Chatting with the Humble Mechanic, Charles Sanville & a review of the Toyota Grand Highlander

WATD presents John Paul, The Car Doctor, All Things Automotive.

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Call or text 7-8-1-837-4900.

Now, here's John Paul, The Car Doctor.

Good Sunday morning everyone and welcome to another edition of the Car Doctor program

on 959WATD.

My name's John Paul, The Car Doctor here to help you with your car problems

and this is where we talk about all kinds of interesting things.

And we have a very interesting guest with us today.

We have Charles Sandville, the humble mechanic.

Charles, good morning and welcome to the Car Doctor program.

Good morning.

Appreciate you having me.

Hope everybody's been awesome today.

It's one of those days in New England.

It's started off nice.

It's sunny.

It's a good day.

It's a good day to be here.

Let's talk a little bit about you.

You originally didn't start as a mechanic, right?

So I have had the fortune or misfortune to have had several terrible jobs.

Some great ones too though.

So I actually kind of found my way into being a technician

after working a series of really crappy retail jobs

that I think most of us have probably had to suffer through,

working some pretty bad retail job,

finding my way into car sales, which was a very short stint.

But what that led me to was meeting a handful of guys

that went to an automotive tech school nearby.

And I was like, well, that's kind of fun.

I wasn't like a deeply passionate car person

as much as I was a kind of person and really like growing up.

The kid that was the kid that took everything apart

to try to figure out how it worked

and had medium to poor success putting back together

at least early on in my career.

And so, yeah, you know, finding that path of becoming a technician

was I want to say I stumbled into it

because it really wasn't that simple, I guess.

But I did kind of stumble into it

and found that I really enjoyed fixing things

and went to tech school, trained with Volkswagen for a few months

and then packed up and moved to a place that I'd never been before

to do a job I'd never done before.

That sounds pretty exciting.

That almost sounds like when I got married,

when I was in my early 20s,

I gave my two weeks notice just before I was going to go on my honeymoon

to start a new job as a new mechanic somewhere.

So no stress there, you know, new wedding, new wife, new job.

So same kind of idea.

And you worked as a tech for what, 15 or 20 years?

Yeah, I worked as a dealer for right around 15 years,

same dealer I had, you know, such a wonderful fortune

of landing at a really great dealership that was pretty new.

I think they'd only been open about six months,

give or take when I started.

And I started with another group of guys that were all really fresh

right out of basically the same school that I had just wrapped up at.

And so there was, I don't know, seven of us.

It was about half the shop.

So yeah, probably about seven of us that all kind of came up together

learning how to fix VWs.

And this was back in 2004.

So it was a really cool time in the VW space to be a new guy.

I don't know about being a veteran might have,

might have not been quite as great,

but this was right when the Torag, the Peyton, the W8 Passat

was still pretty new at the time.

I think those came out the year, model year before,

but the Mark IV R32, all these cars were brand new.

And what that really brought for me was a group of people that worked

with me that didn't really want to dive into the brand new stuff.

And me coming along, not knowing like you weren't supposed to not

want to work on anything.

You were supposed to only do the things that you wanted to do.

So I kind of positioned myself as the kid that didn't care about

what he was working on just wanted to learn and wanted to fix

the car that was in his day.

So for a time, really, I was the one working on the majority of the Torag,

the lot of the Peyton, and at the time it probably was a bit frustrating

because nobody knew about these cars.

The clients didn't know how to use the features in the cars.

The tech didn't know the technology because it was all brand new.

And even the technical support was pretty limited at the time.

We were all kind of learning together.

And as I can now look back at it, it was such an amazing, fortunate

thing for me because I was sort of trial by fire, right?

And I think that forced me into being a much better technician

than had I come in with no new cars, no new technologies,

just kind of learning the old stuff from the old timers.

And yeah, I'm thankful for it.

And it worked out pretty well.

It got to the point where I was making a ton of money doing mostly warranty work

on cars that nobody else wanted to work on.

Well, and I think that's where when we go a little bit further into this,

the idea that maybe not everyone is getting into this trade,

but it actually makes the people that are getting into the trade

that much more valuable and that much more likely to be paid better to do it.

Now, you said you went to trade school.

Was it like a UTI kind of place?

Yep, I went to the UTI campus in Glendale Heights, Illinois,

which is now the Lyle campus.

And then at the time, Volkswagen had a specific like VW training program

that was sort of curated through UTI.

And so I went right from UTI immediately to Volkswagen Academy,

which was kind of on the other side of the business park.

And then it was so funny because I was local, right?

I grew up like 40 minutes, well, probably more like an hour

from where this campus was.

And when talking to the recruiter, I was like, hey, man, like, you know,

I live here, all my family's here, all my wife's family's here.

It'd be awesome if we could stay.

He's like, well, you got about a 50-50 shot.

And like the Chicagoland area is pretty big.

So there's a lot of Volkswagen dealerships in the area.

And, man, I'll tell you, I can remember just so vividly

the first day of Volkswagen Academy, the instructor,

you know, you're kind of doing your casual introductions

and meeting everybody.

There's a group of like 12 of us, I think, in the class,

give or take.

And he's like, all right, so who's local?

And like me and three or four other people raised our hand.

He's like, who's trying to stay local?

And me and one other dude raised our hand.

He's like, all right, so here's the deal.

You want to stay in the Chicago area, you can.

There's exactly one dealership that generally will hire you.

And there's the downtown Chicago dealership

where your parts department is like two blocks over.

Your parking lot for getting cars is two blocks the other way.

And the advisors are in another building.

I was like, oh, well, that sounds terrible.

Not to mention I didn't want to commute to downtown Chicago every day.

So after much deliberation, my wife and I,

for lack of a better term, threw a dart at the map

and landed in central North Carolina, a place we'd never been to.

The first time I was in the state of North Carolina

was when I flew down for my job interview.

I flew down, got the job, rented an apartment,

and two weeks later, we got a moving van loaded up

and we're rolling.

Great story.

And then you did that for about 15 years

and then you started the whole social media thing

and you have over a million subscribers now, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.

There was actually a few years of overlap

where I was doing both as kind of two full-time jobs

which I don't necessarily recommend in the during period

but the end result worked out pretty well.

So the way this all came about was this was probably like 2010, 2011

and I've been working at the dealership, I guess,

at this point six, seven years now

and I'm looking at the terrain

and we're seeing the emergence of Facebook becoming really popular

and Instagram is fresh.

And I'm looking around and I see everything car-related

and the only thing I'm seeing is,

hey, come leave this new car on a really good deal

or here's a coupon for an oil change

and I was like, man, there's so much more that we do

than can be whittled down to a coupon for an oil change

or a lease deal on a car, right?

So I talked to my boss, I was like, hey,

I see an opportunity for us to share a little bit deeper

about what we do as a service department at the dealership

and I can't stress enough how great my dealership experience was.

Every day wasn't perfect and it had its frustration too

but overall it was really incredible.

We're such a different place

and it wouldn't be uncommon at all for you to walk through

any technicians there to walk through the waiting room

and say, oh, hey, Mrs. Jones, I haven't seen you in a year.

How are you? How's the kids? Whatever.

You see parents come in with the baby

and the next thing you know, they're seven

and then the next thing you know,

their older sibling is getting their first car.

So it was really cool, really special building that I worked on

and what that led me to was this mindset that we were different, right?

Everybody, every single person on the whole planet

that has ever known anyone with a car

probably has a bad mechanic story, right?

Got ripped off, got taken advantage of.

They didn't do the job that they said they were going to do all that stuff.

So because that was so different from what I was experiencing,

I was like, hey, we need to share this.

Like everybody that I worked with was a good dude, honest person.

Did we make mistakes? Of course we did.

Did stuff get broken? Absolutely.

Because that's what happens everywhere.

But at the end of the day, all of us really wanted to come in,

do our job, fix cars, get paid and go home, right?

And I wanted to share that story.

I wanted to share that not every tech is out there to rip you off.

Not every service department is out there to rip you off.

And I wanted to do it for the dealer

because I thought that just made sense, right?

So they let me do it.

They let me do it for like three weeks,

set up the Instagram account, set up the Facebook,

post some cool stuff that we're doing in the shop,

random tidbits about whatever just happened to be going on,

things that were great about a certain car,

things that maybe you wanted to be mindful of on a certain car.

And then, yeah, it was like two or three weeks later,

they called me in the office and they're like,

hey, we hired a company to do this.

So, you know, don't worry about it.

Give us passwords. I was like, wow, all right.

That was abrupt.

And so, you know, I sat on it for a while, man.

And like the thing that drove me nuts is that

everything I had said to them, I truly believe,

I still to this day believe that.

And it felt like there was still a story to tell, right?

There's still something to share.

And so I decided to just do it for myself.

And part of it was like, when someone tells you,

oh, you know, you'll never be successful at anything.

That was sort of a bit of motivation,

but I really just wanted to share with people like, hey,

here's some stuff I know about your car that you may not.

And I wanted to show people that there are good shops out there

that genuinely do care about you, care about your car,

and want to do a good job for you.

And so for, I don't know, two years probably

before I started making videos,

I was trying to figure all this stuff out, right?

Because, man, I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know, just like when I went to tech school,

I didn't know a single thing about fixing cars.

When I started on this journey,

I didn't know anything about anything internet related.

I didn't know anything about how to work a camera.

I didn't know anything about how to edit a video

when I eventually mustered up the courage to hit record

and watch myself talk to a little box in front of me.

And so it was a long journey at that point

because I legit had to learn every single piece of piece

because I didn't know anything.

But what that did for me is it allowed me to really suck

at all of it while nobody was watching

and nobody was paying attention.

So I'm thankful for that part of the journey

even though much like learning how to fix cars

on the hardest cars Volkswagen had had had at the time,

it was a lot of trial by fire there too,

but it worked out.

And I think that helped me really hone my skills

without the pressure of needing to be perfect.

Yeah, well, I mean, is that saying,

don't let perfection get in the way of good?

Yeah, well, that's never been a problem for me

because I think this is good enough

and as long as the information is accurate,

I don't mind if I stumble or stutter

or maybe didn't get the color grading cropped quite right

or whatever.

As long as the message is clear, I was cool with it.

Yeah, I mean, people have said to me,

well, you're a broadcaster and a journalist.

I'm like, no, I talk about car stuff

and write about car stuff and used to fix broken cars.

But let me stop for a second.

And you ended up building a shop at your house

to do all this fun stuff, right?

Yeah, so a bit of the timeline is in late 2014,

I had met some other guys that like did car videos

as their full-time job.

And me being so naive about it,

I didn't even know that was a thing you could do, right?

I had no idea.

And I was like, wow, that's awesome.

Like I'm writing all of this stuff down

in blog posts or whatever.

And I had been wanting to do videos for a while,

but the truth was I was scared to hit record.

And I didn't know what I was doing

as far as camera work or editing.

So it took me a while to get there.

But then I meet these guys that are like, yeah,

this is what we do full-time.

I was like, holy crap, that's awesome.

And so I took a couple stabs at it

and realized I could convey a message

that I was trying to convey so much faster

with more clarity and more contact in a video

than I could trying to write a coherent statement

on a website or whatever.

So late 2014, I kind of committed, okay,

we're going to give this video thing a crack

and see where it goes.

And it didn't go anywhere for a while.

And then it did.

And so it was so cool because I remember getting

like a random email that somebody saw the video that I did

and to give context of how long ago this was,

even though it doesn't feel like it was this long ago,

this video that I shot on how to use the Volkswagen jack

in the jack kit that comes with the car to change a tire,

I shot with my iPhone 3GS.

And this was before you could just jump on Amazon

and get like a little phone tripod mount.

So it's sitting on a tripod.

My wife is holding it on the tripod.

And it doesn't have audio enhancement, no microphone.

So I'm yelling as I'm trying to explain how to use this jack.

You know, like from a production standpoint,

the video is terrible.

But it delivered what it had intended to do, right?

It had intended to show people how to use this thing safely

because if you don't do it right,

it's a high risk piece of equipment.

And I got this email and it was like,

yo, I was, it probably didn't exactly say this.

It was just my memory of it.

Hey, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate that video.

I was stuck in a parking lot and I didn't know how to use everything.

So I YouTube it and your video came up

and I watched it and I was able to change my tire.

And I was like, holy crap, like something I did made

like a direct in the moment impact for somebody.

And that's incredible.

And so I then go look at the video and you know,

there's, I don't know, 50,000 views,

which was mental to me at the time

that that many people would watch the video of mine.

Maybe maybe it was 5000 views.

Honestly, it could have been could have been 12 views

and I would have been just as excited about it.

And I was like, okay, there's something here.

Let's keep going.

And I hammered the gas.

And so from late 2014 until early 2017,

I basically worked two full-time jobs.

I worked my dealership job.

And then I worked my internet job while having a newborn daughter

who was born in early 2015.

So it was, it was a full plate, right?

It was, it was a lot.

But the winding through that year and a half

or whatever period allowed me in mid 2017

to step away from my dealership job.

And I'm getting, I'm getting around to your question

about the shop.

Don't worry.

It allowed me to step away from my dealership job.

So what I did was I was just working out

of the garage at my house,

which was an unconditioned,

like just a normal house garage,

a small two-car garage with a mid-rise lift.

And I did hundreds of videos out of this garage

just because that's what I had access to.

And then in 2019 it got to the point where I was like,

okay, we need to, if I want to do anything bigger

than I'm doing, I need more space.

And we looked at a ton of different stuff, right?

We looked at moving to a place

where we could build a giant shop.

I came dangerously close to renting a facility.

Not far from my house, which would have allowed me to do

everything I wanted to do.

But the main thing was they wouldn't allow me

to ever put like an open for business sign.

And with the forever unknown internet space,

I didn't want to commit to spending thousands of dollars

a month and not be able to work on client cars, right?

Right.

So paused on that, decided,

okay, we're just going to build a shop at the house

and they broke ground to add this shop

in late February of 2020.

And so two weeks after they start, world shuts down.

And it actually worked out awesome

because I had a catalog of travel on the books already

that I was going to be going a lot of this build.

And so thankfully I didn't travel.

So I was home for the whole thing,

was able to make some decisions.

The kind of decisions you don't know are like

challenging decisions until you're faced with making them

like, where do the light switches go?

Where are the outlets?

You know, which way do you want this door to open?

Do you want your office to have two windows or one?

I'm sitting in my office here.

The answer is two, by the way.

Do you want a bathroom with a shower

or do you want just a bath?

Like all these random decisions that are vital to the shop.

So I was home for the whole thing.

We had almost no disruption or delay in building.

There was one thing with the HVAC company,

but it was like a day late.

So it was no problem.

Talking to the contractor later that year,

so it was like October of 2020,

he's like, had you waited,

it would have cost you about 40% more than it did.

I'm sure everybody remembers that late 2020

and prices of everything skyrocket, right?

Home Depot, everything at Home Depot tripled in price,

especially things like lumber.

So we really hit the jackpot.

And yeah, now I have this really nice shop with two lifts,

air conditioning, all the tools that a fellow technician

could ever dream of adding to that collection

sometimes more than I care for.

But yeah, it's great.

Now I have enough space.

Before we let you go, a couple more questions.

Is it worth becoming a mechanic technician these days?

So only you can answer that for yourself.

I do genuinely believe, though, for the right people,

there is insane opportunities in the automotive industry.

It's in a constant state of flux.

It always has been, it always will be.

There's always going to be opportunities.

It may look different than, I won't say may,

it will look different than it did for me when I started.

But you can have a great career, make a great living.

And truly one of my favorite parts is actually help people.

And this industry is not for everybody and that's okay.

And there are plenty of places where I would tell you

you shouldn't work, but there's a lot of really great shops

and that's just in the being a line mechanic space.

There's opportunities that I'll tell you,

I don't even know about that would be incredible for a lot of people.

Yeah, no, I totally agree.

And you did a video about a tool cart

and basically not having to mortgage your life away to the tool truck guy.

You don't need to spend, you don't need a wall of tools

to be a working technician.

So 100%, one of the negatives about starting as a technician is

unlike every other job in a shop or in a dealership,

they only have to come in like with a smile on their face

and maybe a pen, right?

As a technician, you're expected to come in

with every tool you need to do the job.

And so the dealer I worked at had asked me a couple years after I left

like, what can we do to stand out to recruit these young technicians?

I'm like, why don't you guys put up 1500 bucks, give them a tool cart

that if you want to put a, hey, you got to work here for six months

stipulation on it, fine.

Give them a tool cart.

They're not going to remanufacture a new Volkswagen with it,

but they're going to be able to come in

and do some basic stuff on day one

and you're to a dealership to recruit or hire someone $1,500

is pickle to a kid that just got out of tech school

and spent $30,000 or whatever it even is today

and is making the least amount of money in their career

as they probably will $1,500 is a ton of money.

And so that kind of kicked off a like,

a really interesting trajectory for me of like,

you can spend a limited amount of money

by tools that are good enough with a lifetime warranty

to get you going.

And then you can do kind of what I did.

I started off with all craftsman tools from like the 90s

and then upgraded when I went and where I either wanted to

because buying tools was fun or where I needed to

because the craftsman wasn't good enough.

And then I just brought those tools that I didn't use home

or kept the backup at the shop and it worked out really well.

We have such an amazing tool-dying opportunity

in today's day and age that wasn't there

when we were first buying our tool.

Yeah, no, just last year or the year before

I was tinkering with my wife's Volkswagen

and I needed triple squares.

And I stopped at the, I was leaving where I lived

and stopped at a snap-on truck and asked them

and I don't know a set of triple squares

or 200 bucks or something.

And I went down to Harbor Freight,

bought a perfectly adequate set for like $30.

And they work fine.

And if you break one, you want to return it?

Cool, if you break one, did you want to buy a whole other set?

Yeah, and if you break one twice

and you go, you know, maybe I will get this size

and snap on a Mac or Mac or something

that maybe it is a little bit more rugged,

but it did everything I needed to do.

And I think that video combined with the idea

that you can make a good living and not go crazy

with tool costs.

And like you said, you know, buying tools is fun

and it's somewhat addictive and, you know,

even doing home improvement projects.

It's like, oh, here's a new project.

Gotta buy a new tool, you know, kind of thing.

Oh, I love that. I love and hate that at the same time.

Yeah, absolutely.

You have a million subscribers.

You're like everybody who does what you do now

you seem to be workaholics.

I had Brian Lones, who I've known for 10 years on the program.

He's a NHRA announcer for Fox.

He's a lead announcer for Fox.

He ran the website bank shift with David Freiberger.

They started it together back in 2010, I think.

You know, he does like, he has like five jobs going

at the same time.

Would you put yourself in that sort of workaholic category?

Yeah, probably.

I would like to not put myself in that category,

but I don't know what it is about the majority

of the people that I've met that were like good technicians

seem to have a strong case of ADD

and aren't settling for just one thing, right?

There's always some random thing going on

that you're either side hustling to make a couple bucks

or doing as a hobby, like I'm sitting here looking

at this 3D printer that I have right here

that I'm actively learning as much as I possibly can

about among like 10,000 other little knick-knacky things.

So, yeah, look, I wasn't good at a lot of things,

especially growing up, but what I found

when I got my first like on-the-payroll job

is that I was actually pretty good at working.

Whatever it was, I found a way to get at it.

So you showed up every day with a good attitude?

I'll tell you, man.

The good attitude thing,

I don't know why it's so lost on so many people,

but that's a difference maker, right?

I was involved in hiring a lot of the technicians

that started after me,

and that was the thing we would always tell you,

like, if you don't know how to fix cars,

that's totally fine.

We can teach you how to do that,

but we can't teach you not to suck.

So come in, have a good attitude,

and you will set yourself apart from somebody that doesn't.

And I've witnessed it time and time and time again

of the tech that comes in, you know, ready to go,

excited versus the guy that'll sit on his toolbox

waiting for the great job to come in

because he didn't want to do the crusty job that,

like, let's be honest, nobody wanted to do it,

but it had to get done.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

In the YouTube world, do you have favorite YouTubers

that are in sort of the same space?

So this is going to probably surprise a lot of people.

So I do because I have, like, you know,

what started out as kind of colleague

but became personal friends of mine.

I have a handful of groups of people

that I consider personal friends, you know,

Paul from Deutsche Autoparts, Eric Cargai,

Engineering Explained, Chris Vicks,

all personal friends of mine.

And I consume almost zero automotive YouTube

because after working on cars all day

and dealing with my own YouTube, you know, Internet space,

I don't really want to think about cars

when I'm, like, winding down, chilling in the evening.

I want to do something else.

So, yeah, I don't consume a lot,

but I'm very thankful to have a group of friends

that are also in the space that, you know,

we can share ideas, positive and commiserate

when it's time to complain about stuff.

Yeah, no, you know, talking to Brian Lones a couple weeks ago.

I said, what do you watch on YouTube?

And he says, you know, at the end of five days

on the road at Dragstrips, he said,

I watch them make pancakes in Thailand.

And I'm like, what?

And he goes, he says it's so completely different.

It's like the world's best pancake stand or something.

And he said it's just, I don't know, I find it fascinating.

They come in and they have nothing set up.

And 20 minutes later, there's a whole little mobile restaurant

and they're making pancakes, you know, so.

I love that. Yeah, I watch more like,

well, I've been on a King of the Hill kick lately

because of the reboot of the series,

but I watch more like movie breakdowns

and stuff like that than I do anything on YouTube.

Just like that you said, like it's so different

than what I do day to day, but, you know,

you also want to try and like learn from other creators

and what they do and what they do well

and what works for them.

Because I think that's how you make better videos.

I'm amazed at, you know, I watch probably too much of it,

but you know, I look at people like Derek Bieri,

who has Vice Grip Garage,

who pretty much films everything on an iPhone.

And I'm amazed at how well that comes out.

And then I look at, you know, Sarah Entuned,

who has multiple camera shots set up

and I'm like, and is so fussy about it.

And, you know, and then there's the people in between,

you know, Eric at South Main Auto,

who, you know, I love how he ends his video with,

you know, if I can do it, you can do it kind of thing.

And, you know, I think all of these stuff

that you do, stuff that they do,

it gives regular people and technicians

a place to learn something that they didn't know before.

Yep, in fact, in, well, three minutes ago,

because I wasn't watching the clock,

we had a video that just launched about

checking timing chains on your TSI.

And, you know, it's not going to be a video

that pops out a million views on day one,

but it's going to be a video that people search

because they're worried about the timing chains

on their two liter golf.

Yeah, well.

And it takes both to me, right,

the big projects, like we just wrapped up this

crazy imported Volkswagen Lupo VR5 swap.

And that was fun.

And it was interesting and different

and different challenges for me.

And now, you know, I'm thankful to get back

to kind of the roots of the channel of

here's the Volkswagen problem.

Here's how you find it.

Here's how you avoid it.

And you should do that.

Otherwise, you're going to be rebuilding your engine,

which nobody really wants to do.

Oh, well, I think one of your videos

you told me in a five-seller Volkswagen,

if you need to replace the vacuum pump,

you don't have to take the transmission out.

You take it all apart and then assemble it

without having to move the transmission out of the way.

And that's saved me a whole lot of time.

It's something that when I looked up the shop,

you know, shop manual and looked it up and I said,

you know, step two, remove transaxle.

And I'm like, who?

Wait, it's going to be a better way.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So Charles, I want to thank you for taking time

out of your Sunday morning and joining us

on the Car Doctor radio program.

It has been a delight.

Awesome.

Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

Have an awesome day, everybody.

All right.

Take care, Charles.

That was Charles Sandville, the humble mechanic.

Great guy has some really good content.

Build some incredible things.

And down the earth guy.

You know, on his website, he says,

my name is Charles.

I'm a Volkswagen technician.

I've been a mechanic.

I've been a monkey car enthusiast for many years.

I started this site mainly to connect with my customers

in a way that I can't in the shop.

However, it's my hope.

It can also serve as a community forum to share information

and impart a little wisdom and have a little fun.

Let's get started.

Now, great guy.

Let's take a break.

Pay some bills.

This is the Car Doctor program.

You're listening on 959WATD.

We'll be right back.

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Thanks a million, Mr. Kabilian!

Oh, no.

Someone ran a shopping cart in my car

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Hey there folks,

it's Quinn Kelly reminding you

to tune in Sunday night

at 5 for the South Shore's

first voice in sports talk radio,

the Sports Exchange.

Unmatched coverage

of local high school action

as well as a relatable voice

on all things Boston Pro Sports,

we've got you covered

live at 5 every Sunday night.

Have a question for our host,

Miss Last Week Show,

or just want to share

a great sports story

you can find us on Twitter

at SE on WATD.

But remember,

mark your calendar folks

and we'll see you Sunday night

at 5 for the Sports Exchange

on 959 WATD.

Honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award

from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

He's John Paul,

but Car Doctor on 959 WATD.

And welcome back

to the Car Doctor Program

on 959 WATD.

Want to talk about the car

that got me around this week

and also, you know,

some of our advertisers,

Auto Shine and Cabillions,

love to get them on the program.

So if you guys are listening,

let me know.

Send me a note.

Drop me a note.

Let me know.

Let your salesperson know.

Love to have you on the program.

Talk about what you do,

sort of like what Charles does

in his now internet garage.

You know, some of the things

that you see,

some of the challenges you face,

especially in the auto body business

or repair business,

either way,

I think it could be

a great little segment

to do on the program.

Car that got me around

was the Toyota Highlander

but not just a regular Highlander.

This is the Grand Highlander

and it happens to be a hybrid.

So sort of super-sized

the Highlander.

I've always liked the Highlander

size-wise.

It's always been a good,

solid choice,

sensible,

efficient,

you know,

it's a good family SUV

providing that your family isn't too big.

But with the Grand Highlander,

Toyota aimed for something more.

I think it's a vehicle that

retains what it's always been

but it added something

that it lacked

and that was more space.

You know, there are

Highlander-sized SUVs

that have three rows of seats

and the third row is

for kids.

It's, you know,

can you squish adults back there?

Yeah, you can.

Well, they'd be comfortable, not really.

The Grand Highlander,

they added space.

They put comfortable space,

they put three rows in.

I was sitting in the third row this morning

just trying it out,

just seeing what it was like.

Yeah, it's pretty comfortable.

Yeah, it still is.

You got to flip the second

captain's chair row

forward and, you know,

kind of crawl in the back.

But it's not super-

super-hard to do,

but again, it's

really there.

So the Grand Highlander's purpose

is right there.

It's bigger than the old one.

It's a longer wheelbase.

It's a little boxier.

It's more upright.

It maximizes volume.

It's, again, it's super-sized.

It isn't just a stretched out version.

They really kind of, I think,

thought it through.

Is it perfect?

We'll get into the less-than-perfect part.

The harder to this review is

the available Hybrid Max powertrain.

The base Hybrid option

gives you really good fuel efficiency.

The Hybrid Max is

a little bit more.

It's a 2.4-liter turbocharged hybrid engine.

It makes 360-ish horsepower, I think,

and 400 foot-pounds of torque.

It's got plenty of power.

It doesn't just merge into the highway.

It just, you nail the throttle.

It's, I had a run from here

up to Iannis yesterday

to do some stuff.

Merging out on the highway

with Saturday morning traffic.

People leaving the Cape.

No problems whatsoever.

It feels as good as a V6

and even some V8s.

It can tow 5,000 pounds

according to the MSRP sticker,

Monroni sticker thing.

It's,

EPA says 27 miles per gallon combined.

I've been driving, and again,

my driving isn't like it used to be

when I used to commute 100 miles or so

back and forth to work.

I commute 12 steps to

where my desk, my computer are these days.

But according to the digital readout,

30 miles per gallon.

Pretty good for a big vehicle.

Again, the real strength of this vehicle

is space.

Third row, it's not an afterthought.

It's generally usable space

for adults capable for, you know,

going for a long ride with adults

and not having them complain too much, I guess.

The second row is available

with captain's chairs,

which slide and tilt for easy access.

The second row seats are real comfortable.

They're real good seats.

This is the first car my wife actually liked,

the passenger seat.

She is very fussy about short seats

that don't give good under thigh support.

She liked this a lot.

The cabin is thoughtfully designed.

It's got plenty of cup holders

and bins and storage

and all that kind of stuff.

The dashboard layout is clean.

It's pretty user friendly,

but also it can be frustrating.

This Toyota lacks, you know,

real knobs for some stuff.

The climate control does have

real knobs and buttons,

but to go in and like change

from AM to FM to

Serious XM,

it becomes challenging a little bit.

Sometimes you have to go

what seems like a couple screens deep.

Just too much distraction.

That wouldn't be good

if they could think through that a little bit more.

All kind of premium Lexus-y

like soft touch interiors.

You know, this could easily be a Lexus.

Wouldn't be hard to confuse it.

On the road, the experience is what most people want.

It's comfortable, especially families.

It's not a sports SUV.

It's ride smooth.

Soaks up the bumps nice.

It doesn't feel too floaty-boaty kind of thing.

It feels confident, I guess.

Steering is light. It's accurate.

It's still a large vehicle

when I went to Home Depot yesterday.

The parking lot at this Home Depot

was they tried to put

as many spaces in as possible.

It's pretty easy to get around.

It's still pretty easy to use.

But it's a big vehicle.

You got to remember that when you look behind you,

there's a whole lot of vehicle back there.

The Toyota Grand Highlander,

especially in this hybrid max layout,

they did a really good job.

I think it meets modern family needs

that can tow a 5,000-pound boat or camping trailer.

It comes equipped with what they call the utility hitch.

So it's kind of a class 2 smaller hitch looking thing,

which I think is really just made for bike racks

and stuff like that.

I was a little surprised to see it.

Again, 30-ish miles per gallon in my driving.

I think it's Toyota trustworthy, sensible,

belt and suspender kind of vehicle.

It's not just a great hybrid SUV.

It's kind of just a great SUV.

If you're looking for your family that needs

to carry more than just a couple people around

and you're tired of vehicles that are getting

less than 20 miles per gallon,

take a look at the Grand Highlander hybrid.

I think it's the new benchmark of 3-row hybrids

that, you know, 3-row SUVs that just happen to be

a hybrid that gets 30 miles per gallon.

This top-of-the-line version, not cheap,

62 grand, but the average price of new car state,

over $50,000.

I read something the other day that said

the average car payment is $900 a month.

Not in my lifetime.

But, you know, that's what people are paying.

If you want to join us, our phone number is

781-837-4900.

We can talk to you about whatever's on your mind

in the automotive world.

We're happy to talk to you about it.

Someone wrote to me and said,

I've been looking at a certified pre-owned 2022 Lexus,

as it turns out, sort of Toyota-ish.

RX 350 with the V6 engine.

As you know, this was the last year this engine was included

in the RX 350 before it was discontinued

for the Turbo Charge 4.

I had the impression the V6 was a terrific engine,

dependable, durable, powerful.

What's your opinion of each?

Bottom line is, this person says I'm 73 years old.

I'm looking for a comfortable, quiet ride

after driving a 2010 Honda Civic for years.

The four-cylinder engine performs good.

It's 275 horsepower.

The V6 engine and the older models produced almost,

you know, not much more than that, 295 horsepower.

I do think the V6 engine,

whether it was in a Toyota or a Lexus,

was one of the best engines in that lineup.

Although the engine can have issues,

the V6 engine with proper care can last a really long time.

And I think after driving the Honda Civic,

this Lexus will feel like a really nice transition

from everything from, you know, how it drives

to the ride that's going to return, you know,

but also, you know, you say you're 73.

You know, getting in and out of an SUV

is a whole lot easier than getting in and out of a Honda Civic.

Something to think about.

Someone wrote to me and said,

a comment.

You said to use Barkeeper's Friend or Bon Ami Cleaner

to clean a really dirty windshield.

I have found that glass top stove range cleaner

gets windshields really clean.

Never tried that, I suppose.

Similar, you know, if you have a glass top stove,

you know, it's a little gritty like the Bon Ami stuff

or the Barkeeper's Friend.

So I don't think there's anything worse than doing that.

So I'm driving with a dirty windshield.

A person wrote to me and said,

have you encountered a problem with the 2025 Kia Sorento plug-in hybrid

at first start-up and drive?

We are annoyed from the rear of the car

under the rear portion of the vehicle.

We call it crickets or a percolating sound.

It's mostly in the morning now, almost all day.

We're annoying.

We're back to the dealer and they stated some packing items

were left underneath the vehicle.

That's a little scary.

It's still happening.

Please let me know if you or any of your community knows about this.

And the only issue I'm aware of is some noisy rear shocks,

especially over bumpy roads, not crickets though.

I will say I was in a 2025 Ford Explorer,

which is generally a nice vehicle.

I was parked to answer a phone call.

And after a couple of minutes,

there was more weird sounds coming from this car.

Clicking, popping, you know,

not just the catalytic converter,

heat shield expanding and contracting.

There was solenoids and things clicking and snapping

and making all kinds of noise.

Probably is pretty normal.

So something to think about.

One more and then we'll take a break.

A person says they've been a fan of my column.

This is a column question.

I've been doing my own work for many years as a resource.

I always relied on all data, which is what I use all the time.

And they used to go to the library to get it.

Apparently the library doesn't want to pay for it anymore.

And is there another service that is available

for detailed maintenance schedules, repair topics

that is not subscription-based service?

Well, you can get, I mean, most car owner's manuals

have some service interval stuff.

So you can find about, you know, and, you know,

if you bought the car used and the owner's manual is still,

you know, the two previous owners have it somewhere still.

You can get nearly every owner's manual online

every once in a while.

They'll ask you to put in a vehicle identification number.

And I go to owner's manuals a lot.

And even when that comes up, I'll just go online,

try to find a used something for sale.

And it happens to list the vehicle identification number.

I'll just copy and paste that into the thing.

You know, and a lot of car dealers will have

the vehicle identification number of a used car on there

because they do, you know, one of the, you know,

car facts or one of those things.

So it has it there.

There is a website called, and it's,

you have to do the HTTP colon backslash, backslash,

but it's called charm.li, C-H-A-R-M.li.

I have no idea what the L-I stands for.

I probably should look it up.

But it has almost every make and model up to 2013.

So now it's 12 years old.

You know, sometimes looking at, you know, a 2013 car,

and if you have a 2015 or 2016, it can be close enough.

It can give you an idea what's going on at least.

So it's called, it's again, it's HTTP colon backslash,

backslash or forward slash, forward slash, whatever that one is.

Charm.li, that's one way.

You can also get a single make all data subscription.

I think it's about 100 bucks.

Or you can, or, you know, Harbor Freight has Truefix.

It's about $300 a year.

It has really good OEM information.

And you'll find that in, you know, a lot of different scan tools now too.

So it all works out pretty good.

Why don't we take another break?

Pay some bills if you would like to join us in the next,

oh, seven or eight minutes of the program.

Our phone number 7818374900, 7818374900.

Phone lines are open.

We'll be right back.

Well, Nick, there's a pretty good resume here.

You've always been this responsible?

When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.

Well, like how?

You know that story, the giving tree?

Oh, come boy, swing on my branches.

Eat my apples.

Be happy.

That's it.

One day I was driving my pickup truck, saw an apple tree.

I climbed up, swung on our branches, ate her apple.

The branch broke, cracked my windshield.

The giving tree?

I'm Peter Brown from Tiny and Sun's Glass.

We come to your work, your home, or your story time.

We replace your windshield and insurance pays.

One, eight, eight, eight, sixty-four tinies.

Just call.

And thank you.

How was the apple?

Wasn't worth the trouble, really.

This special event is proudly sponsored by Distinctive Pergolas,

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Hey, I'm Ashley Jordan.

Tune into Twilight Showcase Radio,

hosted by Sandy Stride and Keith James

on 959WATD and 959WATD.com.

Search for Twilight Showcase Radio on Facebook

and visit twilightshowcase.org.

Twilight Showcase.

Tonight from 8 to 10 on 959WATD.

Honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award

from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

He's John Paul, the car doctor

on 959WATD.

And welcome back.

I wonder how long I can milk that Lifetime Achievement Award thing.

It was very nice to get it.

It really showed that people appreciate

whether I do this or whether it was putting kids' car seats in

or teaching people how to do that

or doing the older driver programs that we did

or any of the safe driver programs.

It was very nice to be recognized by that.

And it was also nice that most of the time

that award was giving posthumously.

So it was nice to be alive to get the award.

So that was quite nice.

It was about a year ago.

So I really appreciate the folks from NHTSA doing that.

A person says they have a brake vibration

in a 2005 Toyota Highlander

at 120,000 miles.

Everything is in the car

as it came from the factory in Japan

except they changed the brakes at 90,000.

Today I took front calipers off

to see if the slide pins were moving and they were.

There's no leaks anywhere. The flex hoses look good.

And on the outside, no bumps or dents.

The caliper boots were dry. Everything looked okay.

When I pushed the caliper pistons back in,

they seemed to take more pressure to push in

than I remember.

I have never had to use that much pressure

on any Toyota caliper

in my 50 years of repairing Toyotas.

I've never had to replace a caliper on my car,

but I have on other vehicles

where drivers have a heavy foot.

What are the chances of caliper pistons are sticking?

Well, it's certainly possible.

I mean, rust builds up on the inside of brake calipers.

Also, just as a tip,

it's not a good idea to push caliper pistons back in.

Correct the bleeder screw,

put a hose on the end of it, catch the brake fluid

because what can happen is sometimes

you push rust back up through the brake system,

up through the anti-lock brake system,

and you can cause a whole bunch of problems.

Some people will clamp the brake line.

I don't think that's a great idea.

Some people will clamp the brake line

and open the bleeder screw.

Perfect. That's fine.

I don't like to really squish brake lines, though,

if I don't have to, but there are brake line clamps.

They're made just for that reason.

But I don't like pushing

old dirty brake fluid back into the master cylinder

because it goes through the anti-lock brake system.

Anyway, usually out-of-round rotors

are caused by a combination of rust on the hub

and even around the wheel studs.

So the rotors might be slightly at a round.

And a lot of times this is why dealerships

and some shops will resurface brake rotors

right on the car because they want to get

the rotor perfectly true,

even if the hub is not for whatever reason.

So what I like to do is

I take a wire wheel on a drill

and knock every bit of rust off the hubs,

make them clean and shiny.

Also, even take a smaller wire brush,

go around the wheel studs.

So everything's going to lay good and flat.

I think that's important.

Also, when I first started to repair cars a lifetime ago,

no one ever talked about bedding brake pads.

You put brake pads in, brake shoes in,

you took a ride, made sure it stopped, you were done.

Today, there's a very specific procedure

when you put brake pads in

to make sure that they kind of

mate to the rotor and drum surfaces.

You don't really need to bed brake shoes,

but it's sort of the same thing will happen.

So important.

And then finally, use torque wrench.

There's a lot of controversy about things like

torque sticks, which are sort of

things you put on the end of an impact gun

and you tighten it and they jiggle

and they're supposed to be, oh, 70 foot-pounds

or whatever.

Either spin the lug nuts on by hand

if you have a battery plug-in

or air impact wrench.

Spin the lug nuts up so they're snug.

Then use a torque wrench.

And it doesn't have to, when it comes to wheel lugs,

it doesn't have to be a super expensive torque wrench.

It just needs to be a torque wrench.

You need to, if it's off a few pounds

and usually there's a little bit of a,

torque is 75 to 85 foot-pounds.

So you set it at 80.

If it's off a couple pounds in either direction

it's going to make a difference, no.

But it's going to be consistent.

So it's going to be 81 foot-pounds

on all five studs.

So it's going to be good and even.

Nice and easy.

Well, that's our program for today.

I want to thank Charles, the humble mechanic

for joining us.

Fantastic chatting with him.

I want to thank Jesse back at the studio

for doing all the work he does there.

And until next week, make sure

you wear your seatbelt drive safely.

Be good to your car.

And if you do see an emergency vehicle

by the side of the road,

slow down or move over.

It saves lives.

Talk to y'all next week.

Bye-bye.

Chatting with the Humble Mechanic, Charles Sanville & a review of the Toyota Grand Highlander

Volkswagen Passat

Nissan R32

Volkswagen Lupo

Toyota Grand Highlander

Honda Civic

Kia Sorento

Ford Explorer

About this episode

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