Beads of sweat start to form.
Dollar signs. Bills. Lots of money flowing into that great abyss known as repair costs.
Does this car have a blown head gasket? Are the valves bent?
Did I really betray my enthusiast bent and ignore a little problem until it became big?
JFK was quite right when he said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” We never want to admit our mistakes.
But when it comes to cars, you can’t blame it on the dog. Mistakes of our own making don’t go away. They serenade us with their presence and in the case of a car, often multiply due to carelessness and neglect.
Like a sad pound puppy staring for affection, a car will look downright despondent with an open hood and parts laden every which way from the engine bay.
That desire to fix it yourself. Or get it done on the cheap. Or simply just ignore the problem. It can awaken you to a world filled with automotive hurt and heartache.
Then it happens. You get it towed or hauled off to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
They diagnose the issue. Fix it. Make it as good as new.
The bill may have been high, or jaw dropping cheap. One thing is sure. You ought to thank the guy.
So go ahead and do it right here.
My mechanic always has my side. It took me years to find the right one and now I consider him a friend. He knows I am a research junky and are pretty decent at self diagnosing. There has been times where he could have taken way advantage of me when my truck would stay running etc and its was a quick fix and didnt even charge me. I must say good, honest mechanics are hard to come by.
My 1976 Datsun B210 boiled over on the grapevine on my way to my first day of graduate school back in ’82.
There was one service station open Sunday afternoon, but the attendant said they weren’t open for repairs. I told him I had tools and a manual I had been using for maintenance. He told me if I took out my thermostat it would run cold or boil over.
Long story short, it ran cold and I had to run it flat out all the way (83 mph if I recall) to Orange County to keep it going.
Free advice and I made it to school. It cost about ten bucks to fix it the next day.
A parts store counterperson saved me $80 per hour quoted by the dealer to diagnose my dashboard shorting out when I had an electrical gremlin. He sold me a $3 flasher and it worked the first time.
I am a new poster, and I appreciate Steven’s interesting questions and answers, trenchant and often unexpected points of view.
My first car was an old VW Fox that had over 260k miles when I got it for free. My friend’s dad was going to send it off for scrap, but it still ran relatively well. I was lucky enough to be referred to a local mechanic that was not only honest, but wanted to help a struggling student. He’d charge a minimal amount for repairs, let me help out to save on labor, and a few times all he had to do was put some fluid in at no charge.
I was making a solo cross country trip from Boston to Oregon back in 1992, driving my bitchin’ 1986 VW Quantum Syncro wagon. Around St. Louis, it started making a weird noise from the engine, and it grew louder as I nursed it along I-70. At 24 years old, I knew little about cars, so I had no idea what the heck was going on and I was terrified that I’d be stranded smack in the middle of nowhere.
I pulled into the dusty “town” of Hays, Kansas that night and found one dude at the only service station in town (Texaco), who agreed to take a look at the furrin’ car with the Mass plates on it.
I was sure this guy would take full advantage of my clearly desperate situation. The bill, 4 hours later? $11.00. Eleven dollars. No lie. I still have the receipt. It was a test pipe for the exhaust that slowly disintegrated from rust. A quick weld job and that was that. I think I might’ve hugged the guy.
Our mechanic has saved my hide and my son’s several times. Our daughter’s 1997 Cavalier, for example. When she was in college, she called me one evening very concerned about how the car was steering – very difficult in one direction. I told her to get back to her dorm and take the car to the local Chevy dealer in town ASAP, park it and leave it at the dealer and call a friend and get a ride back to the dorm – don’t drive the car! I called the Chevy dealer and alerted them that my daughter dropped off her car and left the key in the night slot.
She did. The dealer called me after checking out the car, informing me the right ball joint was about to pop out. I breathed a sigh of relief and had them fix it pronto. They did and it didn’t cost me an arm or a leg either.
If that would have happened while she was on the road…Whew!
My mech tech keeps my 1990 Sunchicken running tickety-boo. But soon will be time for an upgrade.
Mine was the end result of a comedy of errors on my part. I had a vibration from the front right of the car, so I figured it was either the tire or the brake rotor. I went to swap the front wheels side to side, and turned the first lugnut right instead of left and stripped the threads. Oops. I had a go at it for a while trying to break the nut, gave up on that, and had it towed to the shop.
They fixed the lugnut and put in a new stud, but I still had the vibration. Eventually I replaced the front pads on both sides and put a new rotor on the right side. The old rotor was a slip-on but rust and crud had it stuck to the hub, so I had to heat it with a torch and bang on it a while to pop it off. I got the new rotor on and got everything buttoned up.
The next day I went out on a trip to test things out. Everything was fine for a while, but after 45 minutes or so the vibration came back. About an hour in the vibration got worse and worse. I knew I had screwed up something and seriously doubted I could make it back home without something bad happening. I found the first place that was open on a Saturday afternoon (Nissan dealer), gave them the key, and signed the authorization.
About 20 minutes later the service writer came out and told me the lugnuts on the front right wheel were just about ready to fall off. I was in a hurry to get everything put away after the brake job before a thunderstorm rolled in, and I had simply forgotten to torque the lugnuts on that side. Oops x4.
On more than one occasion JD’s One Stop in Jackson, MS has saved us tons of money.
The first time was on my mother’s 1994 Plymouth Grand Voyager. AC stopped working, dealership wanted $1500 to replace the entire AC system. Took it to JD’s, they fixed the ground wire and replaced the coolant the dealership had removed. The bill was less than $100 for labor and coolant.
The second time we had a 1991 Chevy C1500 pickup, AC wasn’t working. The tech remembered an issue he had before and before he tore into it, he disconnected the battery for a few minutes, a relay under the dash reset and we went on our way. No charge.
This last time I replaced a coolant temp sensor on my 2004 Impala but the issue would not go away. They traced it to a broken wire, I paid an hour of labor.
I typically work on my own vehicles, but on those occasions I need a professional I can drop it off and not have to worry about being taken for a ride. They get all my referrals.
It’s been in the high 90’s in Chicago and the AC on our 05 Grand Cherokee had been getting progressively weaker over the past week, giving up the ghost on Tuesday. We had a coupon for a AC “tune-up” for $60. We got it back the next day with the AC working and no extra charge. I was sure they’d come back with a $1,000 item that needed to be replaced, but they stuck to the $60 and gave it back with nice cold AC.
It was the late 1980s and the car was a 1987 Corolla FX16. I was on my semi-regular road trip from my home in the Raleigh, NC area to visit my girlfriend in the Roanoke, VA area. Around Danville, VA one of the wheels started making an awful scraping sound like it was tearing itself apart and the brakes worked funny. I limped into a service station and prepared to pay out the nose…. then they put the car on the lift, picked out the small rock that had lodged in the brakes, and sent me on my way no charge.
What made it even more awesome was that I was clearly passing through.. there was no chance of future business from that.
I’m not a professional mechanic but I know how to do a lot of things. From brake jobs to engine rebuilding. I’ve helped people with cars and motorcycles for years, saving them a lot of money. Troubleshooting is easy for me and most repairs can be done with the tools I have. I’ve found numerous simple problems shops claim were major repairs. I’ve been thanked with good dinners and help when I needed it around the house.
I know two professional mechanics who are honest people. One is an independent specializing on Volvos, Toyota, BMW, and Acura. He worked for dealerships and was tired of having to rip off people under management direction. The other guy is still in that situation, and he hates overbilling for labor, replacing parts routinely which are not bad but push up the bill, and having to fudge the workorders. When all workorders are reviewed by a manager with a profit quota you either do it or walk. He’s been with 4 dealerships in 10 years as a result.
This is why it is worth buying the car that requires no repairs instead of ‘only a couple.’
The guy who works on our Honda is a mechanic at a Honda dealer who also has his own shop. He’s been taking good care of the cars for quite a few years now and has saved us a good deal of money in the bargain. We found him via our daughter – he’s married to her best friend’s sister.
I’m a mechanic myself, so I never see anybody else for work except for the odd emergency. There were 2 occasions when I was young that come to mind, especially knowing what I know now.
I had my 1st car, a 1985 300zx turbo for less than 2 weeks before I slammed a curb doing stupid stuff. I bent the frame, and ripped a bolt hole in the crossmember. I took the car to a collision shop where they quoted me $3000 to repair. I was just a broke kid, so no chance of that happening. I pleaded for mercy. The frame tech ended up patching the crossmember by welding a washer on, then advised me on what else needed to be done and how to fix it myself. The cost was $75. I did the necessary repairs and received a wealth of knowledge on how to be resourceful in the process. Still have this car and it drives straight as an arrow.
While driving that Z through a downpour late one night, my lights dimmed suddenly. The wipers slowed along with the music coming through the tape deck. Fortunately, I had an electrical tester with me. I determined that the battery broke internally. The car crapped out in front of a truck shop that was closing for the day. One of the techs stayed late to sell me a huge truck battery, and loan me tools to shoehorn it into the Z so I could get home.
The independent import car shop I take my Range Rover P38 to employs an electrical wizard, necessary for RRs, whot? On Day 2 he diagnosed my “dead car” symptom to a small corroded wire that ran in a loom under the passenger side front door threshold strip. Told me RR had a QC problem back in the day and quite a bit of wire with pinholes was installed in these cars. He showed me the wire, complete with green corrosion here and there.
I suspect the local RR dealer would have charged me to replace the alternator, battery, and many other expensive gubbins (if not the BECM itself) resulting in me with an empty wallet and all of us still staring into the engine bay scratching our chins.
On vacation, 800 miles from home, late in the afternoon the torque converter cracked on our GM rear wheel drive wagon. The dealership could not get to it for several days so we contacted an independent tranny shop combination salvage yard who said to bring it in first thing in the morning and they would look at it. They confirmed it was the converter and 2 hrs. later we were back on the road. The cost was 1/3 of the dealership quote. Ya, we wrote him a nice letter when we got home, I hope he put it on the wall for his customers to see. In 55 yrs of driving, this was the only time I was stranded.
Yep.
My ’92 Pathfinder had close to 200k miles when one afternoon I drove over a speed hump. Immediately it sounded like a Briggs & Stratton had been transplanted under the hood. A quick check revealed the issue – the #6 plug had jumped out of the well. Trouble was, it wouldn’t go back in.
The two estimates I got were both around $600. At the time I was living on a friend’s sofa in a strange city, working in a furniture warehouse for $9 an hour, so my options were to drive it or to have it “fixed”. Luckily my manager knew a mechanic who was a real straight shooter. For $125 he tapped a new plug, then set the timing and fixed some funk in my ignition. I drank a couple of beers and watched him work, after hours, as he explained what he was doing and we talked about The Replacements.
Good man. Good mechanic. Much appreciated.
One of my friends who is a mechanic used to work at a GM dealer and said I could bring in my car if I needed it to be looked at. Well, I thought my suspension was wonky since the car was bouncing on hills, so I took it in to have it looked at. The suspension was okay for being old; turns out that some of the subframe bolts and brushings were rusty – as in rusty enough I wasn’t allowed to drive the car home until they were fixed; my engine could have fallen out. I drove the car for 1000 miles like that and the same mechanic friend who went with me to buy the car didn’t even think to look underneath it. He told me that if he’d seen the underbody beforehand, he’d have told me to not get it or knock the price down more than I already did ($1850 to $1650).
Thanks to my friend working on the car, I was able to get a nice discount to have all of the bolts and brushings – not just the rusty ones – replaced. Since then, I haven’t had to worry too much about the body falling apart.
A bunch of years ago, running 90 mph north of Ocala, my ’97 Camry ate a valve. The car was towed to a Toyota dealer in Ocala. That was on a a Sunday night. The following Friday, the tech was reassembly the motor and explained what happened and how he’d not seen the same failure in 20 years as a tech.
Anyway, he asks, “Can you bring the car back after a few hundred miles so I can check it over? Never know what I might have missed.” I replied, “When you hand me the keys, I’m heading north 900 miles as fast as I can.” He begged me to “try it out” for a while, but, 13 hours later, I was home.
He was humble, talented and really cared about his work and my satisfaction.
I’ve been fortunate that in my years of being alive (47), I think I’ve only experienced a handful of strandings from any of my parent’s cars or mine. Chalk that up to keeping up on at least the basics in maintenance and having cars that were in decent shape mechanically for the most part.
But when something’s needed done at a shop, I’ve also been fortunate to not have felt to have been ripped off. Some places, definitely better than others that’s for sure. I think it also helps that I come across like I know what I’m talking about and when I can say this is what it’s doing in such a way that the mechanic knew where to begin. I think you are more likely to have issues if you go in and say, I don’t know what’s wrong, please fix it.
For a time had an independent mechanic who did great work at reasonable prices as he did it in his spare time in a large garage behind his house, that is until he retired. I think the last thing I had him do was replace the carburetor on my 78 Ford Fairmont as I never took the Civic that I bought to replace it to him and he retired in the late 90’s if I recall.
I once had to pull into a gas station who still did car repairs that was still open somewhere in Oregon (I want to say near Roseburg) on my way home from a job interview in Klamath Falls back in 1990 and was heading back to my parent’s place in Tacoma when I felt the transmission in my dad’s ’83 Citation begin to slip some.
The guy on duty I think checked the level and found it low, topped it off and I think charged me for the fluid and sent me on my merry way. The car ran fine after that but had Dad have it checked for leaks and we never had a recurrence of the issue the rest of the time he had it – and that would be until 1997.
The most recent situation was having to hit Midas about a block and a half away from work because of an issue with my truck back in January and they found that the idle air controller was not functioning, they did a full going over and found that my cooling system was indeed leaking (been told that via Jiffy Lube and Precision Tune in two different oil changes) so that verified that, the serpentine belt was really needing to be changed and my battery was even worse off (still functioning, but not for long though) and it WAS 6 years old too. They also found a couple of other small things but found the tires, brakes and hoses all good and noted the oil leaks I mentioned and found 2 unrelated codes from the OBD I system and when I had them adjust the IAC a week later on the day I drove it down to Tacoma to trade it in a week after buying the Mazda P5, they said they’d try and were able to and didn’t charge me for that.
And when I went to drive to Tacoma where I bought the car to the dealer, the shifter bushings went.
Two other strandings were not of my cars but my parent’s.
One, around 1990, the 85 Accord SE-I suddenly stopped running. Either the timing belt jumped a tooth or broke while on our way to Mt Rainier National Park with my grandmother and it occurred on an isolated curvy foothill highway and Dad had to find someone with a phone to call for a tow. The truck that got the car back into town was a pretty ragged ’67 Ford that had rolled once and the tranny fluid, I think it was had spilled. fortunately, it was all cleaned up stains remained.
And the other big break down was in 1973 I think on our way back home from Yakima, heading over I-90 and Snoqualmie Pass loaded with fruit, my sisters and both parents when the transmission finally, I repeat, finally went in our then nearly 10 YO Dodge wagon with the 225 slant six and torqueflite. Mom and my sibs and I got a ride from a family in an ’65-66 Plymouth Valiant (or was it a Dart, I can’t recall now) to bring us home and would not take any money from us, but it WAS a tight squeeze and they obviously didn’t have a lot.
They ended up putting in a used tranny and the poor old thing soldiered on until we finally sold it in 1977 with over 140K miles on it, maybe closer to 145-150K.
As a Saab enthusiast hopelessly devoted to the C900(pre-’94) model, I have, out of financial necessity, become a bit of a DIY’er. My safety net has been a Saab specialist in upstate NY who has been a great resource for parts, tools and expertise when I get in over my head. Most recently, he saved me close to $200 by selling me a good used inner driver for my car.
I had somehow wrongly replaced a power steering pump on my Riviera when I was stationed in the middle of nowhere New Mexico when I was in the Air Force. So I drove to town with the car, and pulled into a random shop. There was a guy there by the name of ____ who said he would be glad to fix it for much less than the going rate the shop would charge by doing at his house on the side. It might just cost me a bottle of Jack Daniels from the Class Six on base, plus some cash.
This mechanic eventually became a good friend, and he and his family sort of adopted me. He would help me with all of my projects on the car. Wish I would have kept in touch after I got out of the military.