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My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
Swell AI Transcript: Lee May.mp3
00:00 - 01:29 SPEAKER01 If we ever fix anything, it's that the politics need to stop. If we're going to have incentivized pay plans, then we all need to do better about making it not a political thing. You know, and I'm not talking political like Democrat or Republican. I'm talking about playing the political game within the shop of alliances and it's like high school cliques, right? Everybody should always want to get along. But I mean, if you're competent to do the job and you're the one that sold the job, if you're physically still in the building, you should be the one doing the job. Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another exciting thought-provoking episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast. My name's Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. With me tonight is, I don't want to say, normally I say a young gentleman, but I wouldn't really call Lee a young gentleman, a gentleman nonetheless, but I don't think he's young. I think he's seasoned like myself. So, without further ado, Mr. Lee May. How are you, Lee?
01:29 - 02:37 SPEAKER00 Hey, doing good. Thanks for having me on here. When I found you on Facebook and then sort of listened to your podcast, it kind of opened up, I don't know, another, I guess, some new perspectives for me. It kind of renewed my drive and passion for working on cars a little bit. I think the first car I worked on and got paid for was when I was in high school. I put a muffler on an international scout for one of my dad's, one of my friend's dads. And, you know, I didn't know what I was, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any real equipment. I think I had a few wrenches and a pair of vice grips. I had to use the vice grips to kind of peel the, to peel the old muffler off the old pipe, but got her done. And. So anyway, you know, after, after doing it for that long, it's easy to get tired of it.
02:37 - 02:42 SPEAKER01 So how long, how long is long Lee? Like how long you've been doing this now?
02:42 - 06:06 SPEAKER00 So I am going to be 61 in October and I graduated from high school in 1980. I got my first job in the automotive industry in the fall of 1980. So I went to, I went to trade or not trade school, but I went to auto mechanics class in high school. And. One day they came and showed us this video of Denver diesel and automotive college in Denver. I thought, Hey, you know, that sounds like it might be worth checking out. I had family in Denver, so I'd come out to visit them. the summer between my junior and senior year. And my uncle at the time, him and my aunt took me to the, to the college because of, yeah, my mom was a single mom. My dad passed away when I was in fourth grade and she didn't have a lot of money. So I was able to get some grants and some student loans. And I remember my uncle, he was from Tennessee and he was like, Well, I believe if I was a young man presented with an opportunity like this, I believe I'd go for it. And so I thought, well, you know, I should go for it. So after I graduated from high school, I came out, went to trade school. And when I first got here, I was going to school during the day, or sorry, I was going to school during the afternoons and I was working part-time in the morning. for my uncle doing maintenance on buildings. Uh, I had lost my driver's license when I was still in high school. And so I had to ride my bike around town to the various buildings and stuff. And then, uh, got my driver's license back and the, the real estate company that we, that he worked for. was having some financial difficulties. And he was like, hey, we're all gonna need to find different jobs here in a couple of weeks. So, you know, in old school, you get a paper, you go through the newspaper, you find an ad. The ad I found, they were looking for somebody to help with cleanup and stuff, you know, shag boy type of thing. And it happened to be right up the street from where I was working, which was right near downtown Denver. Uh, if anybody's familiar with Denver, it was an eighth and Bannock and it was an electric car dealership. And so at the time, you know, this is 1980. And at the time what they were doing, they had these Renault, the cars, which was already, you know, a pile of crap. They made it even worse by converting it to electric. So gas motor out older than electric motor to the. to the transaxle. So you had an electric car with a four-speed transmission and a clutch. And then they packed batteries all around the engine. They packed the rear hatch full of batteries. And on a good day, you could get a little over 50 miles out of a full charge.
06:06 - 06:11 SPEAKER01 Right. And then how long would it take to charge it up?
06:11 - 06:13 SPEAKER00 Overnight, it would charge up.
06:13 - 08:28 SPEAKER01 Wow. A Renola car. I remember seeing them So let me think, I was born in 75. I graduated in 94 from high school. And I remember seeing a few LaCars around. And I remember when I moved from Kingston to Ottawa to go to school, to trade school, which is about a two-hour drive. Ottawa is our nation's capital, right? Bigger city. I remember seeing a couple of LaCars still around. And I don't, like, I think we hadn't had a Renault dealer except for the one in Ottawa, within two hours of me, that was the one that was left. I can't ever remember a Renault dealer being in my hometown of Kingston, but I remember when we went to Ottawa, there was still a dealership that I think they serviced Volkswagens, Ladas, and Renault. And I remember seeing Le Carre and I remember going to trade school with a guy that had a friend that had a Le Carre and that's all they talked about is how big a pile of junk a Le Carre is. We'd be sitting there in class and he'd be like, well, that's really just stupid or these are a piece of garbage and he'd stick his hand up and go, is it really as bad as a Renault though? And the guy would go, no. And then I had one of our porters at a dealership that I worked at. He had an old Renault, but I don't think it was a Lecar, I think it was a different model. But he originally, he was from Egypt. So where he was from, it was still like it wasn't all that uncommon, right, for that brand of car. But I remember he needed a brake job and he asked me to look at it one night. And I mean, I just looked at it and it was like, you're never going to be able to fix this we're not going to be able to get the parts that we need which turns out probably wasn't that we could have gotten parts but he was on a limited budget and uh was kind of stingy. So he had other cars. So I think he retired that car and he had like, he had an old front wheel drive Cadillac and he just, you know how some people they just collect like what we as mechanics hate and despise and they just love them. They pick them up for nothing and they think they're the greatest thing ever. He had a whole fleet of stuff.
08:28 - 08:30 SPEAKER00 Whatever car you tell them not to buy, that's what they go buy.
08:31 - 09:14 SPEAKER01 exactly right front-wheel drive like I don't know 1991 Cadillac something I can't remember what it was but I remember it was like a small v8 front-wheel drive and I'm just like his name was Prince and I'm like this thing's turd it leaks every fluid out of it it's like hard to get parts for then right and like so we're talking probably 2002 it was already you know past its usable life of a Cadillac in a, you know, limited budget persons. Yeah, they were junk. So this shop that you went to work at, that was like their own kind of pilot project of doing these conversions on these cars?
09:14 - 11:14 SPEAKER00 No, they were a dealership and there was a company, so they were called Electric Transportation Systems. the people that were building the car, the car was called the electric leopard. And I think the company was just electric leopard and they had a couple other dealerships around the nation. Not too many. When, when I hired on, they didn't have any mechanic at all. And then after I was there for a couple of weeks, they hired a full-time mechanic and he was from Detroit. He had been a. auto shop teacher there in Detroit and moved out to work here. So they sent him to the factory to learn about the cars and stuff like that. They had a couple of used car salesmen that they hired to sell the cars. And I'm not sure why it why they let them do it because they let them do it. And then they decided that they didn't want to do that, but they let the guys, they let these guys go to the auction and buy some used cars. And so they bought some used cars and we had a lot next to our building and they put these cars out there for sale. And so, because the electric cars weren't selling, but at least this way there was money coming in. And then one day the owners decided, no, we don't, that's not what we want to do. We want to sell electric cars. So they, they pretty much fired all the, uh, salesmen, but it was kind of fun because these guys would buy the cars. They would buy were like, you know, since 1980, they bought like a 79 RX seven. They had a nine 11 Porsche and they had, uh, one of the trans ams that, uh, had the, it was like the one with the small V8.
11:16 - 11:18 SPEAKER01 Oh, the 301 or something, I think. Yeah.
11:18 - 12:13 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Yeah. And they had like a 76 that I remember one of the first time, one of the first days that I was at work, uh, the, the owner, he's like, Hey, I need you to run to the bank. And I was like, okay, what do you want me to drive? Oh, he points at the RX seven. Why don't you take that? Like, okay. And I didn't know my way around Denver. We didn't have GPS. So he writes down a note, tell me how to get to where I'm going. And so, yeah, I'm like, right. I'm just, I had grown up in a small town, you know, I'd never even seen an RX-7 before and here I am driving one through Denver. And so that was pretty cool, but it was a lot of fun. Lots of stories about different things that happened at that place.
12:13 - 12:23 SPEAKER01 So how long did you stay at, like, just, so did you kind of get your, like, I can't, I can't see that those cars sold well.
12:23 - 19:36 SPEAKER00 And I can't, I would bet we probably only sold maybe 10 cars the whole time. And I was, so I went to trade school for a year. They had a two-year program if you wanted to do diesel, but I didn't really care about diesel. I wanted to do cars. So I just did the one year for cars. And then after I graduated, probably about, I don't know, maybe a month or two after I graduated, I got a call from the guy that was like, uh, he was a guy from the school, the trade school I'd went to. And he's like, Hey, there. looking for somebody at the Honda dealer up north, you know, I think he'd be a good fit there. And so I talked to my boss, the mechanic that they'd hired at the electric car place. And I told him what had happened. And he's like, you know, I'd go up and talk to him. If it sounds good at all, you should go for it. Cause I don't know how much longer we're going to be around here. And I think he had heard some things that I hadn't heard. Right. And So I went up and interviewed there at the dealership and they hired me and they sold Honda, Volvo and DeLorean. And so I worked there as a apprentice, mostly on Hondas, but their plan was to move me over to the Volvo side when they, cause they were getting ready to open a Volvo dealership next door. And so their plan was they wanted me to move to Volvo. And all the Honda guys were like, no, you need to tell them you want to stay with Honda because the Volvo's are not that great. And the Volvo's we had at that time weren't, in my opinion, they weren't that bad of a car. You know, you had, they had this big heavy cast iron four cylinder engine and it was a pretty, pretty durable engine, pretty durable drivetrain. You had basically four models. You had a two door, a four door, and what they called a five-door, which was a station wagon. And then they had one that was a two-door, but it had a chopped, the roof was kind of chopped. It was done by some Italian company and it had the same V6 in it that the DeLorean had, which was an engine made by Renault. And it just, it wasn't a great engine in my opinion. It was an aluminum block and it had metal sleeves, you know, so if you pulled the heads you had to you had these paper shims had to go under the sleeves to set the height of the Sleeves in there and they didn't make that much power. It's only like 2.7. Yeah, and even in the DeLoreans they didn't make that much power. Yeah, but anyway, I worked there for about eight months or so and and February rolled around and things got really slow and they started laying people off. So I had taken, I had just taken some ASE tests. You know, they came out and they let us know, hey, the ASE tests are coming up. Do you guys want to sign up for any? And I was like, well, yeah, I'll sign up for them. And, you know, at that time there was eight of them and So I was like, well, just there's eight of them. I'll take all eight. And they were like, oh, are you sure you want to do that? Most of the guys, you know, only take one and usually they don't always pass the one. And I felt like I, you know, I spent a year in trade school and every test that they gave us there was geared toward replicating the ASE test. So I'd spent a year doing that stuff. So I think I'll be all right. And they're like, well, if you fail, you got to pay for them. If you pass, we pay for them. I was like, all right, you know, sign me up. So I'd taken the, I'd taken the SE test. And at that time you went in and you sat down and, you know, they had, it was all on paper and they would tell you, okay, now you may take your pencil and break the seal on the test and open. Guys that have been in the industry for a while when I talk about this, they'll, they'll remember. Yeah, I remember that. And so I took the test and one of them was engine performance. And I had learned a lot about carburetors in trade school, but at the dealership, I'd just been through a bunch of classes on fuel injection. And so I wasn't quite sure which one I knew more about. And so you had a choice. You could take the carbureted version or the fuel injected version. And so I went through and kind of just penciled in on both of them until I decided which one I felt better at. I don't remember. I think I went ahead and just did the fuel injected side. Anyway, it doesn't matter. February rolled around. They laid off a bunch of, a bunch of us. They kept the mechanics that were all in flat rate, but pretty much all the guys in the shop that were on hourly were gone. And, uh, so, you know, got the newspaper out, found a shop that was looking for somebody. It was, uh, a place that was an independent and he specialized in imports, uh, Volkswagen, Mercedes, uh, And, you know, Japanese cars, anything imported. We even worked on a few American cars there when it was slow. Somebody wanted their car worked on, we'd do it. And so worked there for probably four or five months. And then the dealership called me and they're like, Hey, we're, you know, we're taking people back. You know, do you want to come in and talk about it? So I was like, yeah. So I went in and talked to Um, they were offering me like a hourly plus commission type of thing. And I was like, you know, I felt like I had a better opportunity there than at this independent. Cause the independent guy was just paying me like a hundred and swimming, like 150 bucks a week in 1980 that you could get by on that. You know, I think the rent on my apartment at the time was maybe 125 a month for a little studio that I had. but the dealer was paying a lot better. And in fact, uh, I had even taken on a part-time job in the evenings to kind of supplement. And that was at a rental car place, just cleaning up, cleaning up, uh, cars and stuff. And I quit that once I got in to the dealer and, um, worked on Honda's there for a while, occasionally worked on a DeLorean. I don't remember too much about them other than, you know, they looked cool and you felt cool driving around in them, but they weren't terribly fast.
19:36 - 19:44 SPEAKER01 Yeah. That's what everybody has talked to me about. Said they weren't like a rocket ship by any performance measurement at all. Right.
19:44 - 20:10 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Very underpowered. Yeah. The owner of the dealer, he had two of them as his personal cars. One of them he had painted a bright yellow. And the other one he had painted, there was a Porsche red that was real popular and he had one painted like that. And he had had some place put twin turbos on one of them. I never got to drive it, but I'm guessing it was probably a little bit faster.
20:10 - 20:13 SPEAKER01 Yeah, substantially better.
20:13 - 21:00 SPEAKER00 Yeah, so they opened up the Volvo store next door. I went over there and when I moved over there, I was on full flat rate. And the money was decent. Uh, but the, the main reason the money was decent was because, uh, we did new car preps and you got paid like two hours for a new car prep that would take you about 20 minutes. It was great on the Honda side because back then, you know, you had to stand in line. There was like a six month waiting list for the Accords. It's like they'd come out with the four door Accord and nobody had ever seen anything like it. You know, this front wheel drive. four-door car, you know, it's usable for a family and stuff and they were just super popular.
21:00 - 21:05 SPEAKER01 So are we talking like towards the end of the 80s about that time frame?
21:05 - 24:17 SPEAKER00 This is like 81, 82. Yeah. Into 83. Yeah. And so then, you know, February rolled around again and it got slow and I had made, you know, I was I was still learning and I'd made a few mistakes, you know, like I was changing a camshaft in this older Volvo and the cams in those, the end of the camshaft, the camshaft, you know, this cast iron machine, the end of it was threaded and it had this big nut that went on the end of it to tighten the gear down. And I put it back together and I was, my plan was, you know, cause you turn the nut and it was like, it would just spin by hand. So I just, I grabbed my impact and I was just gonna, you know, just run it down to take up the slack. And when I did the end of the cam just snapped off and the Volvo master mechanic in the next bay heard it. And he's like, you didn't do what I just think you did. And I mean, he knew cause he had done it himself at some point. You know, and he even said that, he said, yeah, I done one. And I'm like, well, I wish you would have said that earlier. But anyway, I made a few mistakes and I think they had more experienced guys in the shop that were complaining about not getting enough work and stuff. So I got let go there and I went and, you know, again, got the paper out and got a job in a gas station and they paid, I was actually getting paid more per flat rate hour at the gas station. Plus I got, uh, 10% of parts there. You know, it was, it was a little bit different because you didn't have new car preps to get you through, but you also, you had a steady flow work. Um, but we had to do, you know, we had to do all our own estimates and then call the customers. You know, we were, we were like mechanic service, right? Everything. And, you know, after a little while, you got used to it. And I kind of enjoyed talking to customers. And, you know, I didn't know anything about sales. I knew, you know, this CV boot is bad. You know, hey, hey, Mr. Customer, you need a CV boot. You know, what it is and what it does, it keeps the dirt out of the joint and keeps the grease in. You know, I'd explain that, tell them the cost. Most of the time I'd get about halfway through my spiel and they'd be like, well, when can you get it done? Yeah. Cause the area we were in, people were pretty affluent there. And most of the time they were more concerned with how soon can I get my car back and how much it was going to cost. And you got to, it was fun because you got to know a lot of your customers and working in a, in a gas station like that, where you're right on the side of the road. you got used to people just standing there watching you work and stuff. Sometimes it was irritating.
24:17 - 24:22 SPEAKER01 Sometimes, you know. I'm not good with that.
24:22 - 24:23 SPEAKER00 Sometimes people were cool.
24:24 - 24:30 SPEAKER00 Usually if I'd get whizzed and fling a wrench across the shop, they'd usually get the message and back off.
24:31 - 28:45 SPEAKER00 You know, but I mean, and back then, you know, I'd only been in the business a couple of years, so I was still learning and I had a few customers with teach me things, you know, guys that had one guy that he had, uh, an international scout travel and he had grown up on a farm, you know, around stuff. And so every now and then he'd teach me a trick, you know, like, you know, just different tricks for scraping gaskets and things, you know, stuff like that. But, uh, I worked there for a couple of years and I don't, think, I don't really feel like they were treating me all that bad. The working at the environment there, you know, the shop wasn't great. You know, the shop was supposed to have two, it had two heaters and only one work barely. You know, there was no hot water, you know, like they sent us to like two class. I remember I got to go to two classes while I was there. One, the only The biggest takeaway I had from that class, and this will tie into some of the stuff that I've heard you talking about in your podcast, a podcast you were being interviewed on, the guy that was teaching us, was teaching it, was telling us about how to make money on cars. And, you know, cause we were doing our own estimates and we didn't know a lot about markup and stuff. In fact, until this guy gave us the class, I don't remember how I was doing my markups, but he gave us this markup matrix to use. If it costs zero to a hundred, you multiply the cost of the part at 1.45. If it's zero to 10, you double the price. And then as it got over a hundred, you had different multipliers. But the one thing he said that's always stuck with me is he said, when we get in trouble is when we're trying to save our customers money. That's when we get in trouble. So that was a takeaway I got from that class. And then the only other class we went to there, we went to a class on doing struts. I don't even know why I went, cause I kind of knew how to do them already. But I remember, uh, halfway through the class, they had some guys up there using this, they had this old scissors type spring compressor and they're compressing a spring off an old, uh, GM. really big diameter front spring on those things and about halfway through this I see the instructor kind of back off he's like and all of a sudden the spring comes loose and it goes flying up to the ceiling knocks out a window you know an overhead window and so yeah I guess we did learn you know I I knew you were supposed to be careful with Springs yeah but after seeing that I was like yeah I really want to be careful with Springs yeah so anyway worked there for a couple of years. And the guy that I worked with that was the mechanic at the electric car dealership had gone to work for Montgomery Wards Auto Centers. And he's like, Hey, we need somebody at one of our stores. And he told me about the pay plan and everything. And It sounded like a better deal than where I was at because they had benefits, paid vacation and stuff like that. And so, you know, when you're young, you don't, you're not always thinking right and doing right. And I've always felt bad about the way I left that job because I didn't, I didn't tell them that I was leaving until like the day before I left. And I'd known for a couple of weeks. And so I felt bad about that because they really didn't treat me. I mean, they didn't. I wouldn't say that they were great, but they weren't horrible. You know, they just didn't have a lot of benefits. I mean, they didn't have hot water in the shop.
28:45 - 30:08 SPEAKER01 It's funny how, you know, everything that they say, right, like they'd say how everything that was old is new again. because now we're, we're talking, we're, you're seeing more and more of the conversation come up about how, you know, people want there. It's, it's something that they'll work for less money on their flat rate hour, their hourly pay, whatever it is for better benefits. Right. In terms of a retirement and a dental and a medical and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I've talked so many times before, because it's like up here in Canada, we have such a really, good healthcare system in terms of there's a lot that's covered just, you know, from free healthcare, we call it. It's not really free. We're taxed heavy for it. But, you know, it's something that even now, in my 30s, I didn't even think about it. Didn't even care. It was not, you know, it was just like, you know, my biggest thing was like dental. That was the expense. It wasn't, you know, we're very lucky if you go and have a child or, you know, Like if you ride in the ambulance for to go to the hospital, you don't pay for that. You know what I mean? Like if you have anything like I've, I've gotten, you know, I've cut my head, my head at work underneath the truck, had to go to emergency for stitches, never had to pay for that. You know what I mean?
30:08 - 30:25 SPEAKER00 We're very lucky up here in that regard, but it's, and so we hear down here, we hear horror stories. about healthcare in Canada. I don't know if it's true or not, because they're like, you know, somebody needs a knee replaced, they got to wait, you know, a year or something to get it done, because they're so busy with stuff.
30:25 - 33:24 SPEAKER01 Yeah, it's because, because of the fact that it's government kind of monitored and government controlled, I guess there is some disadvantages, because it's not as financially maybe as lucrative. So nurses and doctors for a long time were going to the U.S. to work because it was just, they'd come away with, by the time they got their university done to become a doctor, they were all probably almost a quarter of a million dollars in university fees, and education was expensive. where they could go in five years working in the U.S., pay that off. Up here, their pay rate, it might take 10 years to pay that off. So, the U.S. was poaching a lot of our doctors and nurses for a long, long time. And there is a huge, like, if you need a shoulder, you know, surgery, knee, hip, all that kind of stuff, you're waiting at least a year, for sure, up here, because there's just it's such a backlog. And then when we had COVID, so many surgeries were deemed non essential elective. So there's this huge backlog that they're still trying to get through of people that, you know, were scheduled to have a knee done or something like that, a hip replacement. And when COVID came through and they pretty much just about shut the hospitals down for all that, it just added to the backlog. I'll say that about the healthcare, there's pluses and minuses, but getting back to it. It's funny how you're talking in the mid-80s, you had the foresight to go, I want to go somewhere that has a benefits plan to work versus just whatever I'm getting paid flat rate hour. That's kind of interesting. It makes me laugh how you were talking about how You know, there's not enough hours in the shop in February, so they, you know, let you go again. Like, some things just never change, right? Like, it's always, you see it that way every year. Like, in October, you can, the same five shops around my area will run an ad looking for a young person to hire to do tires. And then that same person is laid off in January, February. And then they might try and find another one in April when tires start to ramp up again for, you know, taking snows off. And it just goes on and on and on like that every year. And I mean, I know for, for me, for all those years, working a dealer, February was always so slow, right? February, March, slow, not, you didn't make a whole lot of money, but so how was that like, because I want to say Honda was not big back then the way Honda is now. So did you ever find like, cause you started out in kind of what I would call different brands for what a lot of people would have started out on in your time, right? Like you, you didn't really do a mess.
33:24 - 37:41 SPEAKER00 Yeah. I mean, Honda's were just starting to get popular. And, uh, one of the big repeat failures really, they were really pretty good cars. We did a lot of breaks. Uh, CV, boots, stuff like that, clutches. The engines were pretty bulletproof. You know, if you change your oil regularly, they'd last forever. One of the biggest pattern failure I remember on them was, so they had the CVCC engine at the time. And just real quick, basically you had your regular intake and exhaust valve. And then you had a little tiny, maybe about the size of the diameter of your pinky, another intake valve. And that led in a rich 12 to one fuel mixture right near the spark plug in a, but they, they called it like vortex chamber or something, but it led a real rich mixture in there. And then in the combustion chamber, you had a really lean mixture. I want to say 24 to one, but don't hold me to that. And so the pattern failures we saw, one was for some reason they would foul and crack the insulator on the number three spark plug. And I remember, you know, one of the first times I saw one of those, the service writer, you know, he was a good guy, had some knowledge about cars and he's like, okay, this car is running on three cylinders. Most of the time what we see is it's a number three cylinder and you got to pull the plug out and you got to clean it, show us there's a crack, and then we can, then we can warranty it. They won't warranty it if it's not cracked. It's just fouled. We clean it and put them back in. And so did quite a bit of those. And then the other one was they used, so the carburetor had two float bowls. It had one float bowl for the little. for the little primary vortex, and then another one for your two main barrels. And they used a plastic float and they would leak fuel, dump fuel. And to remove a carburetor off of one of those things was a nightmare because there was about a thousand vacuum lines going to it. But the guys in the dealer, you know, they, they had learned that you can just pop the lid off of it without pulling the whole carburetor. And so, you know, they, they showed me how to do it. You know, I don't know. I think we got paid like seven tens for it, you know? So it was doing, it was doing a lot of those. And then we did a lot of, uh, AC installations, cruise control installations, and, When I was an apprentice, the flat rate guys loved it because, you know, during like from eight to five, we'd do just the regular repairs, 30,000 mile services, oil changes, warranty work. And then from six to nine, it was all, it was all new car preps, installing AC, installing crews. And I mean, it was just like, like a feeding frenzy. And the flat rate guys liked me because I could work on the AC stuff with them. I could be out under the hood putting the compressor on while they were putting the evaporator and stuff under the dash, you know, and we'd get the job done in half the time. But they claimed the whole thing, so it was our own. So at Honda, that was the kind of stuff I saw there. But I remember like at the end of the night, There'd be so much trash boxes and stuff on the floor. You had like a path into the shop to get the cars into the bays. And then we'd pull the cars out, roll a dumpster in, and one guy would stand in the dumpster and just jump up and down while we're throwing boxes in. And every time we'd get a couple carloads of new cars in, that's the way it was.
37:42 - 37:55 SPEAKER01 Wow. Cause those cars didn't come with, with AC as an option or, or a cruise. Right. So a lot back, most of the time you had to add it on. Wow.
37:55 - 41:34 SPEAKER00 So then when I got out working in independence, I worked on all kinds of stuff. And when I worked at Montgomery wards, you know, then it was mostly American cars and we got, I remember. They charge $75 for a brake job at every brake job we did there. They wanted you to rebuild the calipers and rebuild the wheel cylinders. And, you know, and really back then it wasn't that big a deal because you had, you know, you might get a Toyota or Honda or something like that. And it was a little bit different. And maybe not every one of those got everything rebuilt, but on, you know, most of what, most of what you did was GM Ford and Chrysler. And, you know, you, you knew those and AMC, you know, their brakes were very similar to one of the other makes. And so, you know, your goal, you'd get the rotors off, get them on the, on the lane and get them turned. And then your goal was to have. to have your calipers rebuilt and your wheel cylinders rebuilt and your brake shoes hung and everything. By the time your drums and your rotors were done turning, then you can slap it back together, you know? And even though, yeah, it didn't sound like they were charging a lot, we made decent money at it. Not great. I kind of got tired of the massive brake fluids and stuff. I told them, I want to do more tune-up work. And so they just started feeding me more tune-up work and we had gotten the Bear Ace engine analyzer. I don't know if you ever, it was very, it was, anyway, it was a good machine for its time. You did a really comprehensive engine analysis for the cars that we worked on. And the one thing that machine did, the Allen SmartScope did it, and it bugs me, we've got a Verus, a Snap-on Verus, and I'm like, why could they not have programmed this into the Snap-on Verus? But the Bear Ace and the Allen SmartScope, they did a cranking compression test. And so you would, you would enter the car you're working on and it would know the firing order. And, you know, you had hooked up to number one, hooked up to the coil. And if you had a dead cylinder, you know, no compression in the cylinder, you know, it would catch it on that cranking compression test. And it would even tell you, you know, cylinder number four. or five, you know, check for low compression. And so we've got a snap-on Varis, which has scope capabilities, and we use it. Neither me or Bob that works in the shop with me are, like, masters of it, but, you know, we can certainly look at some scope patterns and stuff. But when we want to do a cranking compression test, it's, like, We have to go in and figure out, you know, the right way to scale the screen out to get it to read right. And I'm like, you know, they could very easily, they did this back in the mid 80s, you know, a snap on or whoever's writing their software, you know, would it be that big a deal to, it wouldn't even have to, you wouldn't even have to enter, have it where it would know the firing order of the car because nowadays your OBD2 code is going to tell you cylinder number three misfire. And if you did that, if you did that crank compression and you saw there was one dead hole, you know, you'd be like, okay, we're going to be dealing with more than just a coil and a plug.
41:34 - 42:23 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. And you see it in the software. I see it like if I'm going in on the OE side, especially because like I work on a pile of Fords, they've got their relative compression or relative yeah. Cylinder balance, relative compression tests, and you can follow it, but it's still not giving you. How do I say that? It's still, I've seen them be wrong sometimes, I guess let's put it that way, right? And I mean, Ford were notorious for flagging the wrong cylinder for what was actually misfiring. I used to do that. I think they've gotten better now, but I mean, it's amazing still how many, when you talk to guys and it's like the new way of, I mean, when I was going through school, I never had a teacher tell me to just like put it in clear flood mode and crank it and listen to it. You know what I mean? I never had a teacher tell me to do that.
42:23 - 42:40 SPEAKER00 We would be going through the whole process and that's so now put it put it in clear flood mode and listen to it Yeah, so clear flood mode. You're killing the injectors cranking the engine. Yeah, and he's he's saying that like you could hear maybe a miss in the cranking.
42:40 - 42:54 SPEAKER01 Yeah, like if the cylinder was low in contribution, right, it's going to wind up ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, like you can hear the difference in the RPM speed because it's pulling essentially a cylinder that's low, right?
42:54 - 42:57 SPEAKER00 Yeah, well, see, you taught me something.
42:57 - 43:33 SPEAKER01 I've never heard that before. I've only really started to use it as a diagnostic tool because I wish I'd have known so much of that when I was back in the dealership days. If you'd have done more of that, you only had so little time to do your diet, like we were talking about. And, you know, the customer's only got a bit of like a $400 budget and you're not going to do a valve job or, you know, whatever for 400 bucks, your diet is done. At that point, the customer's not really concerned. You just don't have to waste time putting a plug in it or selling them a tune up or, you know, wondering about an injector it's.
43:33 - 43:38 SPEAKER00 Yeah, waste your time or their money and then have them pissed because it still isn't running right.
43:38 - 44:09 SPEAKER01 Because I mean, you think like back in the day, everything to do a compression test was, you know, relatively easy to access most of the spark plugs, right? But now when you think about like pulling plugs out of stuff, it's like guys that pull oxygen sensors out to check for back pressure, right? You might as well throw that O2 out in the trash because, you know, when you take it out of the pipe, you know, how many wind up with stripped threads and stuff like that, like it just happens, it's just, you know, they're not meant to be.
44:09 - 44:14 SPEAKER00 Yeah, you smack it hard trying to break it loose and it doesn't work anymore.
44:14 - 44:33 SPEAKER01 You get a heater that fails after that. So, yeah, I mean, I'm the same as you, I sometimes look at when I've got a scan tool and it frustrates me because it's like, you know, one soft, one brand will have all this different software capability and the next brand will have nothing, you know, Nissan driving that way.
44:33 - 44:50 SPEAKER00 Now the Varis does have a lot of like tests, you know, the, you can go in and you can find a known, what a known good way of form looks like for this particular sensor. And it'll tell you how to set it up. But I'm like, would it have killed you to add a cranking compression in there?
44:51 - 45:50 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I've, I've predominantly only ever used either an OE scan tool when I was at my dealership days or a snap on. So I've, I've had the old snap on the MT2500, the red brick that everybody loves so much. And, um, I had a, I still have a Vantage and I still have a Solus. And then I just bought a Zeus just about a year ago. Not a Zeus plus, just a Zeus. I bought it used. great tool. I don't use it to the full capacity. A lot of what I do, I don't have to grab a scope, but I've seen the old, you know, everybody talks about the suns and the bears and the, you know, that, that old Allen scope and everybody, you know, a lot of guys really still, you know, have fond memories of that thing because it was, you know, for its time, it was a very valuable tool, right? Like it wasn't cheap, but what it could give you for information was, you know, very important stuff.
45:58 - 47:07 SPEAKER00 I was starting a story and I'll finish it real quick. Okay. Old Pontiac Sunbird, water pump driven off the timing belt. The water pump is what you use to tension the timing belt. And it came in. I'm like, I know this thing's out of time, but the timing marks are all lined up. So I pulled the valve cover off and I look at the valves and where the cam is and I'm like, this thing's not in time according to where the valves are. So I pulled the pulley off the cam and what had happened is someone had tried to do a timing belt on it and instead of using the water pump, They tried to just kind of muscle the cam gear onto the end of the cam while the belt was under tension. And they lost the key that holds the⦠And so I put a key in there, got the engine timed, got it running, and the guy was happy. And that guy followed me to three different shops. I'd leave one shop and go somewhere else. Somehow he'd figure out where I was. He'd find me and he'd show up there.
47:07 - 49:09 SPEAKER01 There's lots of us in the industry that have stories like that, right? Where the customer follows you. And I mean, when we talk about the little things that you do sometimes, when they say, oh, you made a customer for life. I don't think it happens as much now. Cause I just think of the way the demographic has gone with how people kind of treat cars and, and you know, they think that everything is so, and, and to be fair, right. If you work in a dealership, that customer may just decide they don't want another Chrysler, right. And they might really like you, but you're going to go buy a Toyota. Right. But when I, I enjoy that from the independent side, because even now I still have some customers that, uh, I know if I was to leave tomorrow, they would probably follow me to where I go because, you know, you just do little things for them or you, you know, it's just in how you approach the job sometimes. And they really appreciate that because they feel like it's like you know, you have a relationship with their car. Like that's the thing everybody sometimes I think it's like, you know, you have a relationship with the customer. Sure you do. But what, what they really like is the fact that you're familiar with their vehicle, right? Their vehicle is very familiar to you, the little quirks and, you know, and I mean, it's like we joke, like, you know, every front wheel drive GM starts to seem the same after a while, right? It's just whether it's got a, you know, a two, like an Ecotech that needs change or a 3.6 that needs change. Otherwise, you're driving around the same thing. But I have customers that have both and it's like, they're very comfortable with the fact that you, you know, you've done the big repair on the car. So they feel like you have this innate understanding of their car. Really, it's just I have an understanding of that model. But to them, you know, you're specialized, it's it's a it's a neat thing. They I've got some great customers, they'll buy me like, they get your Christmas cards, or they buy a bottle of rye for Christmas time or something like that. It just makes you feel really good. It's not just about the money at that point. Right. So
49:10 - 49:28 SPEAKER00 Uh, this is, this is as much a people business as it is anything else. You know, I've always said like the people, my customers, the people that you have that relationship with, like you were just talking about, that's what keeps you going as much as the money or anything else.
49:28 - 50:30 SPEAKER01 I've said it more than once when I was at the dealership. This would be a great industry fixing cars if it wasn't for the customers, right? But I mean, it just depends on their dynamic, right? When we were talking earlier, customers would stand there and watch you. When I was flat rated a dealer, that was like I would go sit out in the waiting room if the customer was trying to sit because my bay was right next to the doors that would go through to go to the parts department. So they used to be able to walk down the hallway and stand outside in front of the parts door and see through the window and watch what I was doing. If I saw a customer doing that, I would go get the advisor and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm not a zoo animal. Like they can't stand there and watch me. It's, you know, and the advisor go, okay, I'll get them in a minute. And he never would. Well, I would go sit in the waiting room and read the newspaper in my uniform. Cause as soon as the service manager saw me do that, then he'd go and get the customer moved. Right. Cause he realized I'm paying him to read a newspaper, like, and it, whereas now in the
50:32 - 50:49 SPEAKER00 You know, working, sorry, working in gas stations, you were, you were just always on display because you know, the bay doors were open, people were running around and you just, I don't know, I guess got used to it. It wasn't always your favorite thing, especially if things weren't going right.
50:49 - 51:34 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, like I always, if I was flat rate, I wanted to be as fast as possible. I didn't want to be stopping to answer questions that they would have as to why I was doing it. Or, you know, if they, like you talk about a muffler, if they saw sometimes how you pound a muffler on, you know what I mean? Or you heat the end of the muffler up to slide over the pipe, the customer would come unglued. They'd be like, oh my God, he heated my brand new part. Or, oh my God, he hit it with a hammer. What you don't know sometimes is, you know, It's best for them. But, and I'm not trying to say we did anything shady, but you know how it goes. Sometimes it looks to the layman, it looks like we're, you know, executing violence on their vehicle. Reality is we're just getting comfortable with it. That's just how it has to go. You know?
51:34 - 51:38 SPEAKER00 Like when you're at the dentist getting your tooth pulled or something. That's right.
51:38 - 52:25 SPEAKER01 Yeah. You don't want to hear the noises that it's making. That's why the dentist is talking to you. You don't want to hear the noises that's going on in your mouth, you know, as he's breaking your tooth out. But I never liked being watched. But as I've got to know my customers better in this job, I don't mind. They'll stand there and talk to me the whole day or the whole two hours or whatever. I don't mind because I know they're not judging me. They're appreciative. Whereas when I was flat rate, I felt like they were judging. You know what I mean? They were going to be critiquing. I'm sorry. I'm not here to give you a lesson. If you think you can do it better, you know, I'll drive it outside for you. You can take it home. You can do it yourself. Like I don't, I didn't always have the best attitude. So, but that, so that customer followed you for the rest of it.
52:25 - 54:14 SPEAKER00 Followed me to three, three different shops. And I think the only way that When he finally quit following me was when he moved to a different state or something, you know, and he told me, Hey, you won't be seeing me anymore. I'm moving out of state. And I think he's like, do you want to, do you want to move to Oregon? I don't know where I'm going to stay here. So, uh, worked at that gas station for a while, worked at wards. for some reason, after I'd been at wards for a couple of years, I decided that I wanted something better. And so, you know, like maybe something where I was, I don't know, I could feel better. I feel like I was more important or smarter guy or something, a specialist. And so I went back to work for the guy that had the import place. And I worked there for about six months and I realized that everything, some of the stuff he was doing, I didn't necessarily agree with. Like one time I worked on a car and I couldn't figure out why, what was wrong with this lady's horn, why it would go off sometimes for no reason, you know, and I, you know, I'd kind of, I'd taken some stuff apart, but you know, I couldn't duplicate it or anything. And I, I told the guy, I was like, you know, I can't, I don't know what's wrong with it. And so he charged her, he charged her three hours for repairing the horn. And I was like, what the heck? He's like, well, she's no matter what, she's going to come back and we're going to have to fix it for free anyway. So I'm just going to charge her now. So I mean, I guess on one hand, you know, you could understand, but it just wasn't the way I would've wanted to do it.
54:15 - 55:30 SPEAKER00 And just a few, like, One time we had a, uh, this guy had a BMW, like a seven series BMW. It was fairly new car, but they used these old ceramic, you know, as the ones that use the ceramic fuses, like they used to use in the air, cool VWs and they would corrode and stuff. And, uh, I had found a bunch of fuses in the fuse box corroded, like on the, like for the fuel pump and, you know, important stuff like that, cleaned them all up and. I told the owner, I was like, I clean these fuses up. I think that's probably all that's wrong with it. And he's like, all right, we'll drive it around for a day or two and see how it does. Because we knew the guy was out of town. So the owner takes the guy's car, drives up to Vail for the weekend. And Monday morning, the guy comes in. He's like, hey, here, pick up my car. And where is it? And I know the owner is up in Vail with the guy's car. And right about then, the owner calls in. And so I was like, oh, hey, George, the guy that owns the BMW wants to talk to you. And I just handed the phone to the customer and let him deal with it.
55:30 - 55:34 SPEAKER01 Yeah, he's a joyride in the seven series for the weekend. Yeah.
55:34 - 56:22 SPEAKER00 Yeah. But anyway, I left there and got a job back at another gas station. And it was it was a pretty good one to work at. There were there was a dad and two brothers and his dad and his two sons that owned it. And they were good people to work for. There was another mechanic in there that had been with him for quite a while. He was good, he was fast, he was smart. I learned stuff from him. He could pull in like an old Oldsmobile or something, pull the quadrajet off, throw it, take it apart, throw it in the tank, string new plugs, wires, cap and rotor on it, and rebuild the carburetor. And he could do like three of those in a day.
56:22 - 56:23 SPEAKER03 Like it was⦠Wow. Yeah.
56:25 - 56:54 SPEAKER00 And, uh, he ended up having to move back to New York to help his, to run his family. His family had a printing business back there and his brother had gotten hurt and they needed him. So that's why he left and I ended up there by myself. But one thing that happened there, see, I graduated from trade school in like 81 and then about 82, 83, they started coming out with, uh, uh, GMs with check engine lights.
56:55 - 01:08:20 SPEAKER00 And, you know, codes and stuff. And I hadn't learned anything about that. And then they started, you know, fuel injection and stuff. And so one good thing that happened at that place, we'd gotten an Allen smart scope and because the owner had bought that, uh, it came with some training and went to three, a three night class. And they gave us this book on GM cars, the fuel injection, and it had the old trouble shooting things, you know, if this go here, if that go there. And I learned some stuff in the class. And then with that book, I was able to apply it. And I really started learning how to kind of test some of this newer stuff because I hadn't had much experience on it at the time. So that was a like a breakthrough for me, I guess, you know, it kind of opened my eyes on, you know, the testing and stuff. And, uh, let's see, they sold their business. They had a big lawsuit with Exxon and settled out of court for a bunch of money. And so I had to get another job. And I decided that I wanted to try my hand at being like a service writer or a service manager. So there was a Goodyear store up in Boulder, and they were advertising for a service writer. And I went and applied and got the job. And I'm like, this is cool, man. Nice family operation. The way they paid their tax was everybody got a percentage of what the shop did. I think some of the more experienced guys got a little higher percentage and less experienced got a lower percentage. But they had questionable ethics. You know, they, like, I usually wouldn't recommend brakes unless they were like, you know, almost on the indicator or close, but these guys, if they were even half worn out, you know, new brakes and rotors. And like, if a car had more than 60,000 miles on it, new struts, they got 60,000 on their original, you know, and. Like, I mean, you know the story, every car that comes in needs $1,000 worth of work. And so I wasn't super happy there. And again, February rolled around, it got slow. And he, he laid me off and Cause he had two service writers and he laid me off and kept the other guy. And then he's like, Hey, you know, if you want, you can collect unemployment and you can go up to Estes park and work in my son-in-law's shop for a while up there until we need you back. And I was like, I don't want to drive all the way. Cause it's like an hour and a half on mountain roads to get to park from Denver. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. So. There was a Goodyear store about two miles from our house, and I went and applied there, and they hired me. And it was a company-owned store. And I don't know what the Goodyear corporate stores are like now, but it was really a pretty decent place to work. I had good managers there, and I had bad managers there. Goodyear as a whole, I liked because you had some benefits, you had 401k, you know, you had healthcare, you had paid time off. Like every year at Thanksgiving, we got a basket with a turkey and a ham and a bunch of cool stuff in it. And they also, we're getting that alert again. Oh, success. They also had training. And so the Goodyear company had training centers around the country, and they would fly you out to one of their training centers for a week of classes. Wow, a whole week. Yeah. And what they would do, they'd have a training center. It was like an old shop. And you'd have a classroom. You'd have some classroom time. And then they'd bring in cars from used car dealerships and then we'd actually work on them there. And so, you know, that part was good. We had a few, there were like some district managers there that were doing some kind of shady things. They were promoting guys that maybe didn't have a lot of experience, but for whatever reason, the guy liked them and they got promoted over guys that had been there for a while. And so that was kind of weird when that was going on. But at the end, when, when I left there, the managers we had, uh, the one guy that was a store manager at the time, a guy named Greg, uh, he had started out at Goodyear about the same time as me. He started out fresh out of college as a tire salesman, worked his way up and was very successful with the company. Uh, was a good manager, very level headed. The service manager that we had at the time had been a mechanic and his name was Warren and he was a good guy. I stayed in touch with him on Facebook. But he was, he was a good manager. He taught me a lot of tricks about doing things faster and smarter, some shortcuts. And cause he was like, they would at Goodyear, you know, every month they'd put out a thing about the top performing techs. Right. And like, I would always, I would almost always be in the top 10 in our district. Warren was always like in the top three or top five, you know, Once in a while I might break into the top, I think the highest I ever got maybe was like the top two guy in the district for a month. But the reason I left there was because I got offered the job that I'm at now and that was I've been where I'm at now for a little over 20 years. And I work for Faith Bible Chapel and we have a church and a school. And so we've got a fleet of buses that we use from the school. It's not a big fleet. We have five full-size buses and three type A non-CDL buses. And the guy that hired me there, he had been working He had done a little of everything before he started at the church and became the transportation director, which is what I'm doing now. But he worked on people's cars on the side and stuff. And so when he was there, he was working on cars for the teachers and the church employees once in a while. And we were in a men's prayer group together, just randomly ended up in the same group and found out I was a mechanic. And so he had me coming in. At Goodyear, I worked every Saturday, had a weekday off. And I'd come in once in a while on my day off, and he'd have a couple of jobs lined up for me. And then at a certain point, he offered me a full-time job. that sounded, you know, it wasn't that I was being treated bad at Goodyear or anything, but this is just a better opportunity because I was going to have a job that was Monday through Friday. I was going to be on salary. Had benefits that were, you know, similar to the benefits I had at Goodyear. And then I'd also have paid like 10, I think it was like 10, we get like 10 paid days off a year for holidays. And they were, you know, my boys were both still in school at the time. And so I'd be off when they were off. And that was, you know, that was important to me at the time, still is. And uh they were going to school there and so I got a little bit of a break on tuition you know so that helped and so started there and been working there ever since eventually I got my uh CDL and uh so I'll do a little bit of everything from you know, working on cars, to working on the schedule for bus trips. About seven years ago, the guy that was the transportation director there left and they offered me the position and I felt like I was ready for it and took it on. And so, you know, I can sympathize with shop owners that, and I'm not under the same types of pressure that a shop owner is under, but it's like, you want to be out in the shop working on stuff, but yet you have stuff in the office that you need to take care of. And the guy, we've got another mechanic there, Bob and he's he's a rock star. I mean he can he can fabricate he can well he used to be a pipe fitter He can weld like nobody's business, fabricate stuff. You know, he can, he can build a rack for something. Uh, he can, you know, like one of the, we also work on lawn mowing equipment for the church, you know, frame on a lawnmower gets bad, broke, bad. He can weld it up. And then I've seen him take, like we had a mini Cooper that was in the shop one time and, uh, the relay for the fuel pump. It's just like what Ford used to do. They put the relay for the fuel pump inside of a fuse box. And so it's inside this, on this Mini Cooper, it's inside this big module thing. And it's not bad enough that they soldered into the circuit board. and didn't use a great solder joint. But on the Fords, you know, it's just like a flat circuit board. But on this one, it's two circuit boards that are sandwiched together. And they've got all these little joints all the way around that are soldered together. Bob took this thing and unsoldered each one of those joints, separated the two boards, went in there, re-soldered the relay on the board. He might have replaced it. Either way, either re-soldered it or replaced it, put it all back together, and it worked. We told the people, you know, these Mini Coopers are junk. You really need to get rid of it. And they did, but they kept it, they drove it for about a year after that and it ran. So he's just a rock star with stuff. We're really fortunate to have somebody like that working with us.
01:08:20 - 01:11:46 SPEAKER01 I've always been jealous of people that can really fab really well, because I mean, it's not my strong suit, I can do it, but I'm slow at it, right? And I mean, I never did so much welding. And until I got this job where I'm at like four years ago, because of the dealer, you hardly welded anything. Right. And now I'm constantly like, you know, you've all seen probably by now how when bolts are broken off for an exhaust manifold, right? How bolts down in the head, right? And somebody. welds a nut to the end of the stud, right, to take it out. And I was at my friend's shop the other night after work, and he works in a Hino truck shop, and diesels, right, they break turbo manifolds all the time, and the bolts break off, they just don't come out. And he's gotten pretty good at drilling them, but like the way this bracket was going above the engine, he couldn't get on a very good way to drill it. And he's like, I'm like, You're going to try and drill that?" I said, why? It's right out front. You can weld so good to that. He's like, oh, I never have any luck doing that. I'm like, here, give me your welder. So I'm not even working there, right? But I've helped them out with a couple other jobs going by after work and just, you know, because if they get something and it's gas, they kind of struggle with it. And I'll come over and be like, oh, watch this. So anyway, I get the welder out and I just literally like, build the, build the, it's broken down in the hole. Well, I built this thing up till it was coming up over above the hole and then said here, put a nut on it. So I had to go before he was done, but he sent me a picture of it today. He got it out just by. You know, so I literally taught him how to do it. And he's like, nice. I don't think I'm ever going to drill one again. I'm like, I never drill one. I said, I can't remember the last time I have. So, you know, you just keep the welder. So I'm jealous of guys that are really good at fabbing because you know, it's like, even like we have a bus fleet at my shop and they have these steps on their transit buses, transit for transits. And they have these steps that we've put on to, go into the passenger side sliding door. And everybody in the shop has built a step for these. So they're all different. There isn't one set of, you know, blueprints and measurements. They're all different. They all have way different like they all, you know, and they're constantly breaking. and because they're the only, we're putting on like essentially a step that weighs three times as much as the original tube onto the same brackets. So they're breaking the bracket all the time, right? So I'm looking at these going, oh man, like they're built so wrong, like they're not built strong enough. And even like you start to look at it and it's like, well, all the weight is right here, yet all the support on the step is like in the wrong spot. And you start to think like, well, Well, how would I have built that? And then you realize, like, I would have built it every so much different, right, than how they've ever done it. But that's why I'm envious of people that are just have that natural knack to be able to look at it. And they whip up something that's just phenomenal and strong and durable and efficient, the whole thing. Like, I don't have that. I'm developing it. But, you know, I've worked with guys that could just you know, eyeball it, walk over, make a few cuts, while they walk over and it fits perfect and you're just like, how did you do that?
01:11:48 - 01:11:50 SPEAKER00 I can't weld, I can't weld to save my life.
01:11:50 - 01:13:13 SPEAKER01 Yeah, no, I'm not, I can't do pretty welds, but I mean I can like, if I have to weld a patch in a body panel, I can do it. I'll need a lot of bondo to cover it up, but it'll be done. Nice. And I've welded a lot of exhaust system now in the last couple years, because up here you buy like an aftermarket piece of exhaust, it only lasts like two years, and it's just junk, it rots away so fast. So, we get a lot of flanges that are leaking. So, now, I almost never change the pipe. I'll cut the flange out and just weld another flange in. And because it's such a better repair because the factory pipe is so good. Whereas, if you buy it from Walker or something like that, it just, the stuff just, I don't know if it's galvanized different or what, but it just, it's terrible. It falls apart inside of two years and then you're forever. you know, excuse me, fixing the exhaust system every two years for this customer and you don't, you're not showing them value that way. Right. Whereas if I'd rather spend three hours, weld in a resonator and a flange and have it last three more years without having to touch it versus another year and a half having the flange, you know, the pipe broke off again. And then you're farting around trying to, you know, you lost the muffler cause it's laying in the ditch somewhere and it just. Yeah. Not my, not my scene. I'd rather weld it.
01:13:13 - 01:13:54 SPEAKER00 It's like whenever, whenever we do timing belts, if it's something, if, if we do a timing belt, like on a, on a Japanese or Korean car or something, we'll get, you know, we may get the timing belt component kit from Gates, but we make sure we get the one that has Japanese bearings and the water pump unless like once in a while we'll get a Asian kit, you know, the Asian brand. Yeah. We'll use one of their kits, but otherwise we'll just go to the dealer for the water pump because the aftermarket pumps, they last about 30,000 miles. And when we do a timing belt on something, we don't want to have to go back in there for another 100, 110, whatever the service interval is. We don't want to have to go back in there for anything.
01:13:54 - 01:14:30 SPEAKER01 Nope. No, totally. And that's, you know, we talk all the time in the group and you see people about, is there really a right way and a wrong way to do something? And I mean, There's always room for, you know, wiggle room in terms of sometimes the customer's budget or availability or whatever, right? But I mean, I've worked with countless guys and it's like, you know, they would change a water pump on something and the belt that they took off was all dried and cracked. And they'd put the belt right back on again. And I'm looking at that going, why are you doing that? Well, they're not paying for a belt, you know, labor. They're just paying for a water pump. And I'm like, that builds.
01:14:30 - 01:14:32 SPEAKER00 They probably would if you asked them to.
01:14:32 - 01:14:43 SPEAKER01 That belt's the reason the water pump failed, right? That's why the thing has got shitty bearings in it. Now it's sideloaded all the, you know, stuff like that.
01:14:43 - 01:14:46 SPEAKER00 Tighten the alternator up as tight as it'd go to get it to stop squealing. Yeah.
01:14:47 - 01:16:25 SPEAKER01 Right? It just, stuff like that is always, it's just like, can we just do it right, you know, the first time and then not have to go back in? Because it, you know, and that's, we talk about process, right? And you always have the customer comes in and it's like, well, this estimate from this place is less than yours. or you know you you guys always seem to be wanting to install more parts i just want to do it one time you know what i mean that's it like it's the same as brakes i catch a lot of flack because i probably change more calipers than than a lot of people do but up here like if that car is 10 years old and that's the original caliper it's not gonna you know probably last two more years on that brake job. So then you have a situation where the customer, the caliper locks up, it's, you know, overheats the rotor, burns the pads right off. What do you do then? You put one new rotor on? Like, that's just, to me, so you're redoing the whole job. You're making a warranty claim. I don't want to do that. If I look at it and it's like the saddle is all grungy, the pins, it's the same as by the time you buy pins, boots, and do the labor to get the saddle where it should be clean for the brake pad, if you look, you can buy a caliper for probably just about the same price as what you're going to do. Now they've gotten so cheap. Now I understand sometimes that the quality is not there for some of the aftermarket rebuilt stuff. I get it. But you kind of have to know your, you know, like our Ford Transits, we get them, they're three years old and the rear caliper sees right up the parking brake side of it.
01:16:25 - 01:16:29 SPEAKER00 And it's just like⦠Isn't there something weird about the rear brakes on those?
01:16:29 - 01:17:29 SPEAKER01 So, yeah, they've got like an outboard hub or like a trapped rotor essentially, they call it trap, but it's not really, but the bolts go through the hub to hold the rotor on. So everybody at first was like taking the hub off and pounding the rotor off and you don't have to, you just take the bolts that go through. that grab the rotor and then you just pound the rotor back away from the hub and spin it and it'll slide off the hub and you don't have to undo your bearing and you don't have to undo your hub because once you take that bearing apart and slide the hub off, they always leak after. It does not matter. You can change the seal, you can put a forward seal. There's just something about getting it to where it'll stop leaking, they always leak. And they, in defense of us, I've had them when they're under warranty and we've had to send them to the dealer because they have like 30,000 miles on it and the rear hubs are leaking oil. So it's just a poor design. But yeah, transits are, I hate transits.
01:17:29 - 01:17:40 SPEAKER00 I hate. After hearing like, I heard your horror story about the catalytic converters. Yeah. I'm like, okay, I'm sticking with GM chassis for our small buses.
01:17:41 - 01:18:00 SPEAKER01 Yeah, it's, um, I mean, it's a comfortable bus to ride in. And I mean, considering they get pretty good fuel mileage, our guys idle them nonstop. Like almost our idle time is what kills us. Oh, it's, they never shut them off. They started them up for probably seven in the morning and they don't shut them off until five that night.
01:18:00 - 01:18:02 SPEAKER00 Do they have V6s?
01:18:02 - 01:18:54 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. Three fives and three sevens. I think we have one, three, five and almost, I think the rest is all the twin turbo. Um, and we even, we just picked up a used one there a couple of months ago and we got an all wheel drive unit. And that one, when the cats come, if it needs cats, it's going to have to go to the dealer. Cause like the all wheel drive unit is right up underneath the oil pan and the trans like you might as well drop the subframe just to take the transmission pan out. It's terrible. Like it's awful. So, I mean, it's. You know, and when they rust so bad, like I was talking about that one, just to get the subframe down, the bolts that go up through are breaking off and they're captured nut up in the frame. So you're having to cut a hole in there, cut that nut off, take the bolt out, like weld that all back up.
01:18:54 - 01:18:56 SPEAKER00 Because the thread was spinning.
01:18:56 - 01:19:04 SPEAKER01 Yeah, because the nut is up in the thing and spinning and you're just like, and the thing's only four years old. It's not that old, but it's so rusted.
01:19:04 - 01:19:06 SPEAKER00 Do you guys have emissions programs up there?
01:19:06 - 01:21:35 SPEAKER01 So, we used to until about, when did they stop that? Three years ago? Three or four years ago, they stopped with the emissions program. And they would do it every two years. And it was just literally like, they weren't doing it with like, onboard diagnostic status. They were doing it with tailpipe. And then they tried to implement onboard diagnostic process instead of doing tailpipe emissions through a dyno two-speed, like an idle and a whatever, 2,500 road speed or whatever. And because they were just like, why are we still doing a hook to a dyno, right? Like cars would overheat on the dyno and it should be just using Roe VT2. Well, whoever came up with the software for the government to use, everybody that had like a higher end European car, it wouldn't come up recognized. It would not recognize it as being compliant. There would be no check engine light on, no codes. We were having cars that literally they left the dealership, they were a year old, and they would drive over to the emissions testing center, and the customer would not be able to get a pass because the car wouldn't communicate with their software. So if you want to see a program get scrapped, take some really high-end cars with some high-end customers and tell them that they can't legally drive them because of their emissions. And they'll get the program scrapped for you. So it's, it's scrapped now. We, you know, but I can remember it used to be probably about 10 years ago for shops. The government said how much you could test, like what you could charge to test. So it was almost nothing. And then the whole idea was, well, like, you know, if the car fails, then you can sell some repairs on it, whether it be a new catalytic converter or tune up or whatever. Well, what was happening is they, as soon as everybody was just slapping a cat on it to, to get it to pass and not really even fixing what caused the cat to fail. Then the price of catalytic converters shot up. And what they were saying is it'd be like $1,000 maybe to put a cat on a car or a pair of cats on a truck or something like that. Well, you could get a conditional pass for like 500 bucks. So nobody fixed anything. They just paid $500 to get a conditional pass. Well, and then the stipulation was that if you still own that car in two years time, then you had to fix the car because it wouldn't allow you to have a conditional again.
01:21:36 - 01:21:37 SPEAKER00 So then they'd just sell the car.
01:21:37 - 01:22:43 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. And they'd go buy another junker, right? Go through the same headache again. So where people had no faith in the system, they just felt like the government was ripping them off. And I can see both sides, because they told us when they brought it out, oh, it's going to be great, because some of these older cars that won't pass the emissions, you'll get them off the road then. Like, they'll be already rotten and unsafe. And none of that worked like that. It was so⦠The guys, when they were running them on the dyno, they could manipulate them so that they just kept them at a certain RPM and they'd sit there and watch the gases and it would just get a pass. And, um, you know, that car, like I've seen, I can remember old Intrepids will come in with the three five and they barely idle. Cause they had a vacuum leak from blown out intake and they'd roll them onto the dyno and they'd pass. And you're like, that thing is loaded right up. Like I can't even breathe in the shop here, but at the. It was, it was terrible. Most of the stuff, it sold a lot of air. Have I seen yours?
01:22:43 - 01:22:44 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Can I tell you about it?
01:22:44 - 01:22:46 SPEAKER01 Yeah, go ahead.
01:22:46 - 01:27:33 SPEAKER00 So I went to the dentist the other day and they drilled on my tooth for about an hour and then tell me, Hey, we got to pull your tooth. So that took another hour. They broke one, they broke one half off. drilled cut for 45 minutes on the other half to get it out. I would still rather go to the dentist than deal with EnviroTest here in Colorado. They're so screwed up that there's only one place you can go. It's all run by the government and EnviroTest has the contract. And so here's an example. I'll give you two examples. One, I went in a few years back with my, uh, 98 Durango and they're all they're supposed to do is emissions test. But for some reason they decided they wanted to start doing a little inspection and I had one rear wheel stud broke. So it's a six lug rim. One stud broke, had been for like four or five years. I don't know why I didn't change it, but the, you know, the young, the young lady there is like, Oh, we can't test your vehicle. Cause you've got a wheel stud, you know, the lug nut missing. I'm like, well, it was like that the last three times you guys tested it right here in this building. She's like, Oh, well, but we're going to put it on a dyno and the wheels are going to be turning. I'm thinking, well, what do you think happened when I drove it over here? They were turning. So, you know, no problem. So I fixed that, which I should have fixed. Anyway, you got a few weeks ago, we took, we have a 90, a 92 Isuzu box truck. It's like an MPR. And it's got a 350 Chevy engine in it. Some of them had Isuzu diesels. But as soon as I found out that you can get a small block Chevy in one of those, I was like, if we're getting one, it's going to have a small block Chevy. And it's got TBI. And it's always passed the four on anything 82 and newer. they do, they run it on a dyno, tailpipe and dyno. 82 and older, they do a two speed idle test. And any heavy duty vehicles, they do a two speed idle test. And they call it a two speed idle test because you do 30 seconds at idle, 30 seconds at 2,500, 30 seconds at idle, and then 30 seconds at 2,500 and 30 seconds at idle. And if it passes on any, all it has to do is pass the parameters on any one of those. Well, both at 2500 idle, but on any one of them, it passes if it passes those parameters. So on a 91 with TBI, it's got a single wire O2 sensor. So if you reach in and start it up and let it idle, it hasn't gone into closed loop yet and it won't until you take it up to 2500. So Our guy takes it over and he comes back. He's like, Oh, it failed. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, I'm wondering, why don't they have different RPM readings on there? But I'm like, whatever. So I put it on R4 gas and as soon as I get up to 2500, we go into closed loop and the emissions dropped to almost nothing. And it had a brand new O2 sensor and a brand new converter on it because Converter theft is like huge here in right now. Yeah, and Somebody had stolen the converter. So and they cut the oxygen sensor out along with it. So we'd had to put a new converter on it so I Told Bob I was like, hey, why don't you call the state and Talk to the tech center on this deal. So he calls the tech center and there's two of them There's one downtown and there's one up north He calls the one downtown and the guy's like, oh yeah, yeah, you gotta, if it doesn't, if you don't take the RPMs up 2,500, it won't go into closed loop, it'll never pass. He's like, if, you know, he's like, you could bring, I'd test it for you down here, but it won't fit in the shop, it's too tall. But call the guy up north and tell him what you told us and he'll tell you to bring it up there and he'll test it for you. So he calls the guy up north and the guy up north starts just going off on him. No, no, no, your TBI, your, your pressure is too high in your TBI. You're going to have to go in and adjust that. You've got problems and you got to fix that before it'll go into closed loop. And so I think Bob was just like, you know, this guy's.
01:27:33 - 01:27:33 SPEAKER02 Hmm.
01:27:34 - 01:28:30 SPEAKER00 not he's no help so we took it to uh another just another emission station yeah uh different than the first one we took it to took it there and They did the two-speed idle test. Back up, I asked our guy, I was like, tell me what happened when they did the test? And he was like, oh, the first time they tested it, the guy didn't even have to get out of the car. And the second time it just sat there, he just reached in and started it up. I'm like, he didn't rev it up? No, uh-uh. So when he took it to the other place, they actually did the two-speed idle test and it passed with flying colors. And so that's why everybody, I joke with people, I'm like, I'd rather go to the dentist than go to a viral test. And so after telling people about getting my tooth pulled, they're like, so you still rather go to the dentist? I'm like, yep, I'd still rather go to the dentist than deal with that outfit.
01:28:30 - 01:28:52 SPEAKER01 So when they scrapped the emissions testing up here, the rumor is that they're now going to bring in a mandatory safety inspection. instead, or they're saying that part of the safety inspection will be like a complete diagnostics workup of the car to make sure that there's no airbag, ABS, adaptive ADAS system, malfunctions, check engine light on.
01:28:53 - 01:28:57 SPEAKER00 It doesn't get a lot of cars off the road or repaired.
01:28:57 - 01:29:18 SPEAKER01 Well, but it's like anything else. I mean, up here, the taxpayers are still not ready for the reality that maybe their 15-year-old car, when it now comes time for an emissions testing or safety inspection that they're going to have to get in order to renew their registration to be able to drive, is going to probably condemn a lot of cars. Because you know how it can be sometimes.
01:29:18 - 01:30:02 SPEAKER00 It could be a hardship, like if it's a single mom or something. Sure, yeah. And then where it snowballs is, you know, let's take the single mom, her car fails for something and the shop charges her, you know, maybe they're honest and they, you know, do an honest repair and it costs whatever it costs and they fix it first time around. But it's just as likely that she'd be at a shop that either A, doesn't know what they're doing. They change a bunch of stuff and it still isn't fixed and they've charged her, you know, thousands of dollars or B, they're dishonest and they just charge her for a bunch of stuff that maybe they don't even do. Yeah. You know?
01:30:02 - 01:34:05 SPEAKER01 Yeah. It was, you know, what we found is like, you know how it is, what they used to say, like if the catalytic converters failed, something killed it upstream of the cat, right? The engines burning coil, burning oil or burning coolant or, you know, an unresolved misfire or whatever. So sure. The conditional thing. And I see that that's probably what's going to happen. Only this time it's probably going to be a thousand bucks or two thousand dollars, maybe to get into conditional pass. It's just going to make more customers resent the mechanic. I feel like what's going to happen up here and it's going to suck because it's like they always look at us like, oh, well, you're you're ripping me off. we're just trying to help you stay legal to drive. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's the unfortunate thing is like, yeah, you might drive a ton or 12 year old car and that's all you can afford. And now in order to stay driving, you know, you're may have to get a $2,000 conditional or whatever it is, but you know, a ton of money in it to bring it up to the standard. We're not in charge of that. We don't implement it, right? The government is the government. The government comes up with these wackadoodle policies and we have to just follow them. But I mean, it just drives me nuts when the customers always now, our industry's always looked at like, just like you said, it was so much skepticism that this is not helping, right? It doesn't help us make more money. It doesn't generate more business for the shop. If anything, what it's just going to do is drive more car sales. That's all it's going to do. I think in the end of the day, it's not going to drive a whole lot more business into repair shops. It's just going to drive more people onto either public transit up here or into a newer vehicle, which is maybe going to screw up their credit even more. Who knows? If they go and buy something used, how many people, you've probably seen it, they buy something used and then they bring it into you. and the thing should have never been what we call safety up here right like it should have never been it was structurally it's rotted the floor pans got a hole in it like the you know these and you're looking at this car going Well, here's your first estimate of your first oil changes, you know, you need 1800 bucks. And they're like, well, I just got this car just because of safety. Well, it shouldn't have passed with, you know, the ball joint and it shouldn't have passed with a CV boot torn and it shouldn't have passed with the, you know, power steering pump that's leaking fluid. And they're like, well, why didn't they tell me about all that? Because they're trying to sell you a car. They're not in the business of repairing cars. They're in the business of selling cars. Why would you not spend $100 and have it checked out before you bought it? Oh, I didn't have another $100. Well, now you need $1,800. It's hard because I'm not known to be the most sympathetic person. when it comes to stuff like that, because it's just, after so many years of doing this, right, we talk all the time about the labor that I had to donate, right, or that was, you know, two-tenths shaved here, three-tenths shaved there. I was just talking to a friend of mine tonight about how he just took, they tried to have him do an AC job, and they want to cut like four hours off the job for the extended warranty company. And it's the first time that he's been at the shop, and he said, I'm not doing it. I'm not like⦠Four hours is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And it's an AC problem. It's contaminated refrigerant in a Yukon. It's 1234YF, right? So those, if you've ever had to deal with that stuff in the machines, it's terrible. It's awful. It's slow. The machine most of the time doesn't allow it to work because it already knows there's a leak. Well, the aftermarket warranty company doesn't want to pay for the full time to do an evac and recharge. So they want to trim the time that he's going to need to do the EVAP, the EVAC and recharge and all this kind of stuff. And he's like, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. You're not going to pay me the time that it's supposed to be. You can find somebody else to do it.
01:34:05 - 01:34:09 SPEAKER00 And that's, so that's what they're going to do for him for taking a stand.
01:34:09 - 01:34:34 SPEAKER01 It's tough the way Lee, because it's like, there's so many of us that when we take the stand, we get labeled as like a prima Donna or we get labeled as difficult or we get labeled as having a bad attitude. I don't have, I've been told I have a bad attitude by just about everybody I've ever worked for. At one point or another, your attitude needs work.
01:34:34 - 01:34:37 SPEAKER00 Is it really my attitude?
01:34:37 - 01:34:58 SPEAKER01 Yeah, or does the industry need work? And that's why I'm just like, you know, saying what needs to be said, maybe I don't know. But I mean, yeah, I'm proud of him that he's standing up for himself. But I'm not worried because Like, you know how that can be, is sometimes you just went ahead and drew crosshairs on your back, right?
01:34:58 - 01:35:03 SPEAKER00 And now they're gonna- Now when the gravy jobs come in, they'll go to somebody else.
01:35:03 - 01:35:58 SPEAKER01 I mean, he's an excellent tech. He's very, like he can produce hours. He's a smart, smart guy. He's really good. But you can put yourself underneath a microscope now by doing that. And the reality is, he's not wrong to stand up for himself, right? He is doing the right thing. But now, it's at what expense does it have on his future earnings or his future employment because he stood up for himself. And that's the problem in this industry. When you start to do that, you get labeled. I mean, I've always just been accepted it that I'm, you know, I tend to shoot my mouth off about a lot of things and I'm not scared to say something and have an opinion and voice it. And, you know, I've long ago just accepted that you're either going to like it or you're not going to like me. I'm good with it either way. Right.
01:35:58 - 01:39:19 SPEAKER00 I mean, I had, I had managers at Goodyear that I didn't get along with, you know, they like the one, one time I had, come in, came in in the morning, normal time, checked out a car, recommended struts on it, and we didn't have them in stock. And so they were, the service manager was like, oh yeah, they're not going to do it. And like, whatever. And it was real slow. So I was going to leave early, you know, because it was slow. Service manager's like, well, you want to take off early? I was like, yeah, okay. And I was getting ready to leave, but there was another mechanic there that this particular service manager really, really liked. And he had pulled this little Ford Ranger out to park it, and he couldn't get the key out of the ignition. And he's like, Hey, you know, can you come and look at it? And I went and the mechanic asked me to see if I could get it out. And so I looked at it and I was like, yeah, you gotta, you gotta turn, you know, your ignition switch is messed up. You got to hold this part and turn the key at the same time and it'll pop right out. And I showed the customer, it's like, you really need a new ignition switch. And anyway, by the time I did that, I noticed that a parts truck had pulled up and dropped these struts off. And so I'm looking at that. And then about that time, the other car pulled up and I was like, I thought you said you wouldn't get to do, didn't want to do the struts. And he's like, yeah, I was going to have Kirby do them. I'm like, well, I wrote it up. I think I'll stay and do them. And so I did. And he went to the store manager and the store manager and I got along pretty good. Uh, he was, he'd been in the military and so, you know, he, he appreciated people that worked hard and most of the time I was a hard worker. I just didn't get along with that particular store manager and because he liked this other mechanic better. And so he called me in the office and, you know, it was getting ready to read me the riot act about, you know, being insubordinate and. And I told him what had happened and he was like, Oh, I didn't know that that had happened like that. He was like, okay, well, you know, that's cool. And so I didn't, I ended up not getting in trouble. I mean, another time, same guy brought a car in a old Ford Granada, rode it up for about $1,500 worth of work, which at the time that was a lot of money nowadays. That's nothing. But at the time that was like a ton of money. and did all the work. And the one thing that the card came in for was the dome light bulb, right? The dome light didn't work and he didn't fix that. And so the next day the car comes back and the lady's like, my dome light still isn't working. So I got to replace the dome light bulb for free. You know, that was, so, you know, I've, I've been on both sides of that where, you know, you can get labeled or not necessarily labeled, but you can get you know, where, you know, you're going to be getting maybe not handed the best tickets.
01:39:19 - 01:39:42 SPEAKER01 Yeah. And that's, you know, with this industry could ever, if we ever fix anything, it's that the politics need to stop. You know what I mean? And I think until we get, if we're going to have incentivized pay plans, then we all need to do better about making it not a political thing. You know, and I'm not talking political like Democrat or Republic.
01:39:42 - 01:39:45 SPEAKER00 I'm talking about, I know what you're saying.
01:39:45 - 01:40:32 SPEAKER01 Yeah. The play in the political game within the shop of alliances and, you know, it's like high school clicks, right? Like it shouldn't matter that. I mean, everybody should always want to get along, but I mean, if you're competent to do the job and you're the one that sold the job, if you're physically still in the building, you should be the one doing the job. Now, I understand there's always, you know, things happen, parts don't show up, people get hurt, go sick, whatever. You know, sometimes booking gets screwed up. And you know, you're so far in with more work than you can get done on a promise time. Again, that's not the technicians fault, right? If they screw up on the front counter and how they lay out their workload, that's not still the tech shouldn't be punished for that. So
01:40:32 - 01:41:09 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Well, and see, and this particular service manager, he was like the, I had good service managers there and the service managers I had when I left were great guys. But this particular guy, he could very easily have said, Hey, cause we were on an hourly plus commission thing. And so it was, it was the last day of the pay period where, you know, they were wanting to kind of shave your hours. So you didn't have overtime or something. And he could have very easily said to me, Hey, this guy's coming back and about an hour or so for the struts. If you want to take a lunch and then come back, you can do them. He could very easily have said that to me.
01:41:09 - 01:41:13 SPEAKER01 Yeah, but he doesn't because he wants to feed his buddy.
01:41:13 - 01:41:14 SPEAKER00 Yeah, exactly.
01:41:14 - 01:41:58 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Well, I mean, and that's the problem with, well, it's just one of the many problems with incentivized pay, right? And that's like, I have a good friend and he was telling me, he worked at a shop years ago that the advisor and the tech got into I had a real good scheme going where he was writing really big tickets and then giving them to a certain, like, he was always trying to send a certain customer to a certain tech because he knew he would write up this massive estimate. And then he was paying out of what he got paid to do the job. So he would cash his check. He would give that kickback to that advisor.
01:41:58 - 01:41:59 SPEAKER00 Oh, wow.
01:41:59 - 01:42:29 SPEAKER01 Right. So imagine that isn't it. Right. And that's not the first time I've ever heard that, but he was telling me about it happening in a local place. And I'm like, and yet that local place around here had a stellar reputation. There was more than one place person I've met the below. Oh, we take our car to here. It's amazing when you start to talk to other people that have worked at places like that, when you hear the truth, right. Of what is so, you know, and usually when you hear something like that,
01:42:30 - 01:42:48 SPEAKER00 My feeling is that the reason that people feel good about the place is because whoever they're dealing with at the counter is just a real people person. Yeah. And they really, you know, they really click with that person at the counter and get along with them.
01:42:48 - 01:42:49 SPEAKER02 Yeah.
01:42:49 - 01:42:50 SPEAKER01 And then you talk to them.
01:42:50 - 01:42:51 SPEAKER00 That's my feeling.
01:42:52 - 01:44:40 SPEAKER01 you talk to them it's like so you had your ball joints changed like twice in an 18th month span and you know you didn't you didn't go 20,000 K on it you think that's normal like or you had struts put in and you got struts put in two years later oh yeah those masses are just hard on struts okay like that kind of stuff I mean you know I've said it all before I've never seen a car that was over-maintained and over-serviced in terms of it did harm to the car, but I've seen a lot of people get very creative with the pen to sell work. I think when this industry still rewards people for doing that through an incentivized plan, we're never really going to get the kind of image that I think we all feel like we should have and maybe deserve. So the holdouts for flat rate and incentivized, you always got to keep that in mind. And you think that you're running a legit thing, and you probably are there. I'm not saying that there's people that don't. I'm not saying that it can't work. But I just, like I've said, I wish that more people⦠It's so easily corrupted, the system, that it's hard for me to get behind it now and say, yes, let's work incentivized. Because, you know, we all talk about like, well, I want every customer treated like, you know, as if my mother came in. Right. I would only be wanting selling mom exactly what it was she needed and addressing the issue and no more. But we all know that that from a business standpoint. It's a lot harder to operate a really successful business doing that, you know.
01:44:41 - 01:45:40 SPEAKER00 especially if you don't have a good flow of cars and customers. When I was working in the gas stations, we had, both of them were in a fairly affluent part of town and they were on busy, busy corners. And all we ever really had time to do when we'd get a car in, we'd, we'd fix what was wrong with it. You know, we didn't, we didn't need to, Now, you know, we might, uh, pull wheels and check brakes and stuff if we thought there was something going on, but normally, you know, we were, we were doing water pumps or. Breaks or whatever, you know, whatever the, whatever the customer came in and said they needed, you know, and, and it seemed like we had as much work as we could handle, just, just fixing what was wrong with the car without having to without having to find a ton of extra stuff on every single job.
01:45:40 - 01:46:32 SPEAKER01 Yeah. The air filters thing is one I take a real issue with because the quick lube scam up here is that every time you go there and get an oil change at a quick lube place, you need a new engine air filter and you need a new cabin air filter. I've taken some air filters out in the last couple of weeks that are like, you know, they've had quite a lot of leaf debris in them and stuff like that. And it's affecting the airflow for the AC system. But I mean, I tell customers all the time, you're probably unless you like have a bunch of leaf litter in your, in your yard, say park underneath something that is constantly dripping on your cowl. or you live in some area where you have rodents infested, you probably don't need to replace that cabin air filter four times a year. You know what I mean? Once would probably do it every year, it would be fine.
01:46:32 - 01:46:36 SPEAKER00 But people, they don't realize that when you go to a quick lube place and they say, oh, it's only a $40 oil change.
01:46:43 - 01:46:47 SPEAKER01 Great. It's a $40 oil change, but they sell you a $50 air filter every time you're there.
01:46:47 - 01:46:50 SPEAKER00 And I'll do- That is a 99 cent filter.
01:46:50 - 01:49:25 SPEAKER01 And I'll do a $50 oil change and I'll put in a $20 air filter because I don't mark it up the same way. We're putting in the same filter, but I'm not marking up my air filter the way they mark up theirs. And they go, well, why did they do that? Well, because then you explain to them how most oil changes, if I do it for the shop, it's losing money, right? For what we charge to be competitive and what they pay me, you're losing money. So they, of course, if, if an oil change business is such a, a poor performer, obviously they're going to find something wrong with the car. Every time it comes in there for an oil change, you're going to get a, you're not going to go away with just an oil change. You're going to go away with the, and they do the, like, it's really good. They have little, little dishes and they take a sample of all the fluid. So this is your power steering fluid. This is your brake fluid. This is see how dirty it is. And then they show them how the clean one looks and yours should look like this. And the customer goes, Oh, wow, really? Okay. Like that, I can't get behind because they're not putting in a wee fluid back in it. They're putting in an aftermarket fluid that somebody in a lab says, Oh, that should be okay. You know, I fixed so many Chrysler's when I was back in the dealer by taking that fluid. They just had a, just had a flush done at the local quick loop. Right. And then the thing started to shift funny and. And you clear the adapters and do the relearn and that would help. But we had more than one that was like, get that fluid out of there and put the right stuff back in it. Because it's definitely not compatible. You can tell how the train is shifting. And then the thing that always cranked me up is they might warranty that transmission for say like 130,000 kilometers. Well, that transmission is meant to be warrantied for 130,000 kilometers, as an example, with the fluid that's in it, the type of fluid. But yet the customer goes and gets something dumped into it by a quick loop place. And now all of a sudden, I should have to fix that transmission under warranty if it fails? Why is that? I shouldn't have to. But it happened more times than I care to admit because You know, people didn't want to have that conversation with the customer at the counter that says, I'm sorry, you had maintenance performed that wasn't correct. The fluid is not approved, it's not accredited. Your transmission's now, you know, failed, and it's not a warranty repair. But nobody ever wants to hold them liable. So, you know, this is- There's so many different fluids now.
01:49:26 - 01:49:38 SPEAKER00 There's sometimes we'll spend like half an hour trying to figure out what, you know, if we're getting the right type of oil for this or the right type of power steering fluid or gear lube or whatever.
01:49:38 - 01:50:49 SPEAKER01 Power steering is one of the worst now because it's like even like Nissan, for instance, they have electronic power steering, but it still has fluid. You know what I mean? Like it's not like an electric system where it's all electronic motor turning the gear. It's still an electronic with fluid in it. Trying to find that, there is no aftermarket fluid that's approved yet for it. And so when you have to service it because they just, I don't know whether they eats it or what, but they'll come in and after like 70,000 K, the little tiny reservoir is low and you'll have to put fluid in it. Well, people pour ATF in there or something like that, they just top it up with whatever they got or regular old ester power steering fluid. And it's like, well, guess what we do now? You know, we always try and flush that out. And hopefully it didn't kill the unit. And they're like, I don't understand. Like, it's not approved. So that's the kind of stuff that like always I hate it about warranties because nobody ever reads the fine print. And even if they did read the fine print, they don't back the tech anyway. They just back the customer, you know, punish the tech.
01:50:50 - 01:51:08 SPEAKER00 The other thing that bugs me about the quick lube places, I, we get so many cars that come in with the air filter housings cracked or, or the, you know, the, if it's a bolt thing, you know, it's like, did you really need to use a half inch impact?
01:51:08 - 01:51:10 SPEAKER02 Yeah. Yeah.
01:51:10 - 01:51:22 SPEAKER00 They're not put together. Right. And the thing's been, you know, they put a new air filter in, but it doesn't, It doesn't matter because you didn't hook the air hose, but it's been drawn dirt past the air filter ever since you guys did it.
01:51:22 - 01:51:54 SPEAKER01 A little vacuum hose that goes off to the purge solenoid is not hooked back up, right? So then it's got an EVAP fault and it's like, well, congratulations. You got a brand new air filter and you got, you know, I'm going to whack you $50 for a diagnostic to go and fix what your cheaper oil change did for you. Congratulations. I'm going to say it, I wish that they could outlaw quick lubes. I think it's better for the industry, honestly. Well, with that, Lee, I'm going to let you go.
01:51:54 - 01:51:58 SPEAKER00 All right. Can I say one comment about ADOS?
01:51:58 - 01:52:00 SPEAKER01 Yes, please do. Yeah.
01:52:00 - 01:52:41 SPEAKER00 So I feel like, and I haven't serviced any ADOS yet, but I've been to a few classes. and see what your thoughts are on this. I think the government is going to need to step in and say, we need some uniformity here like they did with OBD2, where it's not like Toyota does it this way, Ford does it this way, and you need 100 different tools to calibrate ADAS. I think the government needs to step in and and get some regulation and uniformity on it. Because I think they're going to start, I think I heard they were going to start requiring it on all new cars.
01:52:41 - 01:52:43 SPEAKER01 Yeah, yeah.
01:52:43 - 01:52:46 SPEAKER00 Well, the end goal is- That's my two cents on that.
01:52:46 - 01:54:53 SPEAKER01 Here's mine. The end goal is that everybody, they want a car to be autonomous, that'll drive themselves to work, right? So that they can, and then, because here's the other government conspiracy that I'm going to say, because that way, if the government is in control or the car is autonomous, then it only takes one click from somebody somewhere to render that car unable to be used because of your carbon footprint, your social credit score, whatever you want to call it. But I think what ADAS is, to me, I like the theory of it. I like the idea. I'm not against the safety system. It's just, when I think about the countless, people have heard me say it, when we talk about TPMS, how many cars come in with a TPMS sensor that's bad? and the customer doesn't fix it. How many cars do we see when it's got an ABS fault and the customer doesn't fix it? How many cars do we see when it's got an airbag fault and the customer doesn't fix it? We're not going to get all these safety systems in place working on most of the cars that are on the road until we start holding the customers responsible for keeping the car in a Relatively safe state. You know what I mean? When we've got people that will not fix brakes, but they'll fix their air conditioner. And I believe me, I get it. Like if you're in Arizona, it's 120 every day. Right. And it's miserable to drive the car with air conditioning, but your cars, your wheels are still turning. You're going to be well, like, yeah, I got cords coming through the tires, but you know, fix my AC till we get where the customers can be held liable for keeping the car safe. And that's what is safe is another topic for another day. I just believe ADAS is just another way for more cars to get written off. When they when they're in an accident, it just drives the price up more modules, more equipment than when the car still winds up in an accident. They just write them off. I mean, if it's got ADAS and everything else, why is it getting an accident? You know, we'd be putting all these safety systems on the cars.
01:54:53 - 01:55:31 SPEAKER00 We had to try really hard. We had a Ford Edge that came in. It looked like they had taken it off road or something. It had obviously been in an accident. And like a bunch of the EVAP hoses underneath were all smashed and pulled off and some other stuff. And I told the customer, don't buy this car. You know, the adaptive cruise didn't work. And he's like, well, can you fix the cruise control? No, because there's supposed to be this whole radar unit behind your bumper. Whoever did the body work on this, just threw that away. It's not even there.
01:55:31 - 01:56:07 SPEAKER01 So it's going to cost you an awful lot of money to make your cruise control work. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASOG group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.