Alan wrote :
>
> Hi Scott.
>
> Your comments about mechanics are offensive and paranoid.
Offensive perhaps, but hardly paranoid. My personal experience is that most
professional mechanics do not (or will not) do as good a job as I, an
amateur at best, will do on my own car. I have been unhappy with the result
at least 9 out of 10 times when I take my car to a professional, and
generally the good mechanics I do find don't stay mechanics for long.
Lots of horror stories :
The AAMCO shop that told my sister that my transmission was unlikely to even
make it home and had to be replaced immediately. (The car made it home just
fine, and after I put in a new filter and a can of Trans-Medic, it worked
fine for another 50,000 miles, when the car was junked for other reasons).
The Pep Boys shop that couldn't put the timing belt on the right tooth until
I walked the shop manager out to the shop to show him where the timing marks
were. Not to mention that they put back in a "replace when removed" plug
without so much as a coating of Permatex, with the result it dumped _all_
the oil out on the freeway while my wife was driving the next day.
The friend of my wife's who showed me receipts for oil and air filter
changes every six months for years, the last one only two days earlier, but
her oil looked like tar, the air filter as though it had never been changed.
There weren't even any fingerprints in the thick layer of crud on the oil
filter.
Did you see the one where Consumer Reports (or someone like that) took off a
spark plug wire and took the car into mechanics across the country ? The
majority of professional mechanics either said the repair bill would be over
$100, or that the car was not worth repairing !
How about the lawsuit convicting Sears and Roebuck (for the second time) of
deliberately selling unneeded parts and service ?
Sorry, Alan, but you work in a field where it's not just "a few bad apples".
Incompetence and outright fraud are the norm, not the exception. There are
good mechanics out there, I've met a few. They aren't the majority.
Randall - "Now where'd I put the Nomex"
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