3 Mechanic Scams Caught on Camera

now the lady who owns this car is a new customer she had taken it to one of these chain discount auto repair shops some young kid was working on it when she got it back it still smelled exactly the same she knew something was up that they didn't do a very good job fixing it they said they put a valve cover gasket in well we're going to take it apart see if they actually did or if they totally ripped her off or probably even worse they put the gasket on crooked or something and it's leaking even worse so let's take it apart it's a relatively easy job and i just got a few of my tools in this plastic case then i have to keep running back and forth basically you just need the sockets a ratchet and a little extension and the first thing we're going to do with the 10 millimeter socket is take off the stupid beauty cover just in the way really doesn't serve any purpose other than making it more annoying to repair take the two bolts off get out of the way then we're going to remove the ignition coils because they're in the way it's another 10 millimeter there's four of them one two three four and we can take them all out easily and i put the screws up here so i don't lose them and if you're the forgetful sword take a picture of it with your phone then you'll know which one goes where and you won't screw up putting it back together oh just move out of the way put them over here now they're out of the way then we got to take these stupid hoses off just twist this off comes a piece of the hose and there's another hose here on this end we squeeze a little clamp this one's a little stuck so we'll pry it with a screwdriver that's the easy way to get them off now that's out of the way and we just have to remove all the bolts that hold it in place and handy enough they're all 10 millimeters too we'll just loosen them one at a time there's a whole bunch of them they're all over the place don't forget the ones in the middle and the ones in the back can't even see back there so get the old flashlight out so we don't miss any of them now they're all loose and we'll take them off can remove them one at a time i put them in the front here so i'll remember where i put them once you loosen them they're real easy to get off by hand just look close make sure they're all gone all right nothing to hold now then we'll pull it off off we pull it comes off they put a new gasket it's supple silicone but they twisted it and had it crooked so it was leaking down now we're not going to make that mistake so i use this 3m weatherstrip glue when i get the new gasket i'm going to put all glue on the inside if you notice when i pulled this off it just fell out not being glued in when he put it down it pinched sideways and then leaked you glue certain spots push it in and let it dry for about half an hour then it won't slip and pinch like it did with them then while we're waiting for the gasket to come they're delivering it we're gonna wipe the edge off to get all the oil off it fell through when it was pinched the whole way around get it nice and clean while we're waiting we'll see this thing has 72 348 miles which for our toyota rav4 is nothing even though it's 12 years old barely broken in and when we look at the top of the inside of the engine it's an immaculate shape cams are all clean there's no sludge build up or anything everything's nice and shiny this car's been taken care of in the timing chain tight as can be which is a good thing it was a much better design when they went to timing chains originally at timing belt so rubber would break and they were pain in the butt to change these have chains change the oil really take care of it they can last basically forever since the chain's inside the engine the cover's off so we see inside it's bathed in oil the whole time so it stays lubricated and it can last indefinitely now we have the gasket what we'll do is we'll put little bits of this weather trim sealer in little parts every once in a while a little hair a little in the middle a little hair then a couple dots in the middle there and a little there put that on tight so it doesn't leak or dry out then you just get the whole gasket assembly check out which way it goes goes this way and we'll start putting it on and realize this goes in the middle so we'll push that in a little then you just feed the whole thing around press it in so it snaps you want it in tight that's nice and tight and make sure it's all in its grooves the whole way around the previous person didn't do it this fell off when i picked it up because it was just in loose when you put it on it twisted this way it can't twist you make sure it's nice and solid in with the 3m weather stripping in the middle too and then let it dry about an hour okay now it's dry you can see you can hang it upside down it's not going to fall off and mess up like the previous guy's work did then we simply place it back in place line up the studs get all the wires out of the way so a little wire stuck over here then we'll start with the big bolts in the middle because you want to tighten it from the middle out and we want to do all the middle ones so we'll put this one here and there's one in the back and we tighten from the middle out we'll do the back metal one get it finger tight then the front middle one finger tight then the inside two we get them finger tight then we do all the other bolts working our way out then once you snug them all up from the inside out you then get them tied with a ratchet from the inside out so we'll start on the back we'll get it tight it touches then just a little snug the same thing here get it so it's snug then we'll do the inside one here the other inside one then we do the outside ones and the other outside one and the top one here and then the top one on the other side and then the last two now we know they're nice and tight and we know they didn't bend and twist and leaking like before because we had glued parts in so it didn't fall down and overlapped now we find the hose that's over here somewhere there it is put that back on squeeze that clamp on it goes then we'll go over to the other side through the pcv hose squeeze the clamp now the ignition coils go back on get them out of the hole they fell into that one goes there it goes here and that one goes there and we put the four 10 millimeter bolts back in you got to wiggle to line them up then we just tighten them all up then we get the ratchet out and finish them off thing we're going to check the oil cap to the old one the gasket's pretty much flush it's worn out here's a new one with a new gasket you can see this gasket's going to seal better than this one so we're going to change the cap too now people often don't think about the cap but that dumb gasket can wear out so it's on then get it nice and snug and of course you don't know how much oil is lost so we'll check the oil it's not even on the dipstick so we're gonna have to add some oil so we'll add some oil put in one cord first and as we measure it we can see it's on the bottom dot that means it needs a whole quart so in goes another quart so we'll check it again and now it's on the top dot it's full screw the cap back in make sure that gasket doesn't fall off and of course we're going to start it up check for oil leaks and voila no more leaks it's all dry now this toyota overheated this guy took it to the toyota dealer toyota dealer charged them 531 dollars and all they did was change the radiator hoses and put new coolant in talk about a rip-off but the worst thing is it didn't fix the car it's still overheating i see that so much these days everybody's in a hurry to make money just change the hoses and put cooling in it for 531. they obviously did not road test the car he got it back it's still overheating so i look at the bill and i look at the car it's got 200 000 something miles on it what's on the bill they didn't even mention that they replaced the thermostat so they didn't change the thermostat thermostats are closed when it's cold they open up to flow when the engine's warmed up 200 something thousand miles they'll often wear out right common sense they charge them 531 bucks to change some hoses and coolant they certainly should have changed the thermostat now that just shows poor training poor quality of work and this was at the dealership let's hope that changing this thermostat is going to fix it and if it does i'm going to advise my customer to go back to the dealer demand all of his money back because it's just total fraud they didn't do the simple thing these young mechanics that a lot of places have they don't even analyze the stuff and they certainly don't road test it when they're done they don't know it's fixed any fool knows if the thing overheats and you don't see any obvious problems change the thermostat it could stick shot right so we're going to try that see if it fixes it first we'll put a pan underneath to catch the coolant so we don't waste it now in this case the thermostat is hiding it's down here there it is right here it's got a bolt in the top and a bolt on the bottom you can see the bottom bolt there we're gonna take it out and change it now maybe out of sight but it shouldn't be out of mind in a good mechanic that's the first thing they should have changed i don't know what they're using at these dealerships what kind of mechanics they're hiring if they don't even do something that simple 10 millimeter socket put a little extension on and unbolt it yeah there isn't much working room but and it's on tight but it's not that big of a deal there's one 10 millimeter bolt put it here so we don't lose it and we'll do the other one and the bottom one's harder to get so we're going to use a deep well 10 millimeter where there's a well there's a way if it sticks in deep just use a deep well socket to get over the thread not that easy to see but it's not that hard of a job now i can get it with my bare finger and here comes number two then we just pull on it now it comes there's the thermostat not judging by the corrodedness of the gasket this is the original one why oh why they didn't replace the thermostat is beyond me i guess it must have been a young mechanic who doesn't know that much about cars didn't think oh thermostat it's a car with 200 something thousand miles try the cheapest part that could possibly fix it no 500 worth of hoses that he probably didn't need and it didn't fix the problem because they didn't even road test a new thermostat and gasket will put it in it just pushes back in the hole right there there's the new one pushed in its hole then you just put the thermostat cover on it and bolt it up just slide it back on and bolt it on first put them on finger tights so the gasket doesn't slip you don't want the gasket slipping then you can get the deep well socket 10 millimeter flip it and tighten it up then you put coolant back in we get our pan and it looks to me like they even lied about new coolant this cooling is pretty old and dirty looking so i'm draining it all out and i'm going to put new coolant in now you notice this is xerix but it's asian vehicle one you don't have to go buy the expensive stuff at toyota realize toyota does not make coolant they just buy it from somebody this is what's called the haute coolant hybrid organic acid technology and that's when you're using this car so after draining it up i'm putting new stuff in it's always better to use the 50 50 dilution that way it always stays 50 50. if you use pure you don't know what's inside 50 50 is what you want so buy it that way it costs a little more but what the heck it works right now we have to get the air out of the system so we're going to start the car and turn the ac on full blast now that makes the ac fan come on so it'll keep it cool while it's warming up as you can see the fan's blowing and another trick is this also turn the heater on full blast because then the heater will recirculate and get air out of the heater core which is hiding inside here air can get stuck in there and as it warms up add it and we're also going to replace the radiator cap this is the original one with 200 something thousand miles the springs will wear out over time but before you put it on we let the car warm out to get the air out but then we let it sit for about 40 minutes because then if there's any air a lot of times it'll migrate and you can pour more coolant in all the way to the top you can see a bunch of air migrated then we're going to start it up again and check it then top it up the rest of the way keep going until all the bubbles are gone then put the top on nice and tight the old cap it came off real easy loose this is nice and tight you can see them now we're going to take it for a good road test so we'll start it up start right up and away we go so where we go on a magical mystery tour we can see it's staying a little under halfway so far and away we go we're driving a good half hour on the highway we're okay on the highway now we're gonna try it in town so far it's staying good you want to test it both on the highway and in town 15 20 minutes of each now as you can see it stayed pretty much in the middle but there's one thing i'm worried about now and that's a possibility with all this overheating since it happened twice after it was fixed it happened again it could have damaged the head gasket it's going to let it cool down and do a head gasket test put a big fan in front and let it cool down and in about half an hour we'll do a head gasket leak test to see if the head gasket's been damaged well now we'll turn the fan off and we'll test the head gasket so we get our block leak test take the top off and we'll pour in some of the blue liquid you can see it's blue put the top back on let me stick it in the radiator make a vacuum with the pump now we start the vehicle see if it changes colors if it goes blue to yellow head gasket's blown so here we go as you can see it's starting to turn it's not yellow yet but it's getting yellow it's not the solid blue that it was before and what that means is it's got a small leak i'm gonna try some sealer maybe it'll work maybe it won't it's got 244 thousand miles it's probably time to say goodbye to this car now even though it ran okay for me it was starting to lose a little cool and i had to add some more cooling to it so that shows it's burning the coolant now i put in some head gas concealer you just pour it in we'll see what happens maybe it'll work maybe it won't but it's probably time to say goodbye to this car because i can't say if it blew after the dealer had worked on it or whether it was blown when they had it and they just didn't do a good job and didn't test the system like i did with a block leak test to see if the head gasket had been damaged obviously it has some damage hey maybe the sealer will last a while who knows but it was not repaired and diagnosed correctly at the dealer for sure because all they had to do is that simple test i just did to see that well the head gasket's blowing and then you wouldn't have put hoses and all kinds of stuff on you would have just said okay it overheated why did it overheat well the head gasket's blowing do you want to repair it or you want to forget because that was 500 something dollars just wasted really but i am trying to seal her i put in some bars head gas concealer you let it idle for half an hour with the heat and the ac on then you let it cool for half an hour and you repeat that six times or so let it sit overnight then pray a whole bunch that it'll hold up now my customer he bought this car brand new and he loves it he's got a hundred something thousand miles on it but last year he took it to a toyota deal for servicing and they said you need your rear differential replaced or rebuilt for thousands of dollars and it's unsafe to drive it that way trying to scare them into spending all that money now my wife's brother he had one and they tried to ream him in houston texas with a power steering pump he had it for 10 years they said you need a power steering pump so they ordered it but it never came or they never called them two years later he was still driving the thing around and had no problems at all and that was like a 600 repair this thing would have been thousands so not trusting them they took it to an independent mechanic who said there's nothing wrong with the rear end or the differential and this was a year ago and you needed druts in the back because they weren't out so he put the struts on but he didn't touch the differential see it's still the original differential under here he's got the shocks on the back of springs but the differential is still the same as it was a year ago and realize this is a limited all-wheel drive a lot of them are just front-wheel drive but this is all-wheel drive front and rear and they told them the rear diff was going out and it was dangerous a couple weeks later after that work they took it to a different toyota dealer who looked up the paperwork that had been done at toyota they got it on computers what did they say didn't need anything there was nothing wrong with the differential now these toyota dealerships were like 20 30 miles apart it just shows that just because they're a dealership doesn't mean they're going to treat you honestly that they're going to give you a fair deal now the second guy granted the toyota whoever owned that toyota dealership they were doing the fair thing but the first dealership they out and out lied to the guy kind of reminds me when i was back in houston and that old lady bought the toyota tacoma made in mexico and they hit it for 12 grand more than it was supposed to be sold for and they said ah too bad you signed the paperwork but then after all scotty made a video on it the next day she goes in and they gave her a check for 12 000 saying oh this was all one big mistake this is the same dealership that said there's nothing we can do about it you signed the paperwork but after i made the video magically she got a twelve thousand dollars back here the owner was very smart he didn't take their word for it for that kind of money he went someplace else and found out he didn't need that work done at all and that's a big deal that's why you have to not trust anybody these days when you're getting your car worked on if they're trying to sell you expensive stuff and to me it kind of amazes me because sometimes i get people go to a dealership and they'll tell them they need 6 dollars worth of work and it'll be on a car that's worth maybe two thousand dollars i mean to me it's just like they're crooks but they're foolish crooks because nobody's gonna spend that money you think they could maybe hit them for a thousand or eight hundred but no they make these inflated prices up and in this case they completely made it up here we go from the second dealer they say inspector driveshafts found a little play inspected the rear differential differentials operating as designed so here we go around and what do i hear in the rear end i don't hear anything there's nothing wrong with the differential whatsoever now of course if you watch any of my videos the toyota siennas are really the best fans in the world there's no arguing that the only thing that i've ever seen go wrong with them is some of them as they age the intermittent steering shift goes bad and you got to replace them it's a thousand something dollar job but this one doesn't have enough knowledge for that yet and it's not really worn out they just basically tried to rip them off for a very expensive differential when it didn't need any work done at all so realize just because you buy a dependable car it doesn't mean you're not going to get high repairs with dishonest shops i have seen this happen so many times i even had a guy come to me once he said i'm getting rid of my toyota corolla it was the worst car i ever had i kept having to spend all this money on repairs so i checked out the car it turns out that probably none of them ever needed doing if you got a toyota corolla i've seen them with 300 000 miles and the only thing i've ever done was oil changes and brake jobs that is it some of them didn't even change the transmission fluid and they were still running perfectly fine so don't let people sell you into things think of that oh i'll take it to the dealer they do good work and they know what they're talking about and these guys have millions of dollars of overhead who pays it you is the customer so they'll just make stuff up and i see it all the time unfortunately usually it's not this bad where they tell you you need thousands of dollars repair on a rear end when there's absolutely positively nothing wrong with it but still you ever get a big quote find somebody who's honest he was lucky he had an independent mechanic who said no and then the other toyota dealer agreed probably because he found out that the independent mechanic said there's nothing wrong and it would make him look bad if he said yes the other dealer was right so you still got to know somebody who knows what they're talking about but don't take anybody's word as gospel on any car with any repair especially a toyota that doesn't break unless you have a really serious problem and even then you want it analyzed correctly if you see my video finding a source of car noises you get a device like that that's got four sending units you put one in different parts of the car then you put on the headphones and drive it and you click one two three four sensors listen to the noise until you pinpoint where the noise is from always have that done if somebody tells you you need something like a transmission or rear end i've seen it where guys wanted to sell a differential for thousands of dollars it was an axle bearing the actual bearing was like 40 and yeah the labor is like maybe 200 but it's not thousands of dollars so always make sure they're not trying to sell you something that you don't need that's super expensive because look at the sienna the leather seats are still in good shape the car's in excellent shape why would you want to get rid of a car that runs that good they were just hoping that they could sell them an expensive repair because they like the vehicle i mean i've seen these things with half a million miles on them right and this is like 150 so it's got a lot of life left in it but they just thought oh well it's so nice inside and everything let's see how much they can gouge them for 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: 1,456,002

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car mechanic scams, mechanic scam, mechanic scams, mechanic scams caught, mechanics, scam, scam mechanic, scammer, 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: kxiIv-L7iZA

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021