rev up your engines now I've been working on
cars for over 51 years it'll be 52 and exactly a week from today so you can
imagine I've heard a lot during those 51 years now here's things that I heard
from customers that it's better not to say such things to a mechanic no one
should waste anyone's time but you want to spend a little bit of time explaining
the whole problem and then the mechanic explaining okay let me analyze this then
I'll tell you the steps I'm gonna do to fix it now the last thing you want to
say to a professional mechanic who's good at his job yes
oh I'm in no hurry to get my car back take your time never say that to a
really good mechanic people used to say that all the time to my grandfather was
also a mechanic was that a mistake because good mechanics guess what they
have work all the time so if you say you're no hurry
probably everybody else coming in says can you fix it as fast you can't
I got to get it back on a road you don't want your car on the backburner I've
seen cars that other mechanic garages been there for months and I'm saying
we're just doing that clunker sitting there sit out a guy said he wasn't any
big hurry so I'm in no big hurry fixing it don't ever say that to a mechanic if you
want your car fixed in a reasonable amount of time now number 2 on the list
is do not lie to your mechanic because you feel stupid because you did
something that damaged your car I don't care what you did your car I just want
to be able to analyze the problem and fix it as quickly as possible so don't
have me going down rabbit holes in the wrong direction looking for a problem
then I can figure out right away if you would have said oh you know I ran into a
curb last night and all this problems started after I ran into the curb now if
you ever had anything like that happened and you know tell the truth to your
mechanic most mechanics these days charge $100 plus an hour we're working
on your car you're gonna be wasted a lot of money and we don't waste any of our
time or your money trying to figure out what's wrong I've had many times
customers tow cars over here what happened to the car he said oh I
don't know it just stopped running while I was
driving realize there's a zillion things that can do that
tell us I'll say hey you know give me the exact scenario then they broke down
and admitted to me they overheated it on a highway they only had a couple
miles to go home so they kept driving the car didn't run anymore so I knew
they probably blown the engine I checked the engine shutting off the engine was
blown they needed a new engine they shouldn't a waste of my time checking a
million things when he could have just told me what happened and I would have
done one test on the engine that said you wrecked your engine now what do you
want to do because the really good mechanic is busy all the time he doesn't
want to waste time on things that are unnecessary so always tell the truth
about your car so he can figure it out as fast as he possibly can without
having to be Sherlock Holmes and starting to analyze in a million things
to get down to the one thing it actually is the problem now the next thing not to
say to a mechanic is don't tell them mechanic that you know all about cars
and that you just don't have any time to work on your own car so you're bringing
it to him when in fact you really know much about cars all you've never worked
on cars don't do that because any good mechanic is smart enough to know if
somebody really knows about cars or not it's more of a humorous thing really but
I had a customer and he says ah Scotty a guy told me about you I fixed my own
cars but out of time anymore cuz I'm bartending all the time can you work on
my car I said sure I worked his car and since he was a bartender I went with the wife
to the bar and he was making us these French 75 howitzers and I said Bob why
did you tell me that you worked on your own car you have any time he said well
Scott he says I was afraid you you're a ripoff mechanic and you were gonna rip me
off so I pretended that I worked on cars so
you wouldn't try ripping me off and I just laughed and said Bob I know you
didn't know anything about cars it's my talking to you you know it doesn't
matter to me tell them the truth don't make up crazy stories because my
mechanics can figure out pretty fast what you know about cars and I leave it
to the professional but give them all the information that you possibly can
about your problem but don't throw any lies in this isn't a murder mystery
where you're the murder suspect you're trying to throw the detectives off your
trail tell the truth about everything that you know is wrong with your car cuz
really you drive your car 99.9 percent of the time I spent a
very little amount of time driving other people's cars unless it's a really
messed up problem but then I got a hookup my fancy scan tool driving around
hope that the problem reoccurs then he analyzed the data you can cut through a
lot of that crap if you pay close attention to your car and then when you
have a problem explain okay this only happens when I'm going 55 this only
happens when it's raining or this only happens first thing in the morning keep
that information so you tell the mechanic so he can get rid of all the
ancillary information that he doesn't need and get down to the rabbit hole
where the problem exists and perhaps one of my all-time stupid things then I'm
told time and time again is somebody bringing a car and they'll say oh well
I'm only keeping this car for another month or two so I don't want to spend
much money fixing it so you know I don't want to do anything that's really
expensive but in reality you plan on driving the car for years more I've had
a few customers mind you if they're obnoxious enough I'll just stop working
on their cars I've had a few over the years that would do that and then you
see them a year later two years or three years later sometimes even five years
later driving the same car that they said they were only gonna drive another
month or so because an honest mechanic will tell you the truth about a car what
you're planning on using it for and what you need to fix you get an old car like
my old Celica it shakes at idle when it's in drive especially with the a/c on
it's always done that since I bought it with two hundred thousand miles on it
did I ever fix it no and the reason I didn't fix it is because they add new is
flipping in a neutral with the a/c on or off and it idles like a dream that tells
me there's either a weakness in the torque converter inside the automatic
transmission or the transmission itself is a little bit more but it's perfectly
fine I don't take it on trips to California everything Texas to California it's no
big deal ten years later still runs perfectly fine it just shakes too much
when you put it in Drive a reverse only one you're idling then you put a neutral
stop shaking run smooth as can be any honest mechanic is gonna tell you what
actually needs fixing and what doesn't need fixing every year this happens
scores at times somebody comes in friend told them about me and they got a
laundry list like this of $3500 to work that the dealer told them they
need to do on their car so as new costumer I put on my fancy scan tool and
check absolutely everything jack it up check the suspension wheels brakes and
a lot of times I tell these people you know you really don't feed you to
anything to your car at all other than change the oil in it now of course
mechanic should say stupid things that are customers of course they shouldn't
be dishonest and lying saying you need this and that everything else you shouldn't
have a mechanic who's always trying to sell you things that you don't
necessarily need or that can go for quite a long period before they need
replace years ago I got one of these Pico scopes it's in this freeze-frame
oscilloscope you hook it up to your laptop and you can analyze electronics
it's a great device but some people take them too far I checked the graph I had
against good ones and bad ones and it said oh that one's on its way out it's
almost gone you need to replace the electric fuel pump mind you the vehicle was
running perfectly fine as it was I just decided hey here's some new technology
I'll try it out so I told the customer I said you know your car's running fine I
did this test and it says your fuel pump is on its way out if you want to do
some proactive stuff you can change it but since it's running okay you know I
mean can do whatever you want so when he found the cost changing out the fuel
pump he said I'll wait till the stupid thing breaks cuz he only used it as an
In Town commuting car was an old beater car and he had aaa towing so if it
ever did break and cost him anything he told over here not fix it but three
years later he's still driving the car and the fuel pump was still humming
along and it ran fine so sometimes you could take this technology too far and
start selling things to people that really might last quite a bit longer
before they're gonna break down now you know some dumb things not to say to a
mechanic and how to successfully interact with a mechanic so that you get
your car fixed as soon as possible without wasting his time or your money
looking for a problem that can easily be figured out if the truth is told in the first
place so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell