one, two, three, four! Rev up your engines! It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel today I'm going to help you answer the
question, how to find a good mechanic, now if you've been watching any of my videos,
you'll know I normally make videos to show people how they can fix their own
cars, but with the complexity of modern cars, a lot of times you're going to have to
pay a mechanic to do some of your work because even a somewhat older car like
this 99 Saturn, as many computerized parts, that you need such a machine to do
serious work on and if you have a more modern car like this 2004 Toyota Sequoia,
realize it's even more computerized, the heating and air conditioning system is
all run by computers, as is the transmission and automatic track control,
so there's absolutely no way you can work on those systems without one of
these fancy computers, so the first quest in your search for a good mechanic, is
ask to see their equipment, see if it's the correct equipment for your car and
if the only stuff they have is a little cheap hundred dollar scan tool like this,
go away and find another mechanic, now the second thing to look for in the
quest for a good mechanic is, find an old dog like me who's willing to learn new
tricks, because nothing beats experience when working on cars, I've been working
on them for the last 45 years, now I've got nothing against young people, hey I
was young once, but I didn't know one-tenth of what I know now, so if all
you see at a shop is a bunch of young guys running around, you run away and go
to a place that's got older guys, and if you go someplace that says, oh yeah we fix
everything, don't believe that, heck even I use a front end alignment shop when I
get cars aligned, because I'm not going to buy all that equipment, Harvey how long
have you been doing front-end alignments, about forty three years,
so you've seen everything, just about, would you rather pay Harvey less than
100 bucks or get that experience yourself and end up buying a whole bunch
of equipment to do it with too, see even guys like me use other mechanics, why get
all that specialty equipment, when that's all they do and they're experts at it, and
when it comes time to find a good mechanic, here's some advice not to do , do
not use the internet, as an example I typed good mechanic
in Houston, found a bunch of different things and then did a little research
and found out that some of those mechanics were really bad mechanics that
all us mechanics know about and would never send anybody to,
they do things like having their mechanics or their friends write really
good reviews about them, some of them are so fantastic, you know they're fake, one
of the reviews had me laughing my head off, saying how, oh this mechanic is the
best I ever met he even let me and the wife stay at his house overnight
while he fixed our cars, who's going to believe that one, what you really want is
word of mouth, friends that have taken their cars to an actual mechanic and
have had good experiences, then you can go and meet him and talk to him, you can
see if they're regular people that are doing an honest job, or whether they're
acting like PT Barnum and are looking for a sucker every minute, and while
you're at it, look at the kind of cars he's working on, if you drive a Toyota
and everything in there is a Mercedes Benz,
you might thing about going somewhere else, and here's a trick I learned years ago,
look at the cars in the lot and see when the inspection and registration
stickers are good, because years ago I knew a guy who had a shop and he filled
the parking lot with old junky cars that weren't even on the road anymore, just to
sucker people then, seen that birds of a feather flock together and he's got lots
of customers, so you'll be another one, if it's full of all junky cars and all the
registrations are way out of day, hey walk away from there too, and while
you're at it, don't be too impressed by any these mechanic certificates, that
some people get, there's lots of guys that can take tests and get a
certificate, but they can't even tie their own shoelaces when it comes to
actually fixing cars, because in these days with modern equipment on the
internet, anyone with a brain who wants to fix cars, they can do it themselves,
they don't need a certificate, so if you're looking for a good mechanic, now
you know what to do and if you're lucky maybe one like me will pop out of your
trunk, and you remember if you've got any car questions just visit the Scotty
Kilmer channel and I'll answer them as soon as I get done knocking this
building down!
