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[Slowhand]

It's basically the same as on a fox.

Figured as much. Hello project to break the monotony of studying for the CPA exam. By the time I'm done fiddling with my car to avoid studying, it may not be such a piece of shit anymore. Maybe.

[shumpertdavid]

Give it time, it only just started 10 months ago. Of course I think there's only 2-3 people who actually work on their car, the other half just tell stories of how bad shops are that do the work for them.

I'm in the 2-3 that actually work on their cars, and I twist wrenches a for a living, so I guess the other half tell stories about me. It really is a shame to see so many posts about how a shop screwed someone and they took that as an opportunity to learn to work on cars, etc. I got started working on things as a young kid from watching my dad work on his stuff. I had a natural desire to see/find out how things worked. I'd take stuff apart and eventually got to where I could put it together. I progressed from there to working on my motorcycles, it's what I had to do if I wanted to ride. Living in the sticks there weren't any shops around, I couldn't afford to pay and have things fixed, and no way to get it there if I could have. My dad was a great teacher in that he would tell me how "WE" were going to fix something. He'd send me out with a short list of things to complete and to come get him when I hit a tough spot. Amazingly he never seemed to make it out to help me when I hit the tough spot. He'd tell me just a minute and I'll be there. After numerous times of "just a minute" i'd dig in a little deeper and so forth until it was apart. When it came time to reassemble I'd go to him for help/advice to which he'd say "I didn't see how it came apart, you better get to remembering". I learned a lot that way, mostly the hard way, but it gave me a lot of basics. Hell at @ 11 or 12 I can remember him sending me out put tie rod ends on our Montero before taking a 10 hour trip 1 way. Thinking back he never even double checked my work, lot of faith he had lol.

Anyway, I was in the market for something other than washing the dishes at a local restaurant when my mom told me of a co-workers son that would be leaving his job at a local service station. After Several months of buggin the owner for a job application he finally caved and gave me one. Nearly didn't get the job over my mop of a haircut, leather jacket, earing, and vehicle I drove at the time, but the guy leaving gave me a good report and I was hired. After slowly being allowed to wrench a little on customer cars (water pump, minor brakes, basic stuff for me at the time), the tech started helping me with pointers and teaching me diagnostics. I'll be forever grateful of Tom's patience, willingness to share his labor ($), and friendship. I really do consider our shop (Tom's moved on to full time ministry which left me as the only tech in our little "old gas station" garage) to be in the small group (as so many people make it out) of shops that do quality/honest work. I make mistakes and don't always get the diagnoses right, but I strive to resolve the problem at the cheapest\quality job I can. I like to sell the customer a job they need rather than a bunch of parts or maintenance I can pursuade them to. I do push timing belts (specifically on interference engines), fuel filters (mostly on domestics because of the amount of fuel pump failures from restricted filters), and a few other items that promote good car health and longevity. We've had our share of unhappy customers, but we try to resolve the problem as best we can. I've swallowed my pride more than once to try to keep a customer or at least maintain a respectful parting.

[crapstang]

David does great work. I wanted to work on that cooper S we threw at him, but between my cars, my brother's car, and my parents other cars, and my part time job as a fleet mechanic, I had my hands way more than full.
I'll try to dig up some "howto" stuff with camera pictures etc. I got tired of taking pictures of my work and just did it, now those need to be dug out of some camera file deep in the septic of the computer.