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The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master Tech transmission
builder, and the host of the Gearbox Podcast. Here I talk with new
and seasoned shop owners as well as industry professionals about day to
day operations within their own shops and all the failures and
successes that come along the way from what grinds your gears to having to
shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the Gearbox
podcast. Cool, man. Thanks for
coming back in. Absolutely happy to be here. Always. Lots to talk about. Lots
to talk about. There's a lot going on in the car industry. Not king of
the Hammers this time, though. No. Yeah. But we have been breaking
things, but we found parts quicker this
time, so that's good. That's good. Yeah. Nobody trying to get one over on you?
No, not recently anyway. No. Yeah, luckily
the parts supply chain is somewhat better even in
a few months. We've actually been starting to see parts in on a
somewhat regular basis. Yeah. Well, I mean, your whole axle
debacle, no one trying to pull a fast one. Yeah, no scams.
I didn't have to go to the scams lately. Find an axle this time.
Yeah. Broke another rear shaft that just snapped
and then tore another front. So
fun. Yeah. And then went to the mud
and with the torn CV boot and then broke the
innards of the axle. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Keep it rolling, man.
Yeah. Well, Tyler Henry's, back in the booth. Back to the
gearbox. Well, we're just going to let this thing roll and see where it takes
us. That's right. Just rolling. I mean, when we were talking about the service
industry, which we talk a lot about, we beat that up a lot.
I think it gets kind of negative sometimes, hearing about everybody
else bitching about dealing with
people. Right. The locker room
talk of the automotive industry. We all can relate to it.
We all relate to it. So it's nice to bring it up and hear somebody
else in the same boat going through the same
water. Yeah, people understand, oh, it's not just me in my service
department. And it's amazing. There's a lot of people that really think they're on their
own. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Well, I think part of it
is as a career automotive
industry is fairly rare. And then you go into the
individual roles in that industry and it gets really rare. Like if you just look
at a dealership, the service side,
the amount of service advisors to other personnel at the dealership is
like one to five or so.
There's five, six, ten salesmen for every one
advisor. Sometimes. That's true. So just the
rarity of oh, yeah, there are a lot more advisors out there or there are
a lot more managers out there. Or shop owners. Because in
a town you only got four or five owners or something. Or in small towns
around here, big cities, it's more numerous but,
yeah, when you start thinking in your little islands,
you think that, oh, I'm the only one like this. But there's tons of people
out there. Tons of people. I mean, doing better, doing worse in
between. It's just we're all dealing with the same stuff.
And sometimes even I think it's like, I got to be the only one
dealing with this kind of stuff. No, but you're not just you
being a mile up the road at the dealership
dealing. I mean, when you came in today talking about, man, there must be
something in the water, and it's like, yeah, we're all drinking this.
Yeah, it's all water going. We've been dealing with the same stuff. Just
summertime. That's when it just gets
weird. People's timelines. A lot
of people traveling, most of. Vacations and coming through the area.
Graduation. Right. Everyone's coming through, trying to look at wedding venues from out of the
area. I mean, when you're here on the central coast, people come from the Valley
all over the place. I'm sure there's other states that are like that, too, where
you live in a town, that's kind of the place to go,
and you have all the cities around the area,
and everyone's going to that central hub, and they want to get married there, have
their ceremony there. And so, yeah, there's a lot of traveling. That's
when I bring that up, because we dealt with that today. Some
ladies came in, and
they were a little twisted. I mean, they were doing okay, but it was
a little anxious. Yeah, they came from Fresno. They're from the Valley, and they were
over here, and she was trying to get all her stuff ready for her wedding,
and the vehicle broke down. Lost all forward gears, lost reverse.
Definitely a little frazzled.
Well, go ahead and get yourself situated. Your vehicle
is taken care of. Now you need to figure out, well, you don't think you'll
get it done today? That sounds like a couple of days minimum.
I hear losing gears, I'm like, okay. A couple of days,
best case in a Nissan CVT. So it's like
just to really encompass the situation we're dealing with
right now. Yeah, we might be able to take a look at it
today, but even if we mean, I
can't just throw reverse back down the dipstick tube.
There's not a bottle of reverse I can throw down there. In the history
of transmissions, is the CVT the most
hated? I don't know if it's most. I mean, the DCT is pretty
damn close. Yeah, DCT is pretty good.
And then you get into, like, now with the ten speeds, that's definitely I
think that'd be on the roster, but I think that's the unknown. That's just kind
of ignorance a little bit. People don't know it, and so they're frustrated by it.
I feel like with eight, nine speeds right. Something you deal with probably on a
regular basis is seeing those eight, nine speeds. They probably don't like those very much,
but the CVT is on an island on its
own for sure. It's a really cool design,
very poorly executed and not usually maintained. So
it's like they don't yeah. How much do you service
those? When are you supposed to service those? Same as any thirty to sixty
thousand. On those. We always say like thirty thousand because the
amount of fluid, you can only get like three or four quarts out. Some of
them have a filter, some of them don't. Like the newer
Nissans with Anastasia three fluid, which is like the
Avatar blue fluid you're supposed to use
that has a filter capsule you can pull off. It's got a little cartridge filter,
but for the most part it's just a drain and fill.
Yeah, like a Honda. Do that a little sooner, like do thirty
thousand on a Honda because you can't replace the filter just
better for it. Anytime you drop the pan and service the filter, of course
you can extend the service mileage to more to like forty or fifty. And if
you're not going to do any towing or any real highway driving for an extended
period of time, or you're not in severe stop and go,
you probably push it to sixty. But I would say at the
dealership I have easily at least a fifty percent
decline on transmission services. That's interesting.
That's all I do.
That is like our number one sixty. K. Like it's kind of time
to do the transmission. Yeah, I'll do that later. That's interesting. All
the time. It's at least half. Well,
we don't do the flushes, so we don't like doing yeah, we pretty. Much just
do drain infills and change the filter. That's the pan service. Yeah. That's the
only way to do it. Yeah. The flushing is just going to cause problems unless
you can start it from day one. But even day one you're going to
pump twenty quarts of fluid through at thirty thousand miles, that fluid is
like brand freaking new. We're not going to flush. Yeah, you don't need to for
one, waste all that fluid. For two charts of consumer, that much fluid, I mean
for nothing. Like at thirty thousand miles, if everything's functioning correctly,
there's really no point to do it. But then if you extend that service to
say sixty, seventy or eighty, well now you've waited too long to flush it, technically
because you have too much sludge. Yeah. And the machine doesn't pull the sludge
out, it just loosens it up. You'll get thirty or forty percent
out, but most of it stays in the case on the valve body, in
the nooks and crannies, in the converter on the stator, there's so many little areas
that it'll settle, but then it gets broken up a little bit. And then later
on when you're driving five hundred, eight hundred miles down the road, after a few
hot and cold cycles, that's when it falls to the bottom of the pan and
then the filter sucks it up and then it plugs the filter with all this
sediment and crap. And then without fluid frosted. Yeah,
that's it. No more line pressure. Line
pressure is critical to have an automatic transmission work. Just let it bake for two
hundred thousand miles. Yeah, just leave it at that point. See a lot of that.
I mean as long as you're replacing the filter and then the filter is going
to capture that stuff and then you get the filter back out, you'll be fine.
But that's why just doing the service thirty, forty thousand, that's the best way. Yeah.
I think as a transmission shop you'd be shocked at how many people
do not service their transmissions at all.
I guess that's the reason why these RFEs are fell in like left
and right. Everything can't find the sixty six RFEs. The sixty eight
RFEs. No. All the Dodge transmissions are just like
almost impossible to find right now and they're so expensive to rebuild.
I'm wondering
what's the next evolution of the transmission? That's
a good question. How many more gears can you add?
Yeah, what's going to change about that? I mean, a lot
of things are going electric, but I don't see that as
a real solution to any problem that we're having
as a globe. If you're thinking about it
in world terms, you can't get people in the middle of the desert
a rechargeable Tesla.
They need their Toyota Helix that'll last them thirty years.
So what are the next evolutions like? Combustion
engine. There's a lot of cool stuff that Porsche is doing with e
fuel and making one hundred percent renewable fuel
that is gasoline that a normal car can run on with no
conversion. Yeah. So do we just switch to that?
And there's such big higher powers above us that can make pulling the
strings and pulling the levers
it's hard. I mean, we've seen a lot of things like hydrogen is a good
example. What happened with hydrogen? It's not a good
choice. And it's the same as the electric right now. It takes way too much
energy to make it. Yeah, that's true. Well, to contain and distort
and to refill. I mean, there's a lot behind it too, but it definitely was
moving in a direction and it got shot down. Yeah,
there's still a couple of people working on it. The BMW still got
their hydrogen X five that they just kind of keep teasing.
Toyota has a hydrogen car, the Mirai. Mirai.
Sixty to eighty thousand dollars or something. Something crazy.
Yeah. That's not a bad option. It's one of the only
options. So I guess it's not a bad one. It can't be if you're the
only one. Yeah. If you really want a hydrogen car, you got it. You're not
a bad choice and you're the best choice. But then because you're the only
choice I even looked into. There was one I think that they
had like a really crazy lease on. And I was like, oh, is this even
an option? It would be cool to own one of those. I'm always looking to
try new crazy tech and stuff. And then I was like, okay, where can I
refuel this? Nowhere near me.
That's convenient. Yeah. When you're talking about electric cars, it's like
living in the desert. That's a great when, when you talk
about making these decisions when you're living downtown La.
Downtown San Francisco, that's your know, I think that
kind of circles back to the beginning, right. When you're like think you're the only
one struggling because you're stuck in your little bubble and it's like,
man, you got to think about everywhere in
like you're going to mandate this stuff and not allow these ranchers to go buy
a brand new truck. Right. There's a lot of world that isn't
city. Right. And you think about ranchers like, oh, they got an old Chevy or
Ford truck, they'll be fine. No, I mean they need new vehicles too.
I got a lot of ranchers with new trucks that pull a lot of weight.
The weight rating is big. They got one hundred and fifty plus extended range fuel
tank because there's not a gas station for six hundred, seven hundred miles in
Montana or something. They're making these thousand mile treks back and
forth nonstop. Right. Well, and they got livestock on board. Yeah.
They can't afford to have a breakdown. So even though they love their old truck,
it's like, no, I need something brand new so they don't have to worry
about it. So even if they got an old record that they can drive around,
they're still not going to put all their livestock in the back and risk a
breakdown because the truck's fifteen years old. But same with the
EV. We've all seen the charging or the capability
when they start towing stuff. The range
isn't there. The range drops to half. I mean you've been driving around and
the Wrangler you got yeah. Hybrid. And you see what
happens when you go full electric. Yeah. I can tell you when I
put a one two hundred pound trailer on it that electric
lasted about eight miles.
Impressive. So factory range started at
like twenty five, which was excellent on the thirty three s. Yeah. That's
solid. Yeah, for a brick that moves down the
road. And then I moved to thirty eight s and it's down to like
fifteen to twenty depending on temperature. And then
you put any weight in it and it's like gone. And that's
like it is with any electric cars. You start putting work against it
and the Ford Lightning is down to like one hundred miles
out of almost three hundred when it starts towing.
I think it was like a six thousand pound trailer they did a test on.
Yeah, that's right. And that's not a good reaction. And we've all
seen the trips they've tried to take across the states with trying to
recharge and waiting forty five minutes to an hour. It's the
infrastructure that's the issue right now. It's not the technology in the vehicle
that's there. It's got the same range as a gas car for the most part
on a lot of these. But the convenience of
refueling is the issue. Right. I mean, anytime you want
to take a road trip and that's what
everyone's doing, right. That's why we're all busy is
because everyone wants to go take their family on vacation because it's
summertime. And I just think there's a time and a place. Have
you been to SEMA? Yeah. And you've seen the Tesla
Loop that's underground. So I know
there's some people out there that don't like it, but I think that's rad. And
it's like such a cool direction
that those vehicles could go. So they had like
north hall, south hall, west hall. So they had the Tesla Loop stations where you
go out front and they would take you underground. And they had the tunnels built
underground. Those are the boring tunnels. Yeah, exactly. Underneath the convention center.
And they just had Teslas running all day long. I've seen the videos of it.
Yeah. Free ride. Awesome. From left to right, back forth. It's like, that makes so
much sense. It's like that should be like the direction like
Ubers in or Lyfts in. Instead of having public
transit be a bus that's like running every
twenty minutes, and you got to get on this bus with a bunch of people
and it's polluting and it's diesel. Why don't you just replace those with Teslas
and just have a Tesla every like eight? That's what Elon said. He said he's
going to do it. Yeah, I mean it's just like that makes the most sense.
People are paying him to collect data right now. People are buying his
data collectors, doing all the R D for the fully
autonomous. He's trying to push this stage five autonomy,
that's know, human factor you can't. Equate
for what a million other people are going to do. Exactly.
That's exactly the point I was going to bring up was like the,
they have a thing about that. It's like the McDonald's stop or something like that.
But it's like the thing with you're driving down the road and you see a
bunch of kids playing soccer on a field and you know there is a
chance that this ball is going to take off and you're going to have to
swerve to avoid. Right. You can't teach that to AI. That's
like that situation cannot be
broken down to artificial intelligence. It can't see
that. It just sees things moving. It has no idea that there's a possibility these
kids playing soccer are going to kick it over the goalpost into the street, and
you're going to have to stop. And maybe this kid's going to run out and
try to get the ball. So you can see that and you can anticipate it.
But the car never is going to too many calculations. Too many calculations.
But I think we're close. You're already slowing down. I don't know.
And then the same thing with having a tumbleweed go across the road
versus a kid going to pick up a ball. Right. And it's like the
whole swerve. How do you choosing between two people?
What do you do if there's two. People in the road? Yeah. You take out
the tumbleweed, right? Yeah. You just demolish that thing. And you don't stop
the vehicle in the middle of the road and have everybody run into you or
cause a bigger accident or swerve around it and swerve in it. So the car
swerved to avoid this tumbleweed and it went onto the sidewalk and took out
fifteen people. Like what?
It'll never be able to a bag? Yeah, exactly. You never
know what the obstruction is going to be and all it sees is just an
anatomic object, like moving. So I don't know. And
what was that damn McDonald's thing where it was something
about the drive through. You got a bunch of cars piled up and you got
one car that's like pulled in. Right. But it's
not off the sidewalk yet. It's still halfway in the street.
And you know, you can just slow down and go around it because you know
what they're doing. They're trying to get in line. But for the AI
has no idea it's just going to stop the car because there's something in the
street or it might just keep driving. You see the reverse lights on.
It doesn't see the reverse lights. So unless these cars all
become one and it can put the reverse lights out, send a signal to your
vehicle. They all know what each other is doing. Right. That's so far in the
future, it's ridiculous. I don't even know if that's going to in our lifetime even
happen in the next forty years. Fifty years. I don't think we're going to see
that. Yeah.
The amount of cars you'd have to have out there all
doing the same thing, all talking to each other is generations. And then what
happens when Grandpa Joe comes out with his nineteen fifty
six Ford? Yeah. What are you going to outlaw these. Old trucks, these old
cars? People just need to drive. Like why does it
need to be replaced? Driving has gotten so easy. I mean,
with adaptive cruise control, I've got it in my wife's Kia and
it's so nice. I mean, all you have to do is keep your hands
on the wheel and look ahead, God forbid, and
just. Leave it there for the next decade or so. Right. Why do we have
to like what was that not even eight years ago.
Now we're here. Why do we got to push this so fast? Why are we
pushing this envelope. I don't get it. Why do we have to be so distracted?
I mean, it's just for the driver, but for the manufacturers.
Why can't you just leave it at adaptive and perfect this yeah. And the
safety and get into the driving and actually start
perfecting the car. I don't
see the point of a fully autonomous driving
on a national scale. Who doesn't
like driving? Right? You know what I mean? There's
kids out there that the adaptive. Driving that we have is good enough. Good enough.
It's good enough. You can take a little break, take a little breather. You get
back into you don't have. To focus one thousand percent. You can relax, but you
don't need to just go to sleep. No, you don't need to go sleep.
You can take a little breather. Take the train. Take the train. You want to
sleep while you go. From one side of the country. We have trains. We mastered
that a long time ago. And airplanes, man, airplanes are so safe. Also
great. Or you could pay a guy to drive you
around. Imagine that. The other side of it, too, is not just like the
people driving the cars and dealing with that, but it's like the insurance
companies, the registration costs. Where is all this
going to land? You got
airbags in the event of the seatbelt. Even
insurance companies change the way they insure vehicles, depending on what
year your vehicle was because you had certain safety equipment. I
mean, it's a law or it's in the books that
if you tamper with the TPMS system on a vehicle and it's
involved in a collision, they can come back to you as a repair shop that
you've disabled a safety feature on the vehicle. You rotate the tires, you don't reprogram
them. That's on you. And it's like that's just the tire pressure. What's going to
happen with this ADAS? What happens when you remove
headlights and you don't get it? Recalibrated because they just didn't oh, I didn't
know. You can't play ignorance
and the same. I mean, replacing a windshield, like if you don't recalibrate it, of
course we know that one. But there's so many different components now in vehicles
that have the LiDAR and the lasers and all this stuff for the
calibration. You bump the mirror and it's out of calibration.
One of your technicians pulls it in and bumps the mirror, scratches a little
bit. He decides not to say anything because he don't want to get in trouble.
But the car leaves getting an accident, and they come to find out, hey, this
mirror was out of calibration and it's going to document it, and it's going to
know on what day at what time showed up.
Yeah, exactly. And that's the other thing, too, is a lot of time it
won't even cause a fault if you misalign this stuff. It ain't
setting a trouble code for it. It just now thinks this is where we're
going. If you're three degrees one direction or. Another, it's just like where
it's just off center. That's the direction we're going. There is no
feedback sensors for it for the most part, so
it's all about the technician's discretion to make sure that stuff's still aligned and
pointing the direction it needs to go. If you're three degrees to the right and
it sees a trash can on the side of the road and it stops the
car, the guy back behind you runs into you. I have mine go off. Who's
pointing the finger at who? Mine goes off all the time. The frontal collision warning
system. Yeah, it thinks something's
going to it's kind of good. I mean, there's some times where I'm, like, looking
somewhere else and it's like, hey, look
forward. Maybe that's driver error, I don't know. Yeah, but other
times where you're just driving down the road and the sun hits it and it's
like, break and cancels my cruise
control, and then my car is just braking on its own down
the highway. That's interesting. So, yes, it saved me, but also it's
almost got me rear ended. Yeah, I've seen that
happen on multiple brands where you're just driving down the road and the
sun's setting right into your frontal collision sensor, and it
wigs out the whole system. Wow, that's interesting.
My Jeep. Wow. Yeah, that's another
problem, too, I guess. I was getting at too with the insurance was like, if
you buy these cars and you have this collision avoidance
system they're basing their insurance on, they're. Giving you a reduction. Yeah,
but what if it's disabled?
Where's the checks and balances on? And you don't think that's right around the corner?
You don't think the insurance companies have that same I'm definitely not the first one
to think about it. Yeah, somebody's thinking about it. If I'm in an insurance company
and I'm giving these guys a rate, now, this car has been on the for
five, six, seven, eight years. Right. Wait a second here. Who's
checking to make sure this stuff. Still essentially smog
should, right. No, you're not going to get it. A visual
light inspection. No, you're not going to get a malfunction. The only thing with the
smog is the malfunction indicator light. So if you don't have any
trouble codes, I'm sure that some of them will set a trouble code for
one thing or another. But a lot of that avoidance stuff has nothing to do
with, you know, unless it's emissions related. I
mean, yeah, even though it sets a code for the freaking front dampener on the
Chevy cruises getting stuck, like, really? The freaking
whatever that flapper is up in the front bumper on the Chevy cruises.
Like, that sets a code for the emission system. Give me a break, man.
Like, what if they're out of alignment sensors? No, just
the car. Just the Caster. The Camber.
And so then it's pulling off and then everything else. Everything's off.
Yeah. So who's checking that? Right. The thrust angle of the rear. Yeah, exactly.
Caster camber at front, like all that stuff that's all going to change. Exactly.
The alignment of the sensors, the way the car reacts. And you're going to say
your car doesn't pass small because the alignment is not on, even though it freaking
should because you're like dragging a tire down the highway. But that if
anything, is definitely affecting emissions. I would say one hundred percent
tires. Maybe not the emissions, but the fuel consumption to say the least.
But yeah, tires and the wear on the tires, but
yeah, there's no checks and balance of that stuff. And if you don't think that's
right around the corner, someone's missing the ball on that one. I
think they started looking to it at our
cars too much. We just need to go back to simple.
It's just a car, don't worry about it. Don't worry. Don't worry. Let me do
my thing. Yeah. Let everybody run into each other, man. Yeah. Why do you have
someone so worried about me getting hurt for anyway? Like wearing a helmet. What do
you want to felt a choice? Yeah. What do you worry about me for? Use
it if you want. Use it if you need it or you want it. But
that's the whole pull behind the insurance companies. They mandate it so that the insurance
companies that was part of the deal, they don't have to pay out so much.
If someone gets hurt in an accident, you get a reduced rate. You think anybody
cares about your well being other than your mom?
Yeah. It's all profit margin.
Yeah. It's all for the calculations.
It's like same with airbags. So if your airbag lights
on that you still pass emissions. Right. Which
they can't seem to get. Right. What is this? How many times have they recalled
all of the yeah. Oh my God. Isn't that crazy?
It's all of them. They just did it again too. Right? Just
constantly. Yeah. Like if you have a nineteen ninety five Honda
Accord, I'm like, what? Probably the only
cars left on the road from.
There'S a new one that they're trying to the manufacturer
of the airbags is like, nah, it's not a defect,
it's just an airbag exploding.
Yeah. Because they can't prove that the shrapnel, whatever, shrapnel of
some sorts. So there's a whole battle going on between and for
another recall about airbags.
At what point is this the recalls are crazy. I mean, how many recalls
exist? It just blows me away. There's a recall. I'm sure you see so many
of them at the dealership. Ford led the board last year with over seventy
recalls. Over seventy
in one year. Yeah, I can see that. One of the weird ones
that we've had at Dodge is Ram.
Sorry. Dodge. Ram. It's different now. Ram. Yeah. Ram
is for a tailgate latch being. Out of alignment, like whole recall for it.
Check the tailgate because it could accidentally open by
itself. Isn't
that just like we're just down to like machine error. No quality
control. Right? Like just throw it together and we'll issue something. They'll
figure it out later down the road. Or then they issue the recalls that they
don't even have the fix for. Yeah, like the eco diesels. Yeah.
Oh gosh. And then they send a reminder to the customer every thirty
days telling them, hey, you have this
recall where your car may just die while you're
driving it. And you could get in a crash and die,
but we can't fix it yet. And they remind this customer every thirty
days that they could die. Just so you know, we're still thinking about
you. Yeah, but we can't fix it. So call your local
dealer, yell at them because they
should talk to Tyler. And let him yeah.
And then we have know explain I understand you got another notice. I'm
sorry, but I can't do anything about
there's nothing. And that just extends their legality that way if anything
happens, they're like, well we told them. Yeah, we told them this month actually. And
then they go, what do I do if it blows up? I said, you should
probably call the one eight hundred number on the notice. That's
all I got. Step one, get out of the vehicle. Yes.
Call nine one one. Step two. Yeah, that's another big one
too. Is the amount of information that we're required to give that you would
think it would be common sense. Right. You know what I mean? All
of it, no more is an owner's manual telling you how
to do anything mechanically, just telling you all the things that can and
will kill you. Right. It's funny.
And I also laugh at how different brands
do owner's manuals. For instance, BMW,
page fifty seven, take it to the dealership. Page eighty five, take it to the
dealership. Like literally every line is just see, the dealership
don't look at it. They've gone so far they don't even have a dipstick anymore.
Everybody knows this. There's no BMW dipstick because they don't want
you to do anything. Right. The opposite end of the
spectrum, you have Jeep who gives you a toolkit
and a pictogram on how to take your Jeep apart and put it back
together with four tools and the
complete opposite ends. Jeep says, yep, here's the even give you the tools.
And not even words on how to do it because even if you can't read,
you can figure out how to take a Jeep. It's like an Ikea manual. Yes,
I find it hilarious. Because one wants you to do it all. One doesn't want
you to even look at it. They just want you to bring it in. Right,
bring it in. Let us deal with it. Let us deal with.
Know. And it's tough to wrap your mind around with the thought process behind it
because I see that as smart business
on both sides. Really? Yeah. I mean, they know their clientele. They know their clients.
Exactly. G people want to wrench on their stuff. Most BMW customers
don't want to check. Their mean, but on both sides, it's smart. They psyched the
whole thing with Ferrari. Like they don't have commercials on the TV,
right? No, because they're Target or is it Lamborghini?
It might be both. Really. I mean, they both I've never seen a Ferrari probably
started I've never seen a commercial for either one of the TVs because their targeted
market isn't watching know, so it's that's a
it's in. Gentleman'S magazine, something I don't have a subscription to.
It's a gut punch right there. Like, damn man, I like to watch
TV once in a know, although rolex. Everybody
wants to get a Rolex. Everybody needs a rolex. And then they advertise
everywhere, everywhere, everywhere the time. But with the
BMW, I think that's smart too, because it allows them to collect a lot. Like
with Elon, and I think Elon maybe took a page from that. Right. With the
Teslas, he wanted everything going back to him. The only way he's going to know
what's happening in his factories is if everything goes back to him. To get quality
control after the fact? No, aftermarket support. Yeah. And
we all kind of hated that and thought that was kind know bullshit, but it's
pretty smart business if you really think about it. I mean, if I'm doing it
and I put myself in his shoes, which I don't know if I could wrap
my mind or even around that, but if I
decided to design and build a car, I'm definitely wanting them back here. If something
happens. And I think of it like every time I do a repair and I'm
not involved in the process, say comes into the shop, leanne takes it,
the guys do the work on it, I see the car
come in and out, I just see a flash of light and the car is
gone and off and away. But if something happened in that process, I want
it to come back to me. And unfortunately, a lot of the time some people
just if something doesn't go right, they'll just go somewhere else and you never know
what went wrong or why or what. So I can appreciate some people coming
back in whether they're frustrated or not about it, because at least I'm getting that
feedback and I know the next time around this is what we need to do
to make it better. I don't think people understand how
valuable it is on both sides to have consistent
service at the same facility. Right. It
helps in so many ways. Not only do they know the condition of
your car, they know what's changing. They know
what the service history is. They know what has been serviced, what hasn't been
serviced, it helps everyone involved when you jump into the middle
of something, you don't know, are you fixing something
that was an old problem? Is it a new problem? Is it a wiring
problem? And you restart and you end up probably
paying double for a lot of stuff. Right. And the reference of, like, if somebody
else repaired it, they weren't happy and they just took it somewhere else.
Yeah. And a lot of times a problem can be solved pretty quickly and
easily. Just going back to the person you started with, why are you
here? What did they do? Oh, I just feel bad
saying something like, be an adult. Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be fine about
it. Nobody's going to yell at you, hey, we just had this
repair done somewhere. And I'm like, okay, yeah,
I'm happy to help, but have you talked to them? Them about it? And they're
like, no. And I'm like, okay, well, just so you know, we got to
start from scratch. So if you don't, I am, because that's what we do.
Yeah. If we get that same story, it's like, well, if you're not going to
talk to him, we need to know where it came from because we're going to
make that call, that conversation with them and figure out what's going on.
Because some people
have what's the right word for
this? Here the politically correct term for this.
They have two sides, right? Yeah. They come in real nice and
pleasant, and then all of a sudden, they turn into a different animal an hour
later. And so it's like, I'm going to call just so, for one, I can
get the service information I need, and for two, to figure out what really went
down here, why you're not going back there. Because
if I hear something I don't want to hear, like, it's not worth my time.
I'm sorry. Yeah. It's like when the guy comes in with a check engine light,
no idea what's going on. And then you uncover all the body damage and the
splice and this wire to this. The stories help the complete
picture makes everything go a lot faster. Right. And then also making sure
that this is going to be a standing relationship. This is not just someone
night going shop to shop, getting free work. You call the last place they went,
oh, man, you know what? I just gave him his money because he just turned
into such a like, what would you do? And it ends up being a bunch
of work that had nothing to do with the reason why he's at your shop
right now. Oh, I see what's going on here. I see
what he's doing here. I'm not dealing with that. So, yeah, that's part of the
reason we like to make that phone call, but a lot of them get kind
of scary. They're like, oh, I don't know if you want to call them.
Why yeah. It saves everybody time,
and it also lets them know what's happening, because I'd want that.
If someone left my place and was not happy with what happened, they didn't say
anything to me. They just went to another place. It's like, how am I supposed
to make myself better if you don't for the yeah. How do you give me
any feedback? Like, what do we do wrong? Yeah, Elon figured that out a long
time ago. He's like, Just keep it coming back. I want all the data. All
of it? Yeah, all of it good or know, up or down. It's like,
that's what you got to do. I mean, and it's improved a lot. I mean,
if you look at how I don't know if there's better
model for it in the car industry, if you look
at how simple it is, everybody can gripe
over the quality control and that. But in terms of a scalable
model of a car business, he did it right
from the ground up. And as somebody in the
dealership industry, I can definitely appreciate his
showrooms, if you will, because it's very low
pressure. Everybody gets the same thing. The model is great. You don't have
to negotiate. You just get what you want. That's it. Just pick the color,
pick the option. Well, it was like not only a new vehicle or
new manufacturing process, but it was like a completely new
everything. Yeah. I mean, it's an electric car.
There was no game plan he couldn't take know back
with the Big Three was coming up. Right. And it's like everyone was competing with
one another, but in reality they were just stealing their top guys, right? Yeah.
It's like Dodge brothers got pushed around and worked for
GM, worked for the other one and the others. Everyone was just kind of like
cycling these people around. Kind of like how
all the rock bands of the Eighty S worked too. Right.
Drummers and guitarists just kind of mixed it around with each band. And
everyone just kind of got better in the industry because it was like the same
group of people just kind of rotating through. And that's kind of what happened with
the Big Three with car manufacturing. They're just stealing everybody's ideas. But he went
off and did his draft football. Yeah. You can get a way to put it.
I mean, look at Kia. They just got the guy from BMW and turned the
brand right side up. Yeah, that's true. In not very long,
in my opinion. Kia in the ninety s and two thousand s was
nothing to reach for. It was like a day.
Woo. Yeah. Remember the day.
Woo. Yeah. They were there. They were affordable
and affordable and affordable.
I don't know if they were I mean, they were let's just say they were
cheap. Yeah, that was it. They were not affordable because day two, you already
had it back in the shop. Yeah. And then. I mean, Kia had the, on
the newer mid century Kias, one hundred thousand mile
warranty. But even then yeah, you were using every bit of that in the
recent history. They changed the branding, they changed the design,
they added a lot of cues from BMW because they took the guy from
BMW and hired him. It's pretty hard to tell the difference
if they're driving by fast. I mean, and I think they did
a great job, honestly, as somebody who's worked for BMW and
who purchased a Kia because I saw the most benefit from
like it was hard to go any other directions. I
mean, looking at Toyota and Honda and even
Ford in the small SUV segment,
kia was best in class economy, best price
and best features from a Kia.
And I mean, this is two thousand and twenty three. And I mean, look at
Genesis, what they're doing with the new GV eighty. Oh yeah. I mean there's a
lot of companies that are coming out that were not really
great in the early two thousand s that have
totally turned it over and now look like nothing else. Right.
Yeah, I got nothing. I mean, negative say about the Kia's now,
even the Hyundai's, I mean yeah, we have a Hyundai
which hasn't let us down
the window regulator. And that was a pain in the ass.
What? Window regulator doesn't go out. Yeah, that's true. But this one
was extraordinarily difficult to find a new one. Oh really?
Yeah. I mean, we had to get off like Rock Auto or something. Which is
where I get all my Suzuki parts, my ninety eight Suzuki
parts. I don't know,
it worked. The whole
rock auto thing. I don't know, I get enough of that stuff coming in where
they're like, oh, I can get this. Look at the part, part where's that part
come. Forty dollars shipping. Yeah. And then that's where Rock Auto gets
you. And then it's like it's never fast shipping,
it always charges and it's like pick your price. Do you want to pay twelve,
fifteen or eighty five dollars for shipping on this
oring so? I get it. Yeah, their prices are good if
you just look at the price. But at the end of the day, I've looked
at Amazon for that part number and then I've looked at Rock Auto and it
comes out about the and but also
you don't know what you're kind of getting half the time. Yeah, that's the
problem for, you know, the one thing with Amazon with parts
is a lot of it they're merging in. And I'll order
parts, transmission parts in particular, and
I'll order them get the price from my normal
supplier. And the box that I get from Amazon is from
my normal supplier. Like ten dollars cheaper, fifteen dollars
cheaper, twenty dollars cheaper. Like what the same name
on it? Same bill, like the invoice everything's the same. It's just through
Amazon. Wow. Okay.
I noticed that actually when I worked at BMW because
I got an employee price on something that I wanted to get a
BMW lifestyle item and my
parts manager and I'm like, what? Why are you ripping me off? And
he's like, what, wholesales this? And he's like, you paid ten percent over that? And
I'm like, Dude, I can get this on Amazon for like one hundred dollars
less than what you just told me. And it's from the
BMW store on Amazon? Yeah, same
box from the brand somehow. Either BMW,
the brand has a deal with Amazon somehow, or
there's some wholesaler that's buying it. I really don't understand. But
there are parts stores that somehow have these connections with Amazon and they're selling
them dirt cheap. Right. I mean, it's crazy. I don't get it. Yep. It's
worth taking the time to look at that because put the part number in. Put
the part number in. Just put it in. Holy moly. Like, all right, whatever. And
free shipping half the time, usually. Free shipping and easy returns. That's the other
thing, too, about parts, is like, can you return it? Drop it off at Ups?
Yeah, amazon perfect. Easy. I mean, that's one thing about having a good relationship
with parts. Dealerships are really tough. I mean, for the most part around
here, locally, we have a pretty good relationship to be able to
return parts. Sometimes you order
stuff because you're trying to get ahead of the game, then
they don't show up. Or as we all know, the
conversation on the phone is not really what's wrong with the vehicle.
Yeah, I've had all of those things happen. So you got these parts here that
you don't need anymore and you're like, well, I got to send them back now.
And if it's a pain to send it back, you're like, I'm not dealing with
that place again. Usually why dealerships will only preorder parts
if you prepay for them or if the car is there, that's when I order
parts. I mean, most of the time it's either, do you pay ahead of time
or is the car here? Because if it's an
inexpensive part, sure. Otherwise
I need some collateral, if you will. Especially when there's
hundreds of people going through there. I mean, we could end up stockpiling. And dealerships
often do a list of parts for people who don't show up
for imagine years ever again. Yeah, that's
interesting to think of it that way, too.
That's a fine line to ask for draws. Ask for money before the vehicle is
there. It's tough for an independent
I mean, depending on how big you end up getting, it's not big of
a deal for us right now to even think about it. Yeah, for the for
the most part, we can get most of the parts we need the same day.
You look it up and you say, well, that's in stock, so we won't have
a problem with it every once in a while
if it's something else and they don't show up like, oh, we got it in
stock now. But some of the stuff is like, well I don't need that.
Yeah, there's certain special order items you. Just don't I'm
not going to use that again. Twenty five year old PT
Cruiser. I don't need a whole transmission sitting here.
I don't know. The chances of another PT Cruiser coming
in and wanting a transmission at a dealership price are very slim. I
need to confirm. You really want this? Yeah. You want to do this or not?
Yeah. I thought you were going to say a PT Cruiser coming in is slim.
But I got one on the rotation that convertible turbo
and he comes in pretty religiously.
We actually have a few and it's purple just so everyone gets the visual. Oh
nice. Yeah, we have a few PT Cruisers and we got a Woody in the
shop right now. PT Cruiser. Right on. That's the best
one. That's the best. It's got to be turbocharged though.
Turbocharged convertible. Not a convertible. It's a hard
top. I mean one thing with parts is like with transmissions, a lot of
them will interchange. So like the nag one or the seven two two six. It's
like sprinter van, chargers,
Mercedes. It just goes across the board on a lot of them.
Right. And it's like the same with most of them. I mean for a long
time everybody was using their own stuff like the a three hundred and forty E
for the Toyota is the same as the Jeep Grand Cherokee in the ninety S
anyway. Really? Yeah. It's the A three hundred and forty. So it's like the same
one on the early one. So there's a lot of transmissions that kind of go
back and forth like it's Toyota, NS, Jeep. There's
only so many distributors for transmissions. Yeah. So having some of those parts,
even though it was for that vehicle, it's like, I can use it for other
stuff, but some of the specialty stuff from the dealerships is like, yeah, I'm
probably not going to when it's vin specific, which everything freaking is nowadays,
pretty much in the last ten years, everything's kind of directed that way. Like a
tekham. Right. For a GM six L eighty or six L ninety, which
is the valve body and the computer module.
Sometimes they're blank, but sometimes they're vin specific
so that can't go into anything else once you order it. So
in those situations it's like, yeah, hey, I'm going to need one thousand
dollars because I'm not sitting on this thing. I guess any modules
really now that I bring it up, it's like, yeah, we do before that we
order that, we make sure we get money out of them before we get it
here because you can't return that thing. Yeah. So it
varies. Yeah. But for the most part if it's a big or specialty
item. We're not going to hold it in stock
or something like that. Or if it's usually vehicles after, what is it, twenty
years, they stop really readily stocking stuff. I mean, aftermarket
is a little bit easier, but dealership pipeline dries out after
that. Unless you're like Porsche or I
mean. Everyone went OE for so long and there was such a big
push to buy OE parts. A lot of shops would
put themselves out there like, we only use OE, we only use OE. And
it seems like pretty recently
that's kind of dried up a little bit. And the aftermarket just can offer
such a better warranty where dormant is really stepped up.
And dormant was like, I mean, it was
bottom the line stuff for so long. Everybody looked down on
dormant. Anything that said dormant was almost like
embarrassing. You take it out of the box and put the part in as quick
as you can so no one saw you using a dormant part. But they've come
so far now and with most shops getting a three year
warranty on them, parts and labor, then you get the same part from
say, the OE and they give you just a one year on the part and
you're like, I don't care how great. That part is, right.
Because parts are going to fail. And if the parts don't
fail, the people are going to break them. Sometimes
people are just hard on stuff and they break it and
they don't care what the quality is because it's still broken.
And so if it's got a three year warranty, it doesn't matter what happened to
it. It gets replaced for free to them. Yeah. O'Reilly's got
like a lifetime warranty on brake pads. Yeah.
Technically limited, but limited. Yes. We only give out
like two year warranties of the dealership. That's pretty
much your standard warranty is a two year warranty. Yeah. And
that's where we come up with a three year, thirty six thousand mile
and we're nationwide warranty being if you can find another certified
auto repair shop in the country, they will cover our repair
that happens here and anything breaks. If you put brakes
on here at this shop, at our shop, and you take off and go to
Montana or whatever and you wear your brakes out and you find another certified auto
repair shop in that three year you get another set of brakes. Yeah. Real similar
with and it's pretty well, like no questions asked, which is like
how do you, I mean, it doesn't matter how mean Acibono
brakes or know,
Chrysler brakes on, like it doesn't really matter. I mean,
Dodge gets their brakes from Brembo. Half the
on I mean Acubona is on par with Brembo. I think Accubono is just
so then. Do you consider like, Brembo is that OE or
aftermarket? Yeah, that's a good question. So like
at what point if it. Came OE with the Brembos, then obviously
they're in bed together. So it would be that's like Allison, like an Allison
transmission, like Allison was aftermarket. But that's the OE transfer
dermat now. So it's like, well, Allison is get a little bit
then. I mean, if you slap Brembos on your Honda, is it OE
quality. That'S an
you definitely if you have a Brembo caliper, you're not going to find aftermarket
pads to go in there. I guess my point is a lot. Of
the brands that are aftermarket the quality is getting
there across a broader scale as you have higher
quality parts available from more places and more
people than just the manufacturers. It used to be the manufacturers had
all the money, they had all the machinery, they could make it the best. And
now you have so much technology available to more people
at a lesser cost that the industries are catching up
and being able to produce sometimes superior parts to
what OE can do. I mean, Charge
Turbos, you can name it, there's probably somebody
aftermarket that has almost a better replacement than
the OE. Yeah, but it's not a
blanket statement either. No, especially talking about Chrysler's, because when you talk about
crank sensors and you can't put
an aftermarket crankshaft sensor in a Dodge or a Ram
or a Jeep or a Chrysler, right. There's quite a bit of those sensors where
yeah. Why are the sensors not quite there yet? A lot of sensors are
just or thermostats or like something just
we were doing aftermarket thermostats in this thing and every aftermarket we
can't get the OE one. But every aftermarket thermostat is
a problem. Every single one becomes a problem. It's a couple of
degrees hot, it's too cold, it's stuck
already. And I'm like, really? Then you wonder, am I the
only one dealing with this? Yeah. How are these things in stock right now?
Right. And we're just getting the bad one every time. Or what's going
or is everybody getting bad one? Or is everyone getting bad one? They just don't
say anything. They don't care. Yeah, keep charging the customer. He can
need another one. Let's put another one and put another one. But that's where it
comes to the warranty, too. It's like you used to have this
high expectation of this part that you took out of this box,
and it's like Eklin, right? From Napa. That was like,
oh, if it's got Eklin on it, that's the best of the best. And
we'll talk like blue streak. You don't use blue,
it's just garbage parts. But it's like anytime you had this
box and it had, say, the Mo part stamp
on it, it was like, that was like the best of the best you're putting
on there. But at this day and age, it's like, well, what's the warranty
on it? That's all anybody cares about anymore. How long
is it going to last? How long till nothing's meant to last?
Don't go there. But then talking about internal transmission parts is like you
get billet internals, right? Everybody knows what billet internals are. Hardened internals, of
course, that's way better than anything stock. Right. But it also pushes
that failure point somewhere else down the line that's going to, something else is going
to break. Yes. And that stuff's not
warrantied but it's like, you know what you're getting. But also you're doing
this because someone is extremely hard on their vehicle
because it's driven normally at normal parameters and normal
settings, nothing's going to break. Right? Typically
you don't need these upgraded parts because you're driving it normally and so that's where
it is. Everyone's just so hard on these vehicles and they expect so much out
of their vehicles that they need this warranty because they know they're going to break
it and they're like, I don't care how good the quality is, they're going to
find a way to break it. Absolutely, I mean you know that, right?
I know this in so many different ways. I've
broken so many cars, so many axles.
But I also understand and I have expectations and funny enough, Jeep
called me as a customer a couple days ago. So for those
of you people who don't know, I work for Jeep. I was a customer of
Jeep before I worked for Jeep, when I worked for BMW
and they called me as a customer and go, hey, how's your Jeep
treating you? Because my Jeep has reached the critical
threshold of being in the shop. That they're like, hey, we
need to give this guy special treatment.
When I pulled my Vin today for some other service work, it
says enhance satisfaction. Customer, please contact
Stalantis for any service needs. They
want this guy in and out of the shop as fast as possible. Give him
a rental like the top service. And so they
call and they're like, hey, how's everything going with the Jeep,
we just want to check in. And I'm like, oh it's going great, I love
it. And I didn't think of anything of it at the time, but then I'm
like, oh yeah, it's because my Jeep has like one hundred and seventeen
registered days in the shop,
which is fifty fifty.
For people who don't know, days down in the shop reflects of how many days
a car was at the shop. Well what dealerships like to do if they can't
get parts is leave the repair order
open and give you back your car until the parts come in
and then you come back. So it only shows one ticket. But
in that thirty days that it took to get the part and my
paperwork was open, I had the vehicle back for twenty eight of
those. I dropped it off the first day they checked it out, then I picked
it up, had it for twenty eight days, they got the part, dropped it back
off, had it back the same day. Jeep as a brand. Thinks my car was
at the shop for thirty days, but it was really only
at the shop for two. So that's why they're thinking that
something's really wrong with my Jeep. Because
you're skewing the numbers here, man. Out of skewing for all the hybrids out
there. Yeah. Out of the five hundred days I've had the Jeep, twenty percent of
the time it's been in the shop. On paper.
So much for their checks and balances. You got this inside guy here just throwing
the numbers off. Yeah, but I love it.
They're like, what? And I guess my point was I'm
really hard on my vehicles, right. And things happen and I
understand that I'm going to lose time with it, I'm going to lose some
money. Something is going to get lost
somewhere. It's not a perfect world. Parts
aren't available. I've had a couple of times where I destroy
my own vehicle because I love to use it for what it's designed, which is
offroading. And then I break something, and then the part is not available, and I
got to drive a backup car for a week. Or these are things that I
plan for because I know what to expect.
I guess people just don't expect anything
anymore. It's just realistic
expectations. And a lot of people have unrealistic
expectations and it's like you got to be realistic about
it. To me, I think it's been a great
experience because they fixed it and I
broke it for the most part, minus the King of the Hammers
experience. And it's been great because Jeep pretty
much stands behind their trail rated warranty. I mean, even when I was a customer
and I took it to another dealership, they fixed it pretty much no
questions asked. And I understand that's not the experience that every dealership, because
some dealerships for whatever reason, don't like warranty money.
But as a brand, I've really liked
Jeep. Even with your modifications on it? Yeah,
to an extent. You have to understand
what's going to happen with that. If
you totally modify your vehicle and then you want to
replace something that forcibly broke because you did something,
they're probably not going to pick it up. I probably push the
boundaries. I mean, if you look at Jeeps offered thirty seven inch tires from
factory. Right. I put thirty eight on it.
So am I stretching the definition
of what their stock vehicle is and breaking things? Yes,
and they're still backing it up. But also I didn't put like a
six inch skyjacker lift on it with. Forty two s. With forty two
S. And then go smash it and break it.
And some things I paid for myself to fix, like when I messed up the
bumper, I went and replaced that because they're not going to cover things like
that. Yeah, but it's a good peace of mind
when you buy a vehicle that's designed for something and it breaks
doing the thing it was designed for and they're like yeah we'll take care of
it. That's how it's supposed to be. Kind of it is. And it's not always
like that but I've had a good experience on both sides of the fence and
I try to push that experience on my customers too. And if it's a
realistic break then cool. If you just wanted to
slam it into a brick wall and now your front end is cracked in half
like okay, this wasn't quite in the
commercial. If you want to go neutral dropping it with forty five
s on it right? Like something you're going to do something. Yeah, I mean it's
like with trucks, like trucks are designed to tow and
every Chevy out there with the six speed is going to fail. Right.
And it's like GM is not doing anything about it. That
sucks. Yeah. I'm a Chevy guy, I like GMs,
I don't like to see that. And it's the same with all the front wheel
drive ones, all the sixty forty five, sixty, seventy five, six speeds,
Acadias, terrains, equinoxes, just all just
junk. Nothing but problems.
No sort of extended warranty converters are just failing. They don't have an
upgraded converter. I won't buy a GM converter put back in.
Mean that's quite a few brands. Nissan
CVT. Yeah, that's quite a few of those. That they just don't really
I mean. There should be something with the CVTs and I'm
not going to rebuild those either. It's just a design flaw. It's an
engineering flaw that you can't fix. You're going to put it back
together exactly the same way it was from the factory with all the same OE
Nissan factory parts with no changes. And
I think that's the definition of insanity. Right. I had a
friend who went over. And over six transmissions, six Nissan
CVTs within like less than fifty thousand miles,
right? Yeah. You go in there and rebuild them
and that's why I like to do the ones that I can rebuild and I
can add something special to them and fix what? Improve it.
Yeah. And fix what they didn't. Can you improve a CVT? I don't know. There's
nothing you can is there upgrades there? No. If there is it's beyond me. I
don't know everything. So maybe there's a guy out there that's figured something out. I
don't know. I'd like to hear from that guy. I'd like to hear from me
on. Instagram, Papa Smurf Wrangler and message me. If you improve a
CVT, I want to know. And you let me know if that happens because
yes, I don't think there is. We'll become the west coast CVT
builders. Oh my god. I still probably won't I don't know
anything to do with those. You could be booked out. It's like the DCTs are
the same thing. There's nothing you can do. I mean it's like Ford's manual.
When the input shaft seal starts leaking is replace the input
shaft seal, put it back together and then hope for the
it. If it experiences any of these symptoms and it's like clutch
shatter, shifting, advise a customer that's normal
conditions. It's like, just talk them into being okay with
it. Is that what you're telling me to do? Oh, my God. That's the TSB.
They released on, like yeah, there's definitely
some questionable recommendations from manufacturers. Yeah. And I mean,
Luke makes an aftermarket clutch disc set up for it, but it's not any
better than the Ford one. It's not like anything different about it's just an
aftermarket alternative that's like a couple hundred dollars cheaper. It's like, well, that's kind of
nice that it's a little cheaper. Yeah. You know what I mean? But there's like,
nothing you can do to improve it. And that design is cool, too. I like
that. That's been around for a long time. In the race circuit,
it's a standard gearbox with dual clutches that engage and disengage,
so you don't have to worry about hydraulics. And it's just the standard gearbox, which
is stronger, so that's cool, but it's just not working out for the
daily driver. But it comes back down to, like so is it the
design flaw, or are these people just that hard on their
equipment? Because I feel like people cared a little more about their vehicles.
Decades ago, that was the
vehicle you're going to have for the rest of your life that your grandkids are
going to have. And that's true because we get sixty s.
Seventy s vehicles in here that are, like, immaculate. Right. Is this thing
restored? Like no, we just took care of it. Holy moly. This is
a nice car. This car is built well. But was it built well, or people
just took care of it? This is my freedom. This is
my mode of transportation. This is like, what our family uses to go on
vacation. Our family gets fed. We have to keep this car nice. And it's like,
nowadays, this generation just gets in these things, turns the key, and just
slams that go pedal down, and it's like, see ya. Yeah. I'd probably
attribute it to two things. One, people
had to work harder for things. There wasn't
a surplus of options of just, say,
refrigerators. You had to work hard
for stuff. Stuff was kind of expensive back in the day, so you had to
work hard for it. And two, back in the day, everything
was meant to last longer. Now we have such
this disposable lifestyle, and that trickles
down to your car planned obsolescence. Yeah. When
everything is meant to be tossed,
I mean, your computer, literally everything in your life that you probably
have is meant to be replaced in the next two to five
years. Everything. And when you
just think about that, how are you going
to why? Take care of it? Yeah. Why take care of it? Why?
I'm just going to replace it in a couple of years, like my furniture, my
couch, everything is going to be replaced in five to ten years for the
most part, depending for most people. Once you
get to a certain point and you want to spend twenty five thousand dollars
on your fridge and then that can last you a lifetime. I forgot
whatever brand that is. You want to spend twenty five thousand on a
fridge, it'll last a lifetime. But for all of us better people out
there, we're going to spend two grand on a fridge and it's going to be
replaced in the next five years. Right. Well, I think we're kind of like
the last of the generation that even sees that divide.
And I can't speak for anybody
younger than us, the generation that's going to
come behind us, but I feel like we are the last ones that see the
two, the divide. We see that care that
was given to everything, vehicles, whatever. You bought your
refrigerator, you actually cleaned the coils out of the back of it. You cleaned it
out. You took care of your stuff, you serviced
everything in your home because it was going to be there forever. But we also
see this planned obsolescence where, like you said, you're going to buy an LG refrigerator
and pretty much guarantee in five years it's going to stop going cold and you're
going to call the service tech out nine times and he's not going to fix
it. So you're just going to buy a new one. I was
actually reading through my wife's Kia's owner's manual to
check the service schedule for a couple
different things. And I came across this section that absolutely
blew my mind because I wonder
how many people read it and how many people do it. And I know I
don't do it anymore to an extent, but it says at every fill
up, when you fill up your gas tank, check the lights, check the
tire pressure, check the brakes, check the oil.
It gives you like ten things to check. Like the normal checklist of all
your fluids, your lights, your tire pressure, check your spare
tire. And I'm like,
that's actually in an owner's manual. I can't remember the last time I read that.
But I do it to a minimal extent. I look at my tire pressure, I
look at my gauges, I know I'm good. I've got oil level sensing, all these
things. Nannies that I have, I can rely to know that I have
most of stuff. But the point is, people don't
look at their car ever until it tells them there's something
wrong. Yeah. There should be a light that comes on for that
or the place I take it to will take care of it. Yeah. And I
think that's another problem with where the industry is headed
is that they don't realize that this is your
vehicle, you own it. It's your responsibility
to keep this stuff. Yeah. My dad taught me to go every
morning before when I got my first car. Walk around it, check the tire
pressure, look at the oil, pop the hood, make sure everything's
okay. Plan for ten minutes before you got to leave somewhere to look at
your vehicle and just make sure everything's okay with it. Because that's going to save
you an accident down the line. That's going to save you somewhere
down the road to know that you're okay. And I
mean that's because I had a seventy three ranchero. It didn't have TPMS, it didn't
have an oil level sensor, but it doesn't matter. These are all sensors that can
fail, too. Yes. And we've become way too
we're just like relying on reliant, on waiting for these lights to come on, these
buzers and bells and whistles. And if there's an issue, it'll tell me
or somebody else will tell me. Sometimes you can spot a nail
before you have a flat tire. Yeah, that's true, too. And not be stuck somewhere.
Right? Yeah. I mean, just trying to be proactive instead of reactive is the big
thing behind it. Or knowing you have a bald tire, you know how many people
come in the shop and I go, hey, you're showing cord on your tires like
it's about to explode. It's a may pop. Yeah. And
it's a will pop. They go, really? I thought I just got tires.
Sure. And I'm like, well, there's two problems with that.
Either your alignment is really off or you didn't just
get tires. Or maybe somebody in the middle of the
night swapped your tires out for bald ones. Also possible.
Either way, keep an eye out on the neighborhood. The fact that you didn't know
before you rolled in means you should probably. Look at your car, pay attention. Yeah.
And a lot of people don't even. Know how to air up their tires. I
run into that quite often, which just blows my mind. I mean, it's just
knowing how to save yourself. I don't know. It
doesn't comprehend in my mind self reliant stuff. And it really goes back to just
not understanding that you own this piece of equipment. Like you
own it. And it's like the manufacturers are taking this and
running with it because you have subscription fees coming out right now. Right.
So it's like you buy a car with heated seats, but you don't get them
unless you keep your subscription. And eighty to ninety percent of
the population is going to be just fine with that. Just like their
phone. You own the phone, but you're still paying for apps.
They've just become accustomed to it. It's like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. The
heated seats belong to them because it's not my car. It is your car, though.
You bought it. So that is BMW's model.
So they thought about the subscription based car
services, what they came out with, a lot of people freaked out
because that's how they thought it was going to be required that you pay
monthly for each one. What their idea was,
every car would ship with every option,
right? So you don't have to have all these different
supply and demand issues with all these different things. Say
you want all the options, right? Here's the price. The vehicle is eighty thousand
dollars. You get all the options, check they're activated. You don't play
another thing. Write your check just like a normal, quote, unquote normal
BMW customer would do. I'm joking a little bit.
On the other hand, say you want to lease
a base three series with no options because you want
the lowest monthly payment possible. Well, I can
sell you that same three series for fifty thousand
dollars with no options. And now you have the
minimum payment, say in six months you want to activate your heated
seats. Say maybe you don't even want to activate it. You just want to try
heated seats because you don't know if you'd like them. You can pay the twenty
dollars and try it for one month and maybe you don't want
it anymore after that, so you're done. Or you want to buy it
permanently. The factory option was nine ninety
five at that time. You can pay the nine hundred and ninety five to
add your heated seats and then you permanently own the heated seats. So
the whole idea was to keep inventory
flowing. And then if you want an option, you can get it. If you
don't want it, you don't have to get. That's just so interesting because it's like
the part is in the vehicle. They've already invested the part
into the vehicle. So it's like they already own
the heated seats. It's in there. Just give it to
them. Then. What? If you don't want to pay for it,
you don't want to pay for it. But the manufacturers already spent the money to
put the damn element in the seats. The money is already invested into the
vehicle. And now the person's driving away with this
component that has been the vehicle. You know who did
this already elon. Yeah,
but it's like you already spent the money. Just give it to the people. No,
he's going to charge you ten, twenty thousand dollars for the
rights to cruise control, right?
Yeah. No, I may be way off on those figures. I don't
know what it is. I think it's in the neighborhood of seventy five or ten
thousand for the. Full the bottom line is there's going to be some sort
of financial gain. Yes. Even though the technology
is already built into the vehicle. Because you're paying for software just like you do
with Microsoft. Yeah, but I'm saying there's like a
tangible piece of equipment that's already in the
vehicle that you purchase the vehicle and you have this tangible item that's in
there. The elements in the seats, the LiDAR sensors, the
radar sensors, his freaking laser beam, windshield wipers,
whatever, it's already in there. And all he's doing
is and layman turned flipping a switch to let them use
it. But yeah, it's already in the car though.
Yeah. I guess if we were to sell it, I
guess if they sold the vehicle to somebody else and they're like, now I want
that, I guess that's when he recoups his money. Hopefully. Yeah,
hopefully if the car doesn't burst. Into flames and burn
or you factor that into overall
cost. Yeah. I mean, of course, having
options is the most expensive thing. If you own a restaurant, you don't want
one hundred items on your menu. If you make one seat
right. They just make one seat. Right. Instead of right
now they make ten, twelve seats.
Right. That's a lot of different production
lines for one seat. You cut five different
production lines out for one production line,
you're saving a. Lot of money right. And put all the bells and whistles in
there, but then just give it to the consumer, you know what I mean?
Just maybe up the base price just a little bit. But now you've saved so
much money, you're still up in the base price of the vehicle. And now these
consumers are getting all the bells and whistles that they want and everybody's happy.
But instead it's like, oh, let's just try to make more money. So we'll just
turn this stuff off and they got to pay for us to turn it back
on. Like, oh, my God. That doesn't leave a bad taste in your
mouth. I don't know what will. It's a weird gray zone cop between
a luxury brand trying to be bespoke
and an economy brand trying to reach the masses. So
it's both of those because that's where BMW is, the
luxury sports car segment. They're between the Rolls Royce, the
Bentley, the Ferrari and the economy brands down
at the bottom, they're right in the middle. So they're trying to find a way
to be both. And that's how you get a subscription for
your heated seats. That's how that comes together. Yeah. And then
everyone else is like, I'm going to do that too. Yeah. What a great idea.
Because look at when Tesla is doing it.
It's there. Well, I think originally they tried to get away with it because they
didn't want radar. So originally
their cruise control system was just camera based, so they didn't need a lot of
equipment. So it doesn't matter if it's in your car or not because
it's one hundred dollars worth of cameras, wholesale,
whatever that they have to put in the car to make it work. But
now they had to move to radar, I think.
And that's probably why it's seven thousand five hundred dollars for your
software. Yeah. Or just whatever the
technology is that's going into it. Pretty much. Name your
price. I thought it was a cool there's no comparison to it. I mean, what
if you only paid for your heated seats in the winter?
Well, let's see. We're in June. It was like fifty degrees this
morning and raining. So it's like there's another twelve dollars. This month
for heated seats. Then you got to
justify the cost of like how many days this month is it going to be
cold? Do I really want to do the whole month? Do we really need these
people thinking if it's a dollar? Yeah,
it's like one more thing I got to think about. I just leave it off.
And they got these cars with this. Now you're using resources for something that's not
even going to be used. Because for me it's like I'm not paying for it
and it's not even about the money. I'm not paying for it. I'm not paying
a freaking subscription for this. I'm going to pull those seats out. I'll put
aftermarket heating system with a freaking switch. It'd be better anyway.
And that is why the huge backfire that happened and they
didn't do it. I think they did it in one country, they tried it out
in a country. They're planning on rolling it out. I mean, subscription based.
I think they tried it and it. Wasn'T going to work. It's definitely not getting
a lot of positive feedback. It's definitely not, not a lot of people are like,
I really like it. I mean, I like it in theory, I think it's a
great theory, but in the practicality I just
get all the options. So you don't want to use all. The
options, but if you're planning on having another vehicle, like if you lease a vehicle,
I get it. That makes sense. If you're going to lease a vehicle, have a
lease vehicle with all the options you want to lease it. And here's all your
subscription stuff, right? Yeah. So then you can choose exactly what you want,
like time of the year you use it, six months or whatever. Well, I don't
want to pay to have that. Also the prime BMW customer leasing.
Yeah, that's true. I mean that would make sense. But it's like to roll it
out to buy a vehicle, to buy something and then not be able
to use all of it, that drives me crazy. Like I bought this
because of all these things and now you're making me pay to use these
things. It doesn't feel like it's mine. I don't feel like I kind of. The
story of the car. Yeah, a little
bit. It's the story of the iPhone, that's for sure. Yeah. To
say the least. You buy the car, you got to pay registration, you got
to pay taxes on it, you got to pay for your driver's license. I mean,
you don't have to though.
You can definitely get into the sovereign citizen debate.
Those usually don't work out. I've watched those videos. They're great
videos. I really appreciate definitely get into it. Start the
damn thing up and drive it down the road without any of that stuff, but
I don't know. I mean, you can at least sit in your driveway with the
heated seats on without any registration, insurance
or driver's license. People do live in their cars for free.
Mean, maybe that's a good way to get people to stop living in their you
know, you got to pay for this stuff. It's like rent. I think they're subletting
RVs out in La. Now. Yeah, I can see that.
It's weird where it's going, to say the least. But
that's welcome to the world.
I don't know where it's going. It's going somewhere. I think eventually
we just get I'm waiting for the hovercrafts to come make a comeback.
That's what I want. Hovercrafts were supposed to be cool. I think they said that
in the sixty S. And we've been waiting all this time. It's supposed to be
a flying cars by now. Yes. They
exist for millions. Yeah.
Everybody'S supposed to have one, though. I'll just get a helicopter. Yeah,
they can't beat a helicopter to buy flying cars.
We'll get there. Yeah. All right, man. Well, this has
been entertaining. It has, to say the least. Yes.
Before we get into the sovereign citizen. Stuff, we can add in UFOs and sovereign
citizens next time. Oh, that sounds like a plan. Yeah. So the gearbox will
call it the trash bin. Just all the stuff that shouldn't be talked
about. The round file. Yeah, instead of The X Files.
Thanks for coming in, man. Absolutely.