Years and years ago, when I actually worked on cars .. we got a car in the shop that had a really bad power steering 'kick back' problem. When you turned the steering all the way to one of the locks, it would kick like a mule. The one we got in had broken an old lady's forearm!
why do so many peolpe buy junk parts ans expect them to work like it was brand new, oem stuff. yesterday, had a lady come in with 00 olds alero, quad 4 (2.4 litre), complaint was, rough idle, MIL on, and no power. well, anyone who works in driveability knows what the quad four's were notoriuos for when it came to misfires. anyway, i told her she needed 1 coil, the coil tower, new plug boots, and plugs, all a/c delco, the quote was high, and her supposed mechanic boyfriend of a whopping 5 years, brought it his own duralast autozone parts. we have a policy on customer supplied parts, 'no warranty on parts or labor' so i tested to coils (he bought 2 cuz he really knows his stuff) and both tested bad. i checked them with an ohm meter, one coil had both banks bad, the other only had one bad bank. he swore up and down it was new parts and it would work. so i put them on with out question. go to fire it up, guess what, its missing worse then what it was before, now his check engine light starts blinking and you can smell the raw fuel out the tail pipe. i told him, well buddy, you have bad coils, and have now probabbly ruined your catalytic convertor. i told him, i'd pull the coils out and replace them, but he'd have to buy my stock. he agreed, so in go the a/c delco coils, fire it back up, idles smooth, but his cat took a beating, melted down to a brick, but this just did'nt happen in a few minutes, they drove the car misfiring for a few days so now, i installed a cat for him, for an extra 200 dollars............ i asked him if he was really a mechanic of 5 years, he said, he changes his own oil, does his own tire rotating, and the occasional brake job (pad slap).......... go figure. look people, thats why you pay professionals to fix your cars !!! why can't they understand that !!
I've seen some real lovely pad slaps!!! I guess they figure if they score the crap out of the rotor they'll get better braking from the increased surface area (once the new pads get chewed in enough)
stupid people, had one guy come in today with an 03 pontiac grand am, brakes grinding big time, both front rotors metal to metal and left front tire had a nail in it. simple brake job was less the 300 dollars, idiot says, and i quote "i don't brake [bold]that[/bold] much, i will be ok" and as far as his tire, he said, and i quote again "i'll just put air in it till i fix it" i swear, some people are just either flat out cheap, stubborn, or morons. his neglect on his car will end up costing him 2 front calipers and one new tire at least, due to ignorance. well, at least my brakes are good and tires!!!! welcome back neph !!
Isn't it unfortunate, that we have to travel the roads with these idiots daily. They are little more than accidents, looking fore a place to happen.
i do safety inspections at my job, and people get mad when i reject their cars due to them being unsafe and resulting in a failure. its pathetic that some people can't spend the extra 100 bucks or so to do a correct brake job, but they'd spend over $1000 bucks on wheels and tires or thousands on car stereo equipment. i can't force them to do their brakes, but if they decline, i have to reject their inspection. at that point, i offer just to do a pad slap, no warranty of course, and they still decline the repair.
Oh Lord, that's the truth. I've seen them spend $2500 on wheels then slap the cheapest crap Chinese tires they can get on them. Guess they don't think far enough ahead when one of those cheap tires separates and they're left rolling on that $750 wheel. When you work in a shop you see so much ridiculous crap people do with their vehicles....... I've seen several guys come in to put $230 apiece Goodyear MTR's on their lifted/Rancho'd Jeep Wranglers that they never take off the road. They're lucky to get 15,000 miles out of those mud tires on a daily driver. Then they never think to rotate them more often and come in wondering why the tires are scalloped all to hell and riding like crap after three months. Then you have the guys with 4X4 SUVs and trucks pimped out with 22" gaudy ass ugly wheels and low profile directionals. Morons! You also have the full size truck guys that are complete acessory whores. You get in their truck and every last little button, knob and doohickey is replaced with some funky replacement they ordered out of a "custom" magazine. It gets even better when you pop the hood and they have all the ridiculous chrome dipstick ends, filler caps, battery covers, washer resevoir covers and pretty much everything else that has a cap,cover or end. Their was one "acessory whore" truck that was a drive in and I burned the shit out of my fingers cause he had a billet aluminum end to the oil dipstick so I did something to his truck that I'm not telling (it was unintentional but I didn't feel bad about it afterwards).
did you leave the dipstick out of it? bet you did? or left the oil filter loose? or filled the washer bottle with piss !!! my personal fav. ..... opps, did i say that out loud ??
the best vehicle i have even enjoyed working on is my 94 jeep cheroke with the off road package everything has a nice and easly accessable drain plug oil( of course ) transmission and transfer case and i have enough room to put boths hands around my oil filter only thing i dont like is the rear leafs break down way to quick im waiting to to a skyjacker set on it im nothing certified mechanic but ive worked on lots of stuff my fav storie: me and my best bud took double bit axes to a 88 cutlas and cut the body clean off behind the body supports between the front and rear doors( 4 door )then we welded a s10 bed to it and welded some chains to the wheels and we had ourselves a we dont give a damn off road warrior ended up wraping it around a tree in like an hour so much work for so little play
I used to be the shop foreman for a Cummins engine distributor. How about changing the rear head or head gasket on an 855 cid cummins in a stub nose IH class 8 truck or even running the overhead for that matter. You spend half your time under the hood and the other half under the dash (head bolts torque to 310 ft lbs). Thats after you've removed the passenger seat and dog house of course. We won't even bring up trying to change the oil cooler on a KT-1150 in a class 8 truck. About 1 in between the oil cooler and frame rail. Almost have to pull the engine.
bust out the torque multiplier mort !! 310 ft lbs, thats torque. friggin head bolt the size of a tuna can !! good thing i got out of big trucks early. ever done an engine in a motor home? i have done a few when i was at the dealership. i hated every minute of it. engines sit 15 feet from the nose, you have to pull the out from the front door, remove windshield, or drop the assembly (which we never had tools for that, much less set up to do it) now, i love the joy of working on small cars and trucks, everyday... yeah right !! in this heat, we are almost as hot as where neph is at!! been 103-109 degrees for the past 5 days now...
What gun do you use? I've an Ingersoll-Rand 2135 and love it to bits Where are you located gear79? It's been hovering just above 100 here for the last three days. Good Lord I did mine so many times it wasn't funny. I had a '74 with the baja kit 235/75R15 BFG All Terrain TA's in the back, skinnies up front and a lovely straight stinger pipe. That little 1600 was horrendously loud with that straight pipe (no baffle). I loved it and the neighbors hated me for it God I miss that car. I finally beat it beyond recognition out in the desert then sold it (stupid teenager that I was).
@ neph its a Matco impact, (still an ingersoll though) i cant remember the exact model number, but its the one with a 2 year warranty, red handle, but exclusive to matco. i'll have to check at work tomorrow. i buy so many friggin tools each week, i dont remember all the stuff. today, i bought a master noid light set and an inner tie rod tool set. also, i am in san antonio, tx.
