Never Say This to a Mechanic

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

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Rating: 4.9280386 out of 5

Keywords: 5 things you should never say, auto, auto repair, automotive maintenance, automotive mechanic, automotive mistakes, car, car advice, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, how to deal with a mechanic, how to talk to a mechanic, mechanic, mechanic secrets, mechanic tips, mechanic trade secrets, mechanic tricks, never say, never say this to a mechanic, never say this to men, repair, scotty kilmer, stupid, things you should never say, mistake, mistakes, never, mechanic fails, fail, fails

Id: m5bgMwTfjTU

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019