine. Ah, but that's another
story.  

Removing Broken Fasteners -EricTheCarGuy

How To Tell If Your Fuel Pump Is Bad

Scotty Kilmer, Live Car Talk: Fixing Slipping Clutches

If your car clunks when going over bumps

METRIC MADNESS

Pat loved Jaguars. He had many of the factory special tools and was very adept with them. For that matter, Pat loved all British cars. Rebuilding a Jaguar engine was a pleasant thought and he was anxious to see the one he was presently working on run.

Because of distractions, Pat liked to build engines after hours _ when there weren't phone calls or customers showing up. The quiet evening hours were perfect for Jaguar engine building, and this evening was going to be the one for this straight-six XKE engine. He carefully washed the pistons, rings, crankshaft and bearing caps and laid them out for assembly.

One by one, he compressed the rings and slipped the pistons into their new bores. Every rod cap fit snugly in its place and Pat torqued the rod nuts in place. But then he remembered he didn't have cotter pins to lock the rod castillated nuts. In a moment of panic he rifled through the parts room bins looking for cotter pins. Good news! There was a full box of cotter pins.

Everything went without a hitch -- or so he thought. By the next evening, he had the engine running. It purred like a kitten _ a Jaguar kitten. Only this one was going to take a bite, a big bite, and when it did, it would cost him dearly.

Within a few days the car came back with no oil pressure and making horrible noises. Pat pulled the oil pan only to find it full of metal shavings. Brass, aluminum, iron and copper. The engine had totaled itself. Or in the vernacular, "Gone to lunch."

Broken hearted, he pulled it down to find out what went wrong. He thought, "Was the crankshaft bent? Did the customer shift to first gear while going 100? Was this sabotage? Who hates me? Why can't anything ever be easy? Will this cost my job?" He decided to face it the next day and went home early.

While he was gone, the shop foreman examined the metal shavings in the oil pan.

He had begun to think someone had sabotaged the job by pouring metal shavings in the engine. There was an overabundance of small pieces that looked like the tail ends of cotter pins. Upon closer examination, he realized they were the tail ends of cotter pins.

The cotter pins from almost every rod bearing nut were missing. Why? Because they were the wrong size _ too small. They vibrated up and down in their holes until they broke apart and dropped into the oil pan. Most pieces were too large to do any damage but some managed to get sucked into the pump, where they were ground into small shards, which circulated through the engine and ruined everything.

The oil pump was a scarred mess. Every crankshaft journal was destroyed. The cylinder walls were also badly scuffed from the metal in the oil. Only the overhead camshaft escaped destruction. This was not a case of sabotage, but rather a case of lack of attention to detail.

The foreman carefully combed Pat's work area for more clues, since he couldn't question Pat. In a box under the bench he found the original cotter pins. They were considerably bigger than the ones Pat had used. The difference in size was really quite obvious.

While he wondered why Pat had substituted smaller pins he checked the parts room for the right size. There were none. There were pins that were too big and pins that were too small. He carefully examined one of the old ones and noticed it had a red color. Metric! It was metric and the ones in the parts room were American size!

The next day the foreman didn't say anything to Pat about the job. He let him disassemble the engine without interruption. At lunch time, he called Pat into the office to discuss his findings. When asked what had failed, Pat lied and told him the crankshaft was machined wrong. The foreman pressed, "Are you sure?"

Pat lied again, "Absolutely." He was fired on the spot.

Jeep Trans Diagnostics

scotty kilmer live car talk"grinding brakes"

Fixing A Car Where The Gas Pump Keeps Shutting Off As You refuel

Mechanic Nightmares! This week's story"Shhht…Clunk!" Part II

You see, there’s this greedy shop owner who’s waging his own personal war
against the knowing. You’d better look out if you wind up having an unsuccessful
repair at this shop. When you show up at his door with a clunk on bumps, and the
shop owner or his staff sell you shocks, you’d better not complain when the
shocks don’t fix your problem! Because if you do, you’re history. Really!

If The Boss says you need shocks, you need shocks. And when the shocks
don’t fix the problem, Mr. Authority comes back at you again saying that you most
certainly needed them, and you also need ball joints and upper strut mount
bushings. You’d better not question his diagnosis. You’d better not argue. Just
curtsy and hand him your money. And just so long as you remain the unknowing,
you’re business is welcome.

Customers who bitch and complain about the cost of the repair had better
watch out! The boss man angers easily, and he’ll quickly tell you to take your
business somewhere else and to never come back. And your name gets put on his
black list. After all, there’s plenty more customers in the D.C metropolitan
area. And even better, many of the customers are transient and will never come
back anyway. Diplomats, attaches, and their staff. Lots of money and lots more
where they came from. Mr. High and Mighty’s shop doesn’t need a good reputation,
just lots of advertising, like full page ads in the Sunday paper.

Speaking of advertising, one foreign car repair shop in Tampa bought
full-page advertising in the phone book. Hard to believe. No, it wasn’t a car
dealership. However, they did sell used cars. They did have a parts storefront
too. Thanks to tourist dollars, which are in abundance in Florida, and that big
ad in the phone book, our phone never stopped ringing.

The person who you spoke with was Ed. Most convincing of all people I’ve
ever met, Ed. He was the service writer and could talk a duck out of his feathers.
Ed came on ever so gentle and mild, drawing in his prey with sickening sweetness.
You’d never think he was capable of anything but your best interests. Then he
would pounce on you, turning into a pirate. Once he got a hold of your car, man
you were toast. He was so excellent at making up and creating so many wild
scenarios. Non-existent problems. Once he got your car in the shop, your wallet
would simply empty right out.

And of course you never came back after experiencing Ed turning from Mr.
Nice Guy to Jose Gaspar, the pirate! It was an amazing sight to see. After the
customer saw the bill, then had a moment to pick herself up off the floor, the
screaming would begin.

Ed’s mild mannered face would turn into a Jose Gaspar, and he’d go into
his scary routine. Systematically, he’d attack and belittle the customer for their
negligence. He’d blame them for the way they treated their car. He’d harp on and
on about how bad it was before we fixed it.

It was absolutely amazing how a clunk on bumps complaint could turn that
money crank! By the time he finished with you, you got all four shocks, both motor
and transmission mounts, a couple of ball joints, maybe both upper and lower ball
joints if he figured he could get away with it, and some custom exhaust work to
boot. Oh, including a complete set of exhaust hangers. Whew! He was brutal. And
if you came in with a starting problem, you always got a starter. Maybe injectors
or a carburetor, too. Not to mention the usual cap rotor, plugs, wires, and ignition
coil. And maybe throw in a sensor or two.

But, the Ed story is unusual. Interesting, but unusual. As I have said
again and again, almost all mechanics and repair shops are honest. The National
Attorneys General study showed that the whole problem of rip-off auto repairs
really stems from problems with communication. No Duh.

I just saw a statistic that said something about how mechanics spend
eighty percent of their time trying to figure out what’s wrong. The rest of
it is easy, with only 20% of the time needed doing the fix. Wow. Four-fifths
guesswork. One-fifth fixing. Pretty scary, huh? Roger that. I mean, it’s gotten
so complicated that even a genius can’t figure it out anymore.

They’ve got dealer service bulletins, independent service bulletins,
dealer tech hotlines, independent tech hotlines, and of course, call-in radio
shows. And still, people can’t get their cars fixed right the first time! And
why not? Well, according to that Attorneys General study, the whole problem is
communication. Right. Like the guy knows the service advisor is telling him the
straight story when he says he needs shocks?

So, does the mechanic mean to rip off the customer most of the time? No.
Usually the customer rips himself off by not communicating his problem. The rest
of the unsuccessful and knowing people with problem repairs can be chalked up to
a bad diagnosis. And the bad diagnosis resulted in an unnecessary repair. The
unsuccessful as in unsuccessful repair and the knowing. The owner clearly sees
that the problem is still there.

Then there’s poor preventative maintenance habits. And since lack of
maintenance doesn’t fall into one of the four categories, we’re not gonna’ go
there. To put a wrap on my lecturing, I want to share with you one of my favorite
rip-off tales. A story that falls in the category of the unsuccessful and
knowing. Over the years I’ve been told this story by many different techs, as
well as shop owners and other auto industry personnel. Here’s it is, with a few
embellishments of my own:

I hate my job. I am an assembly line worker at an automotive plant in
Michigan. I build cars. Boring. Same thing hour after hour, day after day. Yeah,
sure the pay is great. Yeah, sure the Union benefits are terrific. Yeah, sure.
Dull. Yawn. Snore. ZZZzzzzzz. Someone wake me up when it’s quitting time. I’ll do
ANYTHING to fight this boredom!

Hey, I know what. I’ll play a practical joke on someone. I’ll think of a
real good one to pull. A real whopper. A real wing-dinger. One that will drive you
nuts-o, daddy-o. It’ll be a real zinger. Not an easy one. No. A hum-dinger. A
mind blower. Now lets see.

Okay, I’ve got it. I’ll make a time capsule. Put a message inside and seal
it up r-e-a-l good. Seal it up in a nice piece of metal pipe, a nice little pipe
with my note inside. And I’ll leave it behind for someone to find. Someone far away,
far, far from today. Someone in the future. A message for someone to find real
far off in the future.

I’ll just drop this nice time capsule in side of this body panel, and
leave it for someone to find way off in the future. And it’ll rattle around in
all its glory, clanking and clunking its way through the day, until finally
someone discovers it’s there. Until someone cuts open this welded shut body
panel and finds my capsule inside. He he, he he!

Noise? What noise? has been the routine for so many years. Dozens of
techs have been assigned the job of finding the evasive Ssshhhh clunk noise.
Hundreds of dollars spent, with nothing but the same old sad report, No problem
found. Of course, the owners had to pay the diagnostic fee, along with environmental
surcharges and shop fees. And the noise persisted.

Eventually, someone does find it. But not until the first owner of the
car gives up trying to get his clunk on stops problem fixed. He trades it in.
The next owner fights like hell with the dealership that sold it to him, claiming
he got stuck with a lemon. And the car passes through a couple of other owners'
hands until a savy repair tech uses a high-tech listening device to track down
the location of the noise.

Inside a body panel. Something loose inside this panel. He cuts open the
body panel to find out what’s loose inside, and retrieves the time capsule. Fishing
it out with his long-skinny grabber tool, he retrieves the metal capsule. And
when he unscrews the cap and looks inside, he finds the note left by the unhappy
practical joker factory worker so many years ago. Unrolling the scrolled-up
piece of paper he reads.......

Editors note: This shhtt..clunk! story has been around for decades, and has
become an urban legend for auto mechanics. The kind of car is usually a Cadillac.
The time capsule has been anything from a metal film can, prescription bottle,
and pipe. The location has been inside the frame, body, and kick panels. The sound
it makes is always the same: An intermittent clunk that’s accompanied by a hissing
sound, but happening only when braking, sometimes. The owner reports hearing it come
from under the seat, inside the door, in the dash, and the trunk.

The lessons to be learned from this Mechanic’s Nightmare are:

· Always expect the unexpected.

· Do whatever is necessary to be a witness of the problem.

· Make it happen, then record the circumstances involved.

· Look for connections (or clues) between the circumstances involved when it happens and the actual problem occurrence.

· Beware that the problem you’re dealing with may have been built into the vehicle right from the factory.

Hot To Not Destroy Your Car While Fixing It

Scotty Kilmer Live Car Talk: Changing Differential Oil

Lesson 7 Part 3 Reading an ignition system electrical diagram

Mechanic Nightmares! This week's story"Shhht…Clunk!" Part I

Basically, there are two scenarios when it comes to car repairs. There’s the successful, and the unsuccessful. And each of these categories has two sub categories. The first and second categories are the knowing and unknowing. First, the knowing are those repairs the owner knows all about, no surprises. No hidden or unneeded parts added to the final bill, either. You know what you’re gonna get, and that’s what it takes. Nothing more, nothing less. Real predictable.

 The second successful category is the unknowing successful. Your car breaks without warning. You don’t know what it needs to fix it, and don’t care. You just pay someone to make the problem go away. This category leaves the owner uncertain if the repairs were actually needed, and he or she is not ever happy about it. They don’t get involved in the repair enough to find out the root cause of the breakdown in the first place. Most people are this type of car owner. And because of this, most people don’t have a good feeling about their car repairs. They never know what they don’t know about the repair. And what’s worse, because they never know, they don’t do anything to prevent it. If they did, most of their car problems would never happen. These people are the ones who don’t believe in preventative maintenance. They orchestrate their own car problems.

The third and forth categories are the knowing and unknowing unsuccessful. Third, the knowing unsuccessful, is an easy one. These are the people who take their car to be repaired and go away with the same problem, only their wallet has been lightened in the process. They know they got screwed, but they don’t go back anyway. They let their feet do the talking and bounce from shop to shop until someone puts them out of their misery and fixes their car. Forth, there’s the unknowing unsuccessful, the worst of all. That’s what this Mechanic’s Nightmare is all about. These are the people who are screwed, and never know it. Or, by the time they realize it, it’s too late to do anything about it. This is the place where Mr. Rip U. Off works. This is the category that gives the auto repair industry a black eye. This is the type of repair shop reported on the 6 O-clock TV News sting operation advisory alert.

When the National Association of Attorneys General did a study to try and find the root cause of why so many people get ripped off on their car repairs, the results were not surprising. But they were disappointing to the scandal-seeking news media. To their chagrin, it turned out that mechanics aren’t so dishonest after all. In fact, the study didn’t find they were any more dishonest than any other trade, such as doctors or lawyers. But here’s the big surprise. They found that most of the time, greater than eight out of ten, the problem was a simple communication breakdown. But this isn’t the kind of fodder that makes it on the news. Ripoffs are something everyone wants to hear about. Honesty doesn’t pull in TV audiences. So, the study and its findings has sadly fallen on deaf ears. Or rather, it was a non-story. No one ran it. People want to hear about unsuccessful repairs that happen to the knowing. People want to commiserate with those who have suffered. They want to wallow in their suffering, and seek out and consume their tales of woe. In due course, and in keeping with that vein, I’m going to tell you stories, too.

These stories fit all four of the scenarios listed above. Both successful and unsuccessful, knowing and unknowing. To start with, let me say that my experience has born out the findings. I personally know that auto mechanics are among the most honest and hardest-working of all trades. My bros’ have gotten a bad rap, that’s for sure! Enough said, so let’s get on with the story. Lets begin by talking about noises. Noises are freaky. To some people a howl is a moan. To some a moan is a creak. And so on. Some noises are even imaginary. And some are made up.

This first story falls in the category of successful for the unknowing. There was a service writer who was employed at a Mercedes dealership in a major city where I worked. His name was Ralphie, and he liked to make up noises. Especially ball joint noises. He’d take a customer’s car for a test drive and come back claiming he heard the lower ball joint knocking. Kinda’ a Clunk on Bumps noise. No matter how hard I tried, I never could hear it. But let me tell you, that dude sold a whole bunch of lower ball joint replacements! Man, he could really get rich folks by the ball joints! And little did they care. They were unknowing. And their cars were important, so they would just say, How long's it going to take? Or. When can I have my car back? They didn’t give a hoot about the dollar amount. It was probably just a business expense anyway. They’d have to use the Jaguar. What an inconvenience! Ralphie wasn’t malicious or anything. In fact, he was a down-right nice guy. He just wanted to fatten up his paycheck a bit when things were slow. The owner didn’t know. He was from the unknowing group. The tech who did the replacement didn’t know. He was just doing what he was told. The whole process was seamless. No one was the wiser. That’s how it always is with a successful repair and the unknowing owner. Kind of like a quiet bloodletting. Then there’s the unsuccessful and knowing.

 The story goes like this: The guy walks in to the local dealer with his car problem. The service writer greets him as he drives up and begins to take down all the important information. Then he gets around to asking the guy why he’s decided to pay a visit to this fine establishment. And does he need a ride to work? The guy says, "Yeah. You see, I’ve got this clunk-on-bumps problem. Sometimes, when going over a bump, I hear this noise. Like a clunk or something. Maybe a knock. Or is it tap? I dunno. But it’s freaky. And I don’t like it. Maybe you could check it out, huh?" The adviser, who’s already checked the odometer reading and knows the car is no longer in warranty, figures this as a no-brainer. He thinks, Let’s see. Lots of miles on the ticker. Don’t have to worry about the warranty. The most likely suspect would be shocks! It’s gonna’ need a set of shocks. He thinks this is a safe bet, and the owner will go for it because it’s not a big ticket item. An easy sell. And maybe we can find more things once we get it in the shop. So he writes on the repair order, Replace shocks. Then he tells the guy he’s gonna’ need a set of shocks, and to sign right here. So the guy thinks this is the right thing to do, and he signs his life away. Then, he gets the car back, pays the bill, and is driving home. He hears the clunk on the first bump he comes across, and he realizes he was taken.

Well, not that it was done intentionally. He was taken because of the problem that the Attorneys General study talked about. The actual problem was communication. If the mechanic was told to diagnose a problem with clunk on bumps, instead of being told to replace the shocks, he might have had a fighting chance that his problem would have been corrected. Instead, the guy’s car repair was unsuccessful, and he certainly knows about it. Communication problems just like this are primarily responsible for the bad image of the mechanic. In reality, there was no ill will, malice, or evil intent. The repair was unsuccessful because of the system, not because of any one individual. Sure, the service advisor didn’t have to sell the man a set of shocks. Sure. But shocks are a common cause for that type of complaint at that mileage. What you’d call a sure bet. And of course, the owner could have insisted that the tech be paid some diagnostic time to drive the car and witness the problem before beginning any repairs. And finally, sure, the tech could have insisted on being paid some diagnostic time in order to verify the problem.

But none of that happened. Why? Get real. This is the real world out here, and everyone is too busy. That’s why. Okay, OK. Maybe the man did need shocks. But the problem was the mechanic didn’t make the diagnosis. The wise-ass service advisor did. Not. Maybe if the mechanic was given a chance to check it out before the service advisor went and messed things up by suggesting shocks.

But, then I can see the service advisor’s point of view, too. He wants to get the guy to commit to a dollar amount for something. Maybe it’s not going to be a set of shocks that fixes this car. Maybe it’s upper shock mounts, or even a ball joint. Whatever. So he’s just trying to usher the guy on his way out the door as fast as possible so he can get on to the next customer who’s been standing there next to his car and patiently waiting in the service aisle. He assumes that the mechanic will know what’s causing the clunk and will report back to him. He assumes. Now we all know about assume. Right? The mechanic is already up to his ass with alligators nipping at him. His IN box is over brimming with work. And then there are the jobs he didn’t get to yesterday. Parts have come in for jobs he opened up last week which he’s getting grief for not having finished. And to make his day complete, he’s already got a ten-o’clock headache!

So, he cranks the work out as fast as he can, and by early afternoon starts looking for some gravy work so he can slide. He’s been saving the RO with Replace front shocks, the one that started out as a clunk on bump complaint. The tech pulls his copy of the RO, which has by now already had the parts listed and tallied on it. He walks over and picks up the shocks that await him at the parts counter. Once he’s finished installing the shocks, using his fancy pneumatic on-the-car installer tool, he parks the car and knocks off for the day. He’s feeling good because he beat the flat rate by more than half! Easy money, a quick in and out. Now I ask you, did that mechanic rip off the customer? Did the guy's car really need those shocks? Should the tech check the car for the complaint? Should he have questioned the service advisor? It may seem odd, but the answer to all four questions is no. First, and I’m sure you knew this was coming, the car certainly didn’t need shocks. Second, the tech isn’t paid to check a problem. Unless he’s instructed to do so, he ain’t gonna.

 Why should he? He’s not in the habit of giving away his time free. Right? When you go and see a doctor, he doesn’t just hand out pills free without charging for his diagnosis. He may even decide to run some additional lab tests on you. Not only do you pay the doctor to look at you, but you pay some other doctor to look at your lab tests and to make a diagnosis based on those tests. And you wind up getting billed from the first doctor who examined you, from the lab for the tests, and from the doctor who looked at the test results. Have you heard people complain about rising health care costs? So, bringing this all back home to the mechanic here in this story, he didn’t get paid to check the car first.

The car owner trusted the advice of the service advisor, as in this case, replace the shocks. This was assumed to be his problem. It had a high likelihood. So, the answer is most certainly NO. The tech shouldn’t be made to give away his hard-earned time to freely check the car first. Not unless he’s told to do so, and given some diagnostic time. But in this case, that didn’t happen. He was given an RO that simply told him to replace the shocks. Then, should the tech question the service writer? Not. Why should he? It’s not in his job description. He doesn’t have time. If he just minds his P’s and Q’s, he’s free and clear of any flack that might come his way if the customer bitches. After all, he wasn’t paid to check out the car in the first place and to see if it needed shocks. Hell, he’s not psychic enough to read the customer’s mind and to figure out why he asked for shocks in the first place. One of my favorite rip-off stories concerns a shop owner whose shop is located in the Nation’s Capital. This shop owner keeps a customer black list. No kidding. He actually has a list with the names of people who’s cars are banned. And if the customer happens to come back, he or she is told to vacate the premises immediately or the police will be called.

To be continued next week! If you like these stories post on the mailing list so I know to keep them going!

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