3 Mechanic Scams Caught on Camera

we got a toyota tundra today like 140 000 miles on it it make it a pop of noise they took it in the guy said he put ball joints on it's fixed but it's still making a popping knife so not surprisingly there's a lot of idiots out there pretending to be mechanics first thing you want to do is jack it up check for play so jack it up it's just rear-wheel drive so just normal suspension there's no particular play here let's take the wheel off and see if they actually did anything so we're gonna start looking around here they certainly didn't put an upper ball joint on because this rusty is complete that's the original one you can see the boot on the bottom there they didn't change the bottom one either okay so when they lied to them what they actually changed you can see the bolt on the stabilizer bar that holds the stabilizer on has a grease fitting they don't come with grease fittings so all they did was replace this now we still have the original ball joints the original lower control arm it could be getting noise from any of those it's not anything that's structurally shot and the shock itself it looks to be the original one but the bushings are still in pretty good shape good way to check ball joints they kind of need to be loaded unless they're really worn out don't get yourself a long screwdriver we're gonna go into the ball joint pry on it there's no play and we'll try the top one do the same thing there's no play so they're not really worn so i'll put this wheel back on and check the other side but before we do that check out the tire it's bold on the inside not on the outside the front end alignment on this thing is way off it's going to need an alignment for sure they only wear like that if the alignment's up look at the other cards and see what it's doing now you can see this one is a little bit more worn this than that you can see it's still wearing on the inside the alignment's way off but this tire isn't completely shut that one is this car is not even safe to drive on but there's obviously an alignment problem now we'll put this tire back on get it right we'll get 75 foot-pound of torque make sure they're just the right tightness now check the other side now jack this side up if there's any obvious wear not really then we'll take the wheel off that's pretty much what i expected it's had the torsion bar bolt replaced it's got one with a fitting but we look at the ball joint that's still old on the top one and we'll look at the bottom one it's stalled you can see the grease seal on the bottom is old now they got charged 200 bucks for putting on a couple of bolts but i've seen a lot worse i've seen people spend 2 000 for something like that they included their analysis and stuff well pretty crappy analysis nothing really structurally wrong with it as we see here when we load that ball joint it doesn't move and we'll go to the bottom ball joint we'll do the same thing pry on it prying it doesn't move either with age everything gets a little bit worn there's nothing actually worn out all the rubbers are still there you just often will get some kind of noise because they don't have grease fittings in them anymore that's not making any noise either you're on the superficial rust on this stuff but you're gonna often get little bits of noises while you're driving down the road on a vehicle that's assault realize this thing is 16 years old you're gonna get noise when it's 16. we're gonna take it for a ride see how structural it is the wheel back on when you talk the wheel down have it on the ground then it won't move it's a lot easier that way but before we take it for a ride guys trying to sell them everything kitchen sink so we'll put the scan tools now we got plugged in down here and as you can see this baby's got 163 791 miles not that much of a tundra six read it all knows it's a tundra and with an automatic scan you can see the good things engine's fine it's got abs track problems tire pressure monitoring that probably suit the abs and the air bag if the abs system is working on the airbags it'll trip those codes so that stuff ah we really don't care what we want to look at is the engine to see what shape it's in live data there's no codes but the live data is going to give us a lot of information let's start analyzing this stuff everything's good and blue so far we want to look at some of the data to see how this thing is really running now the short-term fuel trim it's eight and a half it's adding fuel i mean it's running lean on both sides so i would say it's time to clean the mass air flow sensor that'd be the main because they're both following exactly the same and if both terms see that's 7.8 and that was 8.5 they're both up high and they're now they're exactly saying that's 8.5 7.8 they're very close that means that it's running lean and one thing that's going to make it run lean is a bad mass airflow sensor one that's dirty this needs cleaning you can see the timing chain's in good shape the time is pretty stable 10 degrees misfires that spark plugs are fine all late zero misfires so take it for spin and as long as we're here you can see it's got the stupid maintenance required light on maintenance required well what you do with that is this turn the key off drink it on position not running all right then you get the little knob here and you hold it down and turn the key off again then with it still held down you hold it down turn the key on again doesn't have that obnoxious little thing over there now and as you can see now the maintenance required light is off that's how you turn them off it's very simple now the maintenance required will come on and turn off it's supposed to do that but it was staying on and we know that the tire pressure monitoring system isn't working he doesn't care he's not going to pay for new batteries there are no sensors he doesn't care he uses air gauge to measure the pressure while we're waiting for them to back their car out of the way i almost ran into it we will find this thing idle's really smooth it's not shaking at all now i turned it i can hear it i heard the noise let's see if it'll do it again there it is we'll get back to that we're going to take it for a road test first got plenty of pickup it's a big happy truck it drives like a truck i mean you're gonna feel like you're driving in a truck because it is a truck we'll see if it'll make the noise now there it goes it's definitely in the left front in the suspension system now i know it sounds horrible but my grandsons does the same thing basically since they have grease fittings you got bushings the rubber bushings get worn and they creak on the metal all right here we go okay keep going coming from the shop now we get some wd-40 and what we're going to do is on the top here the insulator is making a clunking noise the metal is kind of rubbing on the metal you want to do the bottom too you want to spray it good let it soak a while now my grandson's tundra does the same exact thing even on the same side that's just the shock well the shock has that big coil spring inside and inside that there's rubber insulator so the rubber spring instead of sitting on bare metal it sits on a little rubber insulator and then that's on metal they wear out over time so it sounds horrible but when you turn it the whole way it's just a little spring clicking on clink on the bottom and the reason is when you turn it because when you turn it it puts a little torsion on that and it makes a little clunk it means absolutely nothing the noise will probably go away for a while now but it'll come back you can keep spraying it if you do want to fix it go to toyota they're the only ones that sell it you take the shock off take the spring off you'd buy new insulators put them on each end and put them back together again but it means absolutely nothing it's going to hurt anything like i said my grandson's has been doing it since he bought it and it doesn't matter the main thing this thing needs is new front tires because the insides are worn on both sides and a front end alignment these tundras can last forever four or five hundred thousand miles this has only got like one six it's yeah running a little bit lean you can change the mass air flow sensor but a lot of people like it that way you get a little bit better gas mileage since this runs good if you made it run less lean it would get worse gas mileage i've had some of these that i fixed they were running too lean and then after i fixed them the customer said my gas mileage went down so i'd leave that alone here we have a soldier's nissan titan it's getting too hot it's not getting into the h but it's running too hot when the ac is on and when he's driving in traffic get on the hardware works perfectly fine so let's start with the basic analysis of an overheating vehicle and of course the first thing to do is to check the coolant if it's low on coolant it could easily cause the problem at low speeds it could not overheat at high speeds but overheat at low speeds because as you're spinning the engine faster the coolant goes through the system quicker and even if you're a little low it'll still work okay but idle it won't so these crazy systems the real radiator pressure cap is here so first thing we do is take that off you can see it's full inside this cap is to check the radiator as you can see it's not a regular radiator cap it doesn't have a spring or anything it's just a cap and as we see it's pretty much full inside there too now i asked the owner has he had to add cool into the system antifreeze water mix and he said no we know it's not leaky normally the next thing i'd do would be a pressure test of the coolant system with my pump system but really he said he's not losing any coolant if you got a leak you're going to lose coolant so the system's sealed there's not a problem with that and that's normally i do one of these combustion leak tests where i put the blue liquid in here run the engine and see if the blue turns yellow showing that there's exhaust gas and the radiator showing a blown head gasket or cracked head the car overheats with the ac on and idling for long periods of time if it was a blowing head gasket the faster you go the worse it'll get the faster you go there's more pressure the engine's spinning faster it would build the exhaust gas up even faster and it would overheat worse at high speeds than at idle so if it's a blunt head gasket it wouldn't have as much problem at idle it would have a worse problem at high speed and in this case at high speed it has no problem at all so we know it's not a blown head gasket it would be much worse the faster you go so something's up in the system that doesn't leak now maybe it's a stuck thermostat the thermostats when they're cold like this one you can see it's stuck shut as the engine heats up it opens up and lets coolant from the radiator get into the engine to cool the engine it's to warm them up faster if it's stuck shut it won't send any coolant to the engine from the radiator and it'll overheat but when they're stuck shot they overheat pretty fast and then they just stay overheated and again same as if the head gasket was blown if you have a stock thermostat it'll overheat at low speeds but it will overheat even worse at high speeds because you need more coolant spinning through the fast spinning engine to dissipate all that heat from the engine running at higher rpms it would overheat like mad if it was stuck at high speeds and in this case at high speeds it runs totally normal what can it be well it could be the fans aren't working right to cool the engine so i'll start it up turn the ac on i will check the speed using our wind speed indicator you can use your hand too i mean i can feel a lot of air coming out of here now this thing is rated at 5.68 miles per hour at idle it's 5.67 that's certainly close enough and really for those of you without one of these gauges i mean you can get it for 25 bucks on amazon but what's your hand here i feel a ton of air that fan's blowing but in this case it's a mechanical fan it runs off a water pump most vehicles these days have electric one or two electric cooling fans instead of a mechanical one because they're more efficient they work better but you can test them the same way turn on the ac make sure they're both blowing good but in this case i found out there's a flaw the soldier who owns the car told me he was in a wreck and they didn't replace the condenser fan for the ac system supposed to be a cooling fan in here and as you can see there isn't one it's gone but when you look closely there's a lot of bugs stuck in there so we're gonna clean those off first so out comes my unbeatable honda powered pressure washer it's a honda so you know it's going to start where do we go can't be the pressure washer and in this case we're losing a lower pressure nozzle you don't want too much pressure to clean all the bugs off and since it doesn't have the electric fan that goes on the condenser which pushes the air through the condenser to cool the ac and helps push air through the radiator which of course is behind the condenser and make it work so we're going to hook this thing up right in front of the condenser then turn it on full blast we want it on high then we'll go inside the truck start it up with the ac on full blast there it is reserve and we'll see what happens to the temperature gauge the floor was going up all the way up to the notch that's under the h now it hasn't damaged anything yet because it has to get to the h when it boils then it damages the engine as long as it doesn't boil it hasn't damaged the engine yet so it hasn't done any damage we're gonna let sit for half an hour 40 minutes and check it every once in a while and see if it stays normal now it sits so hot today at the end of july in tennessee in a nice cool glass of water and a nice air-conditioned nissan titan and sit here for half an hour and watch it now after 10 minutes you can see it's still running good now i can just about guarantee you that's the problem because it's logical they didn't put the cooling fan for the condenser on after the wreck it was designed that way on the highway yeah you're going 60 miles an hour you got 60 mile an hour wind plenty enough to cool it off but in the city no especially when you're idling it's going to make it overheat especially when you turn the ac on the heat of the ac is ejected by the condenser that's in front of the radiator so it puts a bunch of heat in front of the radiator the condenser gets super hot then the air passes over the condenser and then since it's in front of the radiator that hotter air goes through the radiator well that extra heat is going to make it not work right if there isn't more wind pushing it through and of course when you're going 60 miles an hour you got 60 mile an hour wind going through the condenser going through the radiator cooling it off but i still don't trust anything so i'm gonna wait half an hour to see if it changes and in the meantime i can see his tire pressure monitoring system light is on there it is so we might as well check that i can't just sit here drinking water cool off for half an hour i'd be bored out of my mind we'll go plug in a scan tool you need a decent one to do tpms the really cheap ones won't help we'll plug it in there we go now unfortunately even this scan tool won't do the tpms so i need a better one what the heck i like trying out scan tools seeing what works and what doesn't so here's my new think car one that i've gotten recently this new one is called think tool pd8 we'll see how it works and it shows this doesn't do automatic detection this particular model they're blaming it on the manufacturer so we'll have to put it in manually we see the bcm has problems it's got a code four of them they'll say low voltage weak batteries often do that even with all this information if you notice there is not a tire pressure monitoring service information on the scan tool either so we're gonna do what i always have to do i'm gonna have to get the actual tire pressure monitoring computer to check it out a tpms checker well there's a life of a mechanic for you now i got out here my autel max tpms and it plugs in i always seem to get them upside down there we go that's plugged in now we'll see what this baby does here we go we want to check it out yes dpms okay what do we got nissan go up to nissan diagnostics yeah i see an awful lot of time the front left has low battery the right rear has low battery the right left has low battery and there's no data from the front left now this is the problem with these stupid systems three of the four wheels have low voltage and one has none at all since the front left has no data at all that means the front left sensor is either broken or its battery is completely dead the other ones are warning that they're low so here's how stupid it is if you took it apart replace the front left one the other three are low they're gonna go out soon they're all made at the same time right you have to replace all four it costs a fortune so i just said get yourself a ten dollar little gauge to check your tire pressure with the tire pressure gauge fixing this is gonna cost a ton of money to fix it good because if you change the front left one sure it'll start working but then the other three soon are gonna go out because it says their batteries are low at least now you know how the stupid systems work that you're going to need a really specialized tool to check i'm not an even a good scan tool most of them won't even read them i'll just live with this one well it's been about 40 minutes now messing with those things so let's check the overheating problem well as we look at the gauge it certainly is not overheated anymore so yeah putting this fan in front to take place of the condenser fan that isn't there from the wreck it's all problems now the customer is a soldier he's pinching pennies so i told him i don't go buy the super expensive nissan fan they want a ton for those things go to autozone o'reilly any discount auto parts store and get an electric fan mount it there put a toggle switch in the dash put in a 20 amp fuse you can turn it on when you want when you're in traffic turn it off on a highway who knows it was wrecked in the front maybe it even damaged the computer you might buy a new fan and hook it up the way it was set up and it won't work you just get a fan they're less than 100 bucks usually put a fan there some wire toggle switch and a fuse then you got simplicity itself or go buy all the nissan parts and spend a fortune it's your choice at least you know how you can fix them now here i got a 2001 dodge stratus and you can all learn from this man's sad experience with a repair shop now he inherited it from his parents and you can see you know it's a typical dodge they get older the paint starts feeling off of them because they didn't paint them right and things fade off but it was a good transportation car until he took it to this garage in clarksville it was older had 117 000 miles now it's only got like 120 000 miles and it was time to change the timing belt and it's got this mitsubishi 2.4 liter 16 valve engine that has a rubber timing belt they're interference engines they're not bad engines they put out a reasonable amount of horsepower but they're interfering so if that rubber timing belt gets to be old and it was 19 years old and mileage i changed every nine to 100 it was a little over a hundred it's time to change the timing belt because if the rubber belt breaks the pistons hit the valves good by engine now this particular one is an interference engine because it's a single overhead cam engine if it had been the double overhead cam engines they are not interference engines i mean regardless you got to change the time about every 100 000 miles anyways but this particular one is an interference engine so he was being wise changing the belt so he takes it to the garage right and they hit him for almost 800 bucks it was 775 bucks and they said they replaced the timing kit and everything but they didn't do such a hot job and this particular mitsubishi design and the balance sheet keeps the engine from vibrating when you're idling relatively powerful four-cylinder engines they had a tendency shaking and idling so they put the balance shaft in it to balance it out obviously when the guy put it together he didn't time the balancing shafts correctly you got to put the timing belt on the times the cam but you also have to do the balance shaft as a belt and that has to be set up perfectly it counter rotates to keep it from vibrating and that's time too and if the timing on the counter bounce shafts is off guess what it's good it's gonna shake like this thing does as you can see this thing shakes a lot it runs okay other than shaking the gas mileage is about the same as it always was he took it back right away and they said oh don't worry the shaking will settle down after you drive it a while now 4 000 miles later car's still shaking exactly the same i'm looking at this thing and it says uh technician was eric so i asked the customer here i said does eric still work there well the owner said no eric we had problems with eric you know he would screw up too much and we had to fire him but he did a good job on your car now come on now he trusted this guy shouldn't have trusted the guy how can you tell somebody he fired a guy because he wasn't a good worker but no no he didn't screw up your car right that's just the way that it goes they didn't screw that he obviously did he was in a hurry he didn't do the job right he didn't get the balance on maybe he doesn't even have the timing right i'm assuming the timing is still good because uh it would get crappy gas margin wouldn't run right on highway which it runs okay but it doesn't idle right so check out my fancy scan tool and see what's going on all right we got it plugged in it's doing an auto link now there's no cause we're gonna start it up and we're gonna look at live data ld as you can see the ignition time is moving around eight ten nine ten and i'm not touching the accelerator it's doing it by itself it even went up to eleven once it should not go eight nine ten eleven as you can see that would hit twelve okay eight to twelve at idle that's totally unacceptable is it's stable when we rev it up but idle it is not stable we'll let off the gas and you'll see now it's moving around again it's idling it should stay the same and it's not it's going eight it's going nine eight it's moving all over the place ten so obviously the timing wasn't even set right maybe the balance shaft is on or off i can't get any data on this on this old thing it won't show anything about balance shaft data there's no data for it but it's shaking so much at idle that's part of the problem too but as you can see the ignition time isn't right either so the whole job was boxed up obviously the job wasn't done right and the guy the balls are saying well we fired a guy because he wasn't a good mechanic but in your case he did a good job but basically the whole shop i kind of renege on anything they do because of this he's getting a bunch of squeaking on that side of the car and they said oh yeah you know don't worry about it a little the power steering nothing else is wrong well he changed all these parts these bushings and mounts and guess what happened after he changed those parts the noise went away so the bushings and parts around he misdiagnosed that too whoever he had work on it i was a different mechanic because that guy didn't work there anymore that's the problem with places that are either not honest or just plain incompetent i'm assuming this is more incompetence in the first place runs decent enough but i'm going to take it for a road test and show you what else is wrong it seems like the transmission's starting to go don't close the hood take it for a little spin not to shake quite a bit we're going to back it up and take it for a road test so i feel like i'm in a tent it's the typical chrysler hood liners garbage and it's all falling down especially in the back there and the owner just told me the turn signal front melted and fell off but let's see how the tranny's going good thing for him they don't do car inspections every year they would never pass other than the shaking it still runs okay but he's worried about the transmission and let it be known these things are no choice for failure of transmissions this kind of mileage 121 000 miles so we'll come to a stop here and then we'll check out the transmission okay we're at zero let's see how it goes one two shifted kind of light three is really not shifting until i let go then it shifts i mean it still runs but you can see second to third shifts too high but when you're on third to fourth it really you got to take your foot off the gas otherwise it'll stay and it won't shift that just basically shows the transmission's starting to go up that's pretty typical on these with this kind of mileage a lot of them don't even make it that far but i mean stuff on the gas it downshifts and goes it's drivable and considering the shape of the car i just leave the thing along now he has changed the fluid filter himself and didn't make any difference these things just wear out but cruising along it goes good enough i mean it's a knock around car but he got ripped off by the guy that didn't do a good job and they did the timing belt it's quite obvious and the owner of the start just didn't stand behind it they kept trying to sell them other stuff i mean let's face it we got the wind flapping away there's the headliner in the back window flopping all over the place where you're going down the road like a flag and this sparks practically being sucked out by a like a tornado sucking it out it's just coming apart you can see the front of the hood where it's all really starting to peel off now i mean it still runs down the road but basically he got ripped off and the owner of the shop basically obviously doesn't care in an old car like this is always going to be shaking a little idle anyway nobody's going to put too much money into one of these things you roll the windows up it's not all that noisy i mean yeah when you come to an idol it starts shaking and everything it's a plastic dodge what do you expect you know everything here you see the dashes starting to come apart fall apart it's just plastic cheapness that's all and when you think about it it doesn't have any trouble codes which is really phenomenal for a 21 year old dodge normally they got all kinds of coats that doesn't have any coats everything's green like they say nobody's going to put a bunch of money into this car the hood release is broken you open it from the front you can see the paints all coming off but as far as i'm concerned it could still be like one of those old chrysler vans they fall apart but some guys are driving them while they're falling apart and they got a couple hundred thousand miles they're still going down the road what the heck it's still there's no that bad it's just a shame that the car was running fine and not shaking and he took it into the sky paid 780 dollars for a job that by the way all data says it's a three and a half hour labor job so it's really not a 780 job be that as it may they didn't do it right and when he got it back it started shaking and they just said i'll just wait a while it'll go away now don't ever let that happen to you you take it and it shakes and didn't shake for make them fix it or don't pay him and get your car back and go somewhere else now this is totally safe to drive around the transmission yes it's starting to go out that's going to do it on its own and it runs good enough gas mileage is about the same that it always was he said so not a horrendous bad deal but still get something shaken that didn't shake before don't let it pass by and then later they'll say oh well that's too late now there's nothing you can do about it do it right away this is a big reason i tell people if you ever get getting a wreck get in the car from the body shop do not sign the check until you road test that car tell them i'm taking it for road test i want to see what it's like do not give them the money because once they get that money too bad they're not going to care and your s-o-l you get in a situation like he does it shakes right after you get the car back and didn't shake before take it back especially something like a timing belt if it's not right off maybe one tooth or not tension correctly it's going to make the engine idle poorly which is exactly what this thing is doing and you saw with my scan tool the timing was bouncing all over the place showing it wasn't done right so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 245,333

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car mechanic scams, mechanic scam, mechanic scams, mechanic scams caught, mechanics, scam, scam mechanic, scamming, scammers caught, scams, car mechanic, car scams, car repair scams, auto repair shop, car repair shop, bad mechanic, car repair scam, auto repair shop scam, mechanic shop, worst mechanics, bad mechanics, scam caught, scam caught on camera, caught on camera

Id: J9DwWV_QPx4

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2022