Dealership or Independent Shop: Which Is Better? | Eric Schoenberger
The Jaded Mechanic Podcast · Jun 23, 2026
Annotations will appear as you listen
0:00
142:36
Car
Chrysler PT Cruiser
The Chrysler PT Cruiser is a small car with a distinctive, old-school look. Some versions had a turbo, which can make the engine harder to work on than a simple non-turbo setup. The podcast is bringing it up as an example of a car where the engineering choices can affect how repairs go.
Car
SRT-4 neon
The SRT-4 Neon is a high-performance version of the Dodge Neon. It was built to be quick and fun without costing supercar money, and it used a turbo to make strong power.
Term
turbo
A turbo is a device that helps an engine make more power. It uses the car’s exhaust to spin a fan that pushes extra air into the engine, which lets it burn more fuel and feel stronger.
Term
front-wheel drive
Front-wheel drive means the front wheels do the work of both steering and moving the car. The host is talking about how Chrysler’s cars in that era were different even though many cars were FWD back then.
Car
chargers
The Dodge Charger is a performance car from Dodge that’s known for being powerful and having a classic muscle-car look. The host brings it up as part of why he thinks Chrysler/Dodge got better over time.
Car
Dodge Challenger
The Dodge Challenger is a muscle car from Dodge. The host is using it to make the point that Chrysler/Dodge’s lineup looked and felt more exciting than people expected.
Car
Chrysler 300C
The Chrysler 300 is a large sedan, and some versions are rear-wheel drive. The podcast is talking about a specific 300C they drove, which helps explain the car’s setup and driving feel. It’s included because the speaker remembers it as a notable example from their experience.
Term
rear-wheel drive
Rear-wheel drive means the back wheels move the car. The host is saying that this layout feels more old-school and different from the front-wheel-drive cars that were common earlier.
Term
Hemmy
“Hemmy” is a nickname for Chrysler’s HEMI V8 engines. It refers to an engine design that helps the engine breathe and make strong power, which is why people get excited about it.
Car
Chevrolet
They’re talking about Chevrolet as the brand they grew up with. It’s part of why they were surprised when they later drove other trucks.
Car
Cavalier
The Cavalier is a compact Chevrolet. The host is saying it also had head gasket problems, so it wasn’t automatically the better choice.
Term
head gasket problems
The head gasket is a seal inside the engine that keeps fluids and pressure where they belong. If it fails, the car can overheat or mix fluids, and the repair is usually expensive.
Term
manual steering
Manual steering means you’re doing all the work to turn the wheel. It can feel heavier when parking, but some people like the direct feel.
Term
twin cam
“Twin cam” means the engine uses two camshafts to control the valves. It’s a design detail that can help the engine breathe better at higher speeds.
Term
stick
“Stick” means the car has a manual transmission. You shift gears yourself instead of letting the car do it automatically.
Term
drive ability
“Driveability” means how the car runs and feels when you’re actually driving it. It covers problems like it hesitating, running rough, or not responding smoothly when you press the gas.
Term
automatic transmissions
An automatic transmission is what lets the car shift gears by itself. You don’t have to use a clutch pedal to change gears.
Term
604s
“604s” is the name of a specific automatic transmission used in some Chrysler vehicles. The speaker is saying their dad was especially good at working on that particular transmission type.
Car
Chrysler Pacifica
The Chrysler Pacifica is a minivan meant for families and lots of passengers. It has safety airbags, including side curtain airbags that help protect people in certain crashes. The podcast is focusing on those airbags and how they can complicate repairs.
Term
recall
A recall is when a car maker says, “This part might be unsafe or defective—bring it in and we’ll fix it.” Dealerships and shops get paid for doing the recall work, often using a special pay rate.
Term
warranty pay
Warranty pay is how a shop gets paid when the manufacturer covers the repair. If it’s not warranty-covered, the customer pays instead, and that can affect how the job gets scheduled and how carefully it’s done.
Term
side curtain
A side curtain is an airbag that’s built into the roof area to protect your head in a crash. Since it’s near the headliner, any work around it usually means removing trim carefully so it goes back correctly.
Term
headliner
The headliner is the material on the inside ceiling of the car. Some repairs require taking it down so the shop can reach parts above you, like wiring or components near the roof.
Term
rear AC controls
Rear AC controls are the buttons or dials that control the air conditioning for the back seats. If they’re built into the roof trim, taking the headliner down for a repair can be more complicated.
Term
metal clips
Metal clips are the little fasteners that hold the interior trim pieces together. They can be tricky to unhook without damaging the trim, so the job needs patience and sometimes two people.
Term
clock spring
A clock spring is a cable inside the steering column that allows the steering wheel to turn while still staying connected to the car’s electronics. If it breaks, the car may think the airbag system has a problem and you’ll get warning lights.
Term
impact sensors
Impact sensors are the car’s “crash detectors.” They sense a collision and tell the airbag system whether to deploy the airbags.
Term
seat weight sensors
Seat weight sensors are sensors in the seat that detect how heavy the person is. The airbag system uses that information to decide how (or whether) to deploy the airbag.
Term
airbag side
“From the airbag side” means you’re working on the parts and wiring that relate to the airbag system. Those connections are important for safety, so technicians have to be careful.
Term
OCMs
OCM usually means the module that helps the car decide what kind of airbag deployment is appropriate. It uses sensor readings to make that decision.
Term
splices
Splices are where a technician joins two wire ends together to fix a broken section. If they’re done poorly, the connection can fail later, especially if water gets in.
Term
go offline
“Go offline” means a car computer module stops working or communicating properly. In safety systems like airbags, that can cause warning lights and may disable the system until fixed.
Term
salt in our harness
Road salt can get into the wiring and connectors and cause corrosion. That corrosion can lead to electrical problems that make sensors or modules act up.
Term
heat shrink
Heat shrink is a protective cover for a wire splice that shrinks tight when heated. It helps keep water out so the connection stays reliable.
Brand
Nissan
Nissan is the car brand the speaker says they worked on for airbag recall repairs. It helps identify whose cars were involved in those Takata recall jobs.
Term
warranty time
When a repair is covered by the car’s warranty, there’s a set amount of time the shop is allowed to bill for that work. The discussion here is about how those rules can limit what technicians can earn.
Term
labor optite jobs
This is about how mechanics get paid. Instead of being paid for every hour they work, they may be paid a fixed amount for each type of repair, based on a guide.
Term
one off
A “one-off” problem means it’s not the usual, repeatable issue. It’s more like a unique situation that takes extra diagnosing to figure out.
Term
valve body
In an automatic transmission, the valve body is like the control panel that directs fluid to the right places. If it’s faulty, the transmission can shift wrong or not work right, so the car may keep coming back for repairs.
Term
clutches
Clutches are the parts inside an automatic transmission that grab to make the car shift gears. If only the clutches are replaced but the real problem is elsewhere, the transmission can fail again.
Term
slip in overdrive
Overdrive is the transmission’s cruising gear. If it “slips,” the car can feel like it’s revving without fully pulling, which usually means the transmission isn’t clamping the gear correctly.
Term
cooler lines
Cooler lines are the tubes that move transmission fluid to a cooler so it doesn’t overheat. If they’re damaged or not flowing correctly, the transmission can wear out faster.
Term
planetary
A planetary is a gear mechanism inside the automatic transmission that helps create the different gear ratios. If it “burns out,” it usually means the transmission wasn’t getting the right protection (like fluid cooling or pressure).
Term
TCM
A TCM is the transmission’s computer. It decides when to shift and how hard the transmission should apply clutches, so the right software and control hardware can prevent repeated transmission problems.
Term
input and output speed sensors
These sensors tell the car how fast the transmission parts are spinning. The car uses that information to shift correctly and to notice when something isn’t working right.
Term
limp
Limp mode is what the car does when it senses a problem. It reduces power and changes how it drives so you can keep moving safely to get it fixed.
Term
wiring harness
A wiring harness is the car’s network of wires that carries signals between different parts. If it’s damaged or loose, the car can act up in confusing, on-and-off ways.
Term
Solenoid pack
A solenoid pack is a set of small electrically controlled valves inside the transmission. They help control fluid pressure so the transmission can shift smoothly; if they fail, shifting can get weird or unreliable.
Term
vehicle speed sensor
The vehicle speed sensor tells the car how fast you’re going. If it’s wrong or fails, the car may shift poorly or show warning lights.
Term
MLS
MLS is a type of gasket made from multiple thin layers of steel. It’s used to help the engine seal better, especially around the cylinder head, so leaks are less likely.
Term
rear main leak
A rear main leak means engine oil is leaking near the back of the engine, around the seal for the crankshaft. It’s a common leak point because that seal has to handle constant movement.
Term
thrust bearing
A thrust bearing helps control how much the crankshaft can move back and forth inside the engine. If it’s worn out, the engine can start wearing other parts faster or develop oil-related issues.
Term
chain job
A “chain job” usually means replacing the timing chain. The timing chain keeps the engine’s timing lined up, and when it wears out it can cause rough running or noise.
Term
power steering lines
Power steering lines are the hoses that move the fluid that helps your steering feel light. If they get damaged or start leaking, the steering can become harder to turn.
Term
blind spot
A blind spot is a part of the road around your car that you can’t see from the driver’s seat. It’s why you should always check mirrors and look over your shoulder before changing lanes.
Term
Watts link
A Watts link is a part of the rear suspension that helps control how the rear wheels move. If it wears out, it can start making clunking or banging noises.
Term
Control arm bushings
Control arm bushings are the soft mounts that let the suspension parts move smoothly. When they wear out, the ride can get noisy or feel loose.
Car
Porsche 904
The Porsche 904 is an old, purpose-built sports race car from the 1960s. Because it’s so specialized and vintage, repairs often require very specific parts. The podcast is mentioning it in the context of finding the right component for a particular fix.
Term
valves would burn
When someone says the valves “burn,” they mean the engine’s valve surfaces get overheated and damaged. That can cause the engine to run poorly and sometimes misfire.
Term
misfire
A misfire is when the engine doesn’t burn the fuel in one cylinder the way it should. That can make the car run rough or hesitate, and sometimes it happens only under certain conditions.
Term
valve keepers
Valve keepers are tiny pieces that hold the valve spring in place on the engine’s valve. If they’re designed differently, the valve can spin a bit more, which helps keep carbon from building up and burning the valve.
Term
fuel trims
Fuel trims are the car’s computer adjusting how much fuel it injects to hit the right mixture. If the trims look normal but the engine is still misfiring, the problem may not be simple fuel delivery or sensor readings.
Term
vacuum gauge
A vacuum gauge checks how much suction the engine is pulling in the intake. It can help spot certain problems, but sometimes misfires won’t show up clearly on vacuum readings.
Term
Pennestar
“Pennestar” sounds like a modern diagnostic tool or app the host uses to look at engine misfires. The point is that even with newer tools, the same kind of valve-related misfire pattern can still be seen.
Term
Borsch scope
This is a diagnostic tool that lets a mechanic “see” electrical signals. Instead of guessing, they can look at patterns from sensors and quickly tell what’s going wrong.
Term
relative compression
Relative compression is a way to check engine cylinders by comparing how they behave while the engine is cranked. It helps spot a cylinder that isn’t pulling its weight without doing a full teardown.
Term
lab scope
A lab scope is a special diagnostic screen that shows electrical signals. It helps a mechanic confirm problems by looking at the signal pattern instead of relying on guesswork.
Term
DRB three
That’s a dealership-style diagnostic computer used to talk to the car. It can pull trouble codes and show live sensor data so the mechanic can narrow down the problem.
Term
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a special meter that shows electrical signals as a graph. Mechanics use it to see what’s happening with a car’s sensors or ignition system when something is acting up.
Term
spark plug boots
Spark plug boots are the protective rubber parts that connect the ignition wires to the spark plugs. If they wear out, the spark can get interrupted, and the engine may run rough or misfire.
Term
ignition wires
Ignition wires send electricity to the spark plugs. If the wires are damaged, the engine can misfire or run unevenly.
Term
variable cam timing
Variable cam timing is a feature that adjusts when the engine’s valves open. It helps the engine run better at low speed and high speed. If it’s failing, the car can act weird and it may take more work to figure out why.
Term
phaser knock
A “phaser knock” is a knocking sound tied to the part that shifts cam timing. If that part is worn or not moving correctly, it can make noise and also mess up valve timing. Mechanics often use the sound as a clue to look at the timing system first.
Term
oil pump ones
“Oil pump ones” means the problem is coming from the oil pump area. The oil pump controls oil pressure, and many engine systems depend on that oil flow to work correctly. If oil pressure is off, timing-related parts can act up.
Term
timing cover
The timing cover is the protective housing over the engine’s timing parts. Keeping it on while doing the work means the mechanic is doing the job with that protection still in place. It can change how easy the job is and how things line up.
Car
Chrysler 600
The Chrysler 600 is a car model from Chrysler that was sold around the 1980s. The speaker is saying they owned an ’86 version.
Car
Chrysler LeBaron turbo
The Chrysler LeBaron is an older Chrysler model. A “turbo” version has a turbocharger that helps the engine make more power, and the speaker really liked theirs.
Car
Jeep Cherokee
“Cherokees” means Jeep Cherokees. They’re talking about a head gasket problem, which is when a gasket between the engine parts fails and can cause overheating or other issues. They’re saying it can happen after a lot of miles.
Term
head gaskets
A head gasket is a thin seal inside the engine that keeps oil, coolant, and combustion gases from mixing. If it fails, the engine can run poorly and may overheat. Replacing it is a common repair when it starts leaking.
Term
4 liter
“4 liter” means the engine is roughly 4.0 liters in size. Bigger displacement usually means the engine can move more air and fuel. In this conversation, it’s just how they’re identifying which engine they’re working on.
Term
bearing issues
Bearings are the parts inside the engine that let moving parts spin smoothly. If they wear out or fail, the engine can start making knocking noises and can get seriously damaged. They’re saying they don’t usually see these kinds of bottom-end bearing problems.
Term
bottom end
The “bottom end” is the lower part of the engine—where the crankshaft and connecting rods live. If something goes wrong down there, it’s usually a bigger repair. They’re saying they weren’t seeing that kind of issue.
Term
rocker arm issues
Rocker arms help open and close the engine’s valves. If they wear out or fail, the engine can make noise and the valves may not work correctly.
Term
variable output oil pump
A variable oil pump can adjust how much oil it sends where it’s needed. The idea is better efficiency, but it still needs good oil and maintenance to work reliably.
Term
long block
A “long block” is basically the main part of an engine—its core internals—sold as a unit. Shops use it when they’re replacing the engine but not every extra component around it.
Term
engine hangs in there right in the tail
They’re saying the engine is tucked in a way that makes it hard to get to. When an engine is hard to reach, repairs usually take longer and cost more.
Term
crank reluctance
“Crank reluctance” is related to how the car senses the crankshaft position. The sensor uses magnetic signals to figure out timing, and that timing information is critical for the engine to run correctly.
Car
Jeep Liberty diesel
This is a Jeep Liberty SUV with a diesel engine. Diesel engines have extra emissions parts to meet regulations, and the host is saying those parts caused a lot of trouble and repeat repairs.
Concept
emissions crap
The host is referring to emissions-control hardware and strategies required to meet regulations (like EGR and related controls). These systems can add failure points and maintenance complexity compared with simpler powertrains.
Term
software updates
This means the car’s computer gets a new program. The update can change how it controls the engine and emissions parts to try to fix problems.
Term
Rollover valves
Rollover valves are part of the fuel system meant to help stop fuel from leaking if the vehicle flips over. If they don’t work right, fuel can spill more easily after an accident.
Car
ram trucks
Ram trucks are pickup trucks built by Stellantis under the Ram brand. This segment ties them to a recall involving rollover valves, which are fuel-system safety parts meant to limit leakage in a crash.
Term
EGR valves
An EGR valve helps the engine burn cleaner by sending some exhaust gas back into the engine. The host is saying early versions of this system had issues and needed attention.
Term
map sensor fault
The MAP sensor measures how much air pressure is in the engine’s intake. If it’s acting up, the car’s computer can get confused and the car may feel like it has no throttle or throw warning codes.
Term
pinging
Pinging is that rattling/knocking sound some engines make when the fuel is burning at the wrong time. It’s a warning sign because continued knocking can hurt the engine.
Term
intake plenum gasket
The intake plenum gasket is a seal that keeps air from leaking where the intake parts bolt together. If it fails, the engine can run poorly and throw codes because the air mixture is off.
Term
throttle body
The throttle body is a part that controls how much air gets into the engine. If oil shows up in the intake area near it, it can mean something is wrong with how the engine is breathing or ventilating.
Term
catfault
“Catfault” means the car’s computer thinks something is wrong with the catalytic converter. That can happen when exhaust isn’t being cleaned properly or when the system detects abnormal readings.
Term
Thermostats
The thermostat helps control how hot the engine runs by letting coolant flow when it’s ready. In this design, replacing it is more work because it’s tied into the water pump, so the water pump has to come out.
Term
straight six
A “straight six” is an engine with six cylinders lined up in a row. The point here is that, on this kind of engine, the thermostat is harder to replace than you’d expect.
LIVE
Like I said, I'm glad I made the jump to being an independent, just a growing different
atmosphere, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it's really, it's working out for
the best and I don't regret it.
Times is tipped, you don't want to go back to the dealer, but it's like, nope, I'm more
calm, I'm not ready to bite somebody's head off.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic Podcast.
It's a long weekend up here in beautiful sunny Ontario, Canada, and it's still friggin' cold
in May.
It's our, I guess you'd call it, we used to call it May 24, but it's our Victoria Day
weekend, which is some queen from way back in the monarchy that I don't even know why
we still acknowledge it, but it's mostly just an excuse to drink some beer and have a long
weekend.
So, but it gives me some time to do some recordings and meet some new friends.
So I have a friend that he's from Kansas today and Eric Shullenberger, how are you most morning,
brother?
Oh, doing all right.
Yeah.
You said it's nice and warm there.
Yep.
About 95 degrees.
Nice.
Yeah.
Where abouts in Kansas, are you?
Oh, central Kansas.
Central Kansas.
Right in the middle.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
So our buddy David Roman, he's in Kansas.
Yeah.
He's on the eastern side.
Yeah.
Near Kansas City.
Yeah.
He, do you ever go to vision?
Oh, yes.
I went this year and last year.
How is it?
It's very good.
Yeah.
That's what everybody raves about.
They say it's the event, right?
It's kind of the groundbreaking one, the most established one, the kind of the ones that
all the other ones want to be.
So I've heard that never again.
I'm hoping to go one year.
It just, it seems to be a schedule or a budget thing always.
So, but yeah.
What kind of give us a little bit of an introduction to give us a name of your shop?
Kind of, you know, let us get to know you.
Well, I work for Holt Motor Company.
Okay.
We're an independent shop.
Can I do a little of everything?
I've grown up in a dealer.
My dad was a Chrysler tech for 35 years.
Nice.
And I worked with him for beside him for 10 and Chrysler is pretty much all I've known.
I did work for an independent in high school and part of college before I went into the
dealer world.
And I just finally got tired of the typical headaches.
Yeah, it's, it's, yeah.
And that's the, like I always, you know, I still think fondly of my, my turn at the
dealer because I learned us so much, right?
Right.
You get, oh, kind of, you get to really polish your craft, right?
You know that, you know what it's like.
You know what's probably wrong with it when they write the work order and put it in front
of you, right?
You kind of know.
Oh yeah.
And that's always makes you feel good, right?
Gives you confidence.
Yeah.
You've mastered the brand, so to speak.
Yeah.
But it's, it's that political thing.
What, what did you really like about the brand?
I just always been a Chrysler guy liked what they did.
It was always something different.
I mean, I don't got nothing against Chevy or Ford, but it just Chrysler was always kind
of my go-to and that's the way it was with my dad.
I always liked them because they kind of seem to be like, you know, people have heard me
say it almost unapologetically, like about the horsepower, right?
Yeah.
Performance, even like, you know, people would be like, Jeff, and I'm like, no, but seriously,
think about what they did with like the PT Cruiser or the turbo or, you know, the SRT-4
neon way back in the day, right?
Or even back before that.
Think about the front-wheel drive cars from the late 80s, early 90s, like the Leigh-I-Cocodays.
Like that was, it was something different within the domestic trio, right?
And I always thought that just like people used to say, well, they used to build really
ugly cars and paint them funny colors.
But I mean, you know, when you look at the challengers and the chargers and I can still
remember the first 300C I drove, the rear-wheel drive, that Alex car when it came out, I was
like absolutely floored with how cool that was.
Oh, yeah.
That was building a V8, Hemmy rear-wheel drive, kind of a throwback to what we, some of us
in a certain generation may be grown up riding around in the back of, right?
And there's this four-door sedan with a V8 that has that feel still of like, you know,
a rear-wheel drive, you know, kick the ass into kind of car.
And I just thought it was really cool.
And then the trucks for me, I say it all the time, like you drive back in the day, especially
when the Hemmy first hit, you drove a Hemmy truck and then you drove anything else and
it just didn't feel the same.
Like the pedal, the throttle response was so much different, better, you know?
And I grew up in a house of Chevrolet.
Like you didn't park anything but that in the driveway.
But, you know, when I went to the dealer and started driving those trucks, I was like,
yeah, okay, I get it now.
Because it had weird, wonky stuff, right?
And I mean, caravans are caravans, you know?
But they were a cool little car.
Like I look at a neon and I look at a Cavalier and I'm like, what's the real, why does everybody
say so?
One is so much better than the other.
They both had head gasket problems.
They both, you know, at least the Cavalier for longer, you get a two door.
I always thought that that kind of killed the neon was making it only a four door car.
That was to me, it was stupid.
Yeah, they originally had the two door, but it didn't last.
Yeah.
And I remember seeing one American club racer, ACR, neon, the two door, which is a really
cool because I had manual steering and, you know, just, you know, twin cam, stick, like,
you know, upgraded everything.
It was just a really cool little car, but they didn't sell a lot.
And I thought that's pretty neat, you know, that they were still thinking about that in,
you know, early 2000s, whereas everybody was just like, in a completely different thing.
Now, I'm not talking about the Asian market, right?
But, you know, Ford didn't really, I didn't feel had anything that compared to that, you
know, in escort, in my opinion, didn't compare to a neon.
No.
So what your dad was a tech?
Yes.
Yeah.
So is that kind of why you picked this or just it just became natural?
Yeah, I did.
Like growing up, I'd always pay attention to what he did.
And like he go to class, come back, I'd read the books.
Just, you know, I just had that yearning to learn and just kind of wanted to do it.
And he was so was he a dealer tech?
You said he worked there?
Yeah, he worked at Chrysler store for 35 years.
Wow.
Good for you.
He did a drive ability and trans automatic transmissions.
Yeah, like the 604s he was good at and all that.
So he would have been a pretty important person in the dealership,
then he would have been one of their, you know, they're kind of top kind of people.
Yeah, that's a good influence to have on you, right?
As a young technician, that's pretty cool.
Mm hmm.
You know, he loved the brand too, I'm going to assume.
Oh, yeah, that's all he drove and owned.
And then after he got done with it, he started driving other stuff and
I'd have to fix it for him.
But yeah, but he's still a Chrysler guide heart.
Yeah.
Is he still with you?
Yeah, no, he's retired.
He lives in he lives about 80 miles from me now.
OK, but just a lot.
Yeah, that's cool.
Well, I worked with him for 10 years and I enjoyed it.
But there's one of them deals I want to see what else was out there.
And so I went to another Chrysler dealer on my own and.
Luckily, I had another good tech to work with
that I'm still friends with.
Yeah. And.
Yeah, I moved up, you know, moved about 80 miles away.
And like I said, I worked for another about three other Chrysler dealers.
And it just, like I said, this last one, it just kind of got to the point
the typical politics and scraping and calling for
to make flat rate.
Yeah, the Pacifica side curtain airbags.
What did me in?
They only paid one point eight for the recall, but it was four hours
under regular warranty pay.
Yeah, and six hours under customer pay.
Yeah, which all of a sudden, no more customer pay ones ever.
Yeah. And, you know, you get the young guys that oh, I can make that time.
It's like, we'll go ahead.
I'm not going to work a hundred mile an hour and suffer quality for it.
Well, and that's it.
Think about, you know, and again, so I've never done one.
So I don't I couldn't tell you the the steps.
But I mean, any time of like from my experience at
side curtain, you're you're up into around the the, you know, headliner type area,
right? And that's something that I always never thought should be rushed
because people when they start, especially when you start talking about a recall,
they get like super, super methodical about how they inspect their headliner,
you know, and it could have all your prints and scratches in it before you did the recall.
But you'd be buying, you know, you'd be buying them a headliner.
And then like think about how a lot of us, you know, one minute,
you're doing a waiter, all change, and then you do a recall and you get a
fingerprint on it, right? And then people are, oh, yeah.
It's that like I just, yeah.
And those are real, real particular because where the rear AC controls
are in the headliner, there's some mean metal clips and it's a two man job.
And just carefully bring it down.
Yeah, you don't want to crease it.
Yeah. Yeah.
For sure. I, and again, you know, I mean, I can remember way back in a day
doing all the clock spring recalls like you probably can.
And I can remember, you know, the impact sensors on the front bumper,
on the caravans, like you probably did a pile of them.
That was in the connector that went with it.
And I mean, that was all I can remember doing.
I can remember doing seat weight sensors in the Alex cars when they first came out.
Like, yeah, I touched a lot of it from the airbag side.
You know, OCMs or splices on the floor pan I used to fix on the caravans.
It would cause the OCM to go offline, like all that kind of stuff.
Because up here, we would get so much salt in our harness from like water.
And it would, it would, those stupid splices that were taped with like tape
and not even heat shrink, right?
Those funny things, right? It was just, it was the weirdest thing.
But, you know, the idea that like the, and I did again,
a ton of Takata airbag recalls for Nissan.
But the idea that that they go from it used to be six hours down to less than one third.
To me, it's just, you know, we talk about why technicians or dealer people,
especially talk about why, you know, what's his name, Farley's famous quote.
Well, you know, I got. Oh, yeah.
Like they wonder why.
And it's they, they shouldn't have to wonder.
They do it to themselves.
You know, it shouldn't be any kind of mystery as to why technicians won't pick the job, you know,
and it could be like, and everybody goes, well, it's just one job.
Yeah. But when those recalls get released, sometimes you'll get 23 of them in a day.
And what then think about that, it used to be you would have made 18 hours and now you make six.
Right. Of course, it's going to kill your morale, you know,
like it's, it's just, it's just a given all these things, you know,
and then everybody's like that legislation.
I don't know. Do they have it in Kansas, Eric?
No, they don't.
Because we're free. We're right to work state.
So we don't have that.
And I don't think that that's in people love that idea.
So what we're talking about people is the idea that like in some states,
I think it's Detroit, California, whatever.
Illinois is one of them.
Whatever is supposed to pay retail is what they they're by law.
They're not allowed to change it.
There is no warranty time.
And everybody goes, Oh, that's so much better for the for the technicians.
Sure, it is. You're right. It is.
But here's the reality of it.
We're we're talking labor optite jobs, right?
If you're still into the problem solving, you know,
every car problem is a one off until you find it.
You're still losing your butt.
And it doesn't matter because warranty is only got, you know, if they say,
well, there's every wire problem can be solved in two hours.
And that's all they're going to pay.
That legislation doesn't really help you is my my argument back to them.
I think it's a step in the right direction.
But, you know, there's that hold out of technicians that are like,
I want flat rate no matter what.
Well, most of the guys that I talk to that want that, they're not.
Tackling a ton of die egg.
Now I know I'm going to get a lot of comments and a lot of hate for that.
But that's a very real reality. I mean, you know, well, and also,
I don't see manufacturers sitting there idly by watching that, you know,
having to pay out that stuff that I look for them to possibly buy
into those labor guide.
Because I've noticed with all that, as some of the times they're starting
to come down a little bit.
Oh, and yeah, that's we saw that in another pop, that conversation pop up.
And again, and everybody I think is in it.
It's a pretty cruel, disgusting thing that they would do then, if that's how,
you know, how much they'll invest and focus on backroom deals to make that happen.
Instead of just building the frigging stuff properly so that it doesn't have to be recalled.
I mean, like that would be the way better way to do it.
I and again, you know, I tell people all the time, I remind them like
the OE doesn't tell the dealer that they have to pay you flat rate.
Nowhere does the OE tell them, send it down, that that's how they must pay.
It's just like a warranty. It's warranty job.
It's just like an estimate for a body shop for insurance.
They say we're only going to pay this amount of labor to do the repair on the car.
No big deal. Cool.
But when you go over, it's not the OE that's not paying you the time.
It's your person that you work for.
It's your employer that's choosing not to pay you that.
Right. And so here the argument, well, they can't the money's not there.
OK.
The money is there, people.
They're just they want to buy a second dealer, a third dealer, a fifth dealer,
whatever, instead of paying you for it.
So you have to draw the line in the sand and decide what is my limit on what
I'm going to actually believe on that, you know?
And I mean, if the job should take you 10 and you go 20
repeatedly, it might be a you problem, right?
But if you can hit that recall time and do it without damaging something or having
to come back or really making it look hacky.
Who's to blame?
Well, at some point, then I blame it back on the people that own the dealer,
because they could have a very real conversation with the people and say,
I realize it's only going to pay 18
This is what we this is the way we want it turned out.
And we're going to pay you four for it, because we feel that it's not your fault
that the time got slashed because of their defect.
But nobody's willing to have those kind of conversations.
And that's where I guess for me, you know, and I'm the same as you,
I got tired of it like, and it wasn't a situation of a warranty job that that
worked to me. It was the way, you know, advisors would just expect you to do
things for free salesman service manager would expect you to, you know,
I'll make it up on the next one.
I'll, you know, that part never shows up.
Or it goes to the wrong tech.
It gets dispatched to the guy across the bay from you.
Yeah. Well, shoot, like I'm sorry.
I didn't see those notes in there.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah, I didn't know it was you that worked on it.
Yeah, I looked at it.
You're like, you know, you frigging jerk.
I've got the part, you know, the plate number written in my, in my log.
Did you keep a notebook like I did?
Yes, I did.
Yeah.
Kind of a key important thing.
I tell a lot of young techs.
I kept, well, at first what I would do is if it was somebody's comeback,
I'd photocopy the original work order or I'd print it out.
And I kept that file.
Right.
So I started to build my own file of cars that were problematic within our dealer.
And when the cars were fixed, I had this file, this book of stuff that I'd solved
and how I did it.
And, you know, but we all made a notebook of like, at least our work order numbers.
And what the job was supposed to pay when we were done.
And then if we did make one that had a lot of recs on it, we were told, yeah,
they're going to reschedule.
We made sure to write that all down because otherwise you, because unfortunately,
the amount of car count that was coming in sometimes, you know, this error,
it does slip by the advisor.
It just happens, right?
Oh yeah.
So, I mean, they're human too.
But processes in place should be when the appointment's made, they should be able
to pull the history, look at it and go, okay, those are extra done by, you know,
text 11270.
That was my old tech number.
And it should be in the queue waiting for me to do, you know,
not like, oh, they're here.
We've got to give it to anybody.
Like that's not how that's supposed to work.
So, yeah.
What's, um, when you look back, what are some of the stuff that you really like to
do when you're at the dealer?
Uh, of course, drivability.
Yeah.
Um, I liked electrical.
Uh-huh.
Um, recalls when they used to pay good.
Um, did you go transmissions like your dad or just?
No, I didn't.
The dealer I was at with him.
Didn't want to risk me going through a learning curve on it.
Um, I would do some transmission work, but not a rebuild.
Right.
Like put a valve body in or, you know, maybe put torque converter in something
like that, but not a complete rebuild.
He did, they had him for front wheel drive and another guy for rear wheel drive.
Okay.
Cause we had such a big amount of transmissions coming in back in the,
yeah, like nineties, early 2000s.
Sorry to cut in everyone, but this is really important.
As a tech, I've seen firsthand how frustrating it would be to work in a shop
bogged down by outdated systems and inefficiencies.
It happens all the time, right?
That's why here at the Jada mechanic, we're partnering with tech metric to
help change the industry and your shop.
Tech metric isn't just software.
It's an all in one shop management solution that streamlines everything from
customer dropoff to pickup.
We're talking powerful digital vehicle inspections, integrated payments,
a built in CRM and a marketing suite with shop genie, even a specialized
tire suite, whether it's managing one shop or 10, tech metric makes it seamless.
And here's the kicker shops using tech metric.
See their arrows jumped by 25% in just six months.
Crazy.
Hey, that's more jobs done, happier customers and a stronger bottom line.
Plus with their us based support team, tech metric is more than a tool.
They're a partner in success.
I've been in the trenches and I know what works.
Tech metric isn't just managing shops.
It's transforming them.
Measure up by every measure with tech metric.
Hit the link in the show notes below for more.
Yeah.
They were pretty problematic back in the day for sure.
I mean, which, you know, kind of a lot of people's, it's not that they were the
only people with transmission issues.
I can remember my buddy at the same time, Nissan had a extended campaign where
they were going in and changing, you know, because it wouldn't go in reverse
when it was cold and they were, they were, every tech in the building was doing
that at his dealer anyway, they could all do it.
And I'm thinking, so that's like, but they had it down to a science where it was
like they knew when it came in, this is just the part you put in.
It seemed a Chrysler like it didn't matter what the complaint was.
They all seemed to get like a full overhaul.
Yeah.
When they were, when they were out of warranty and when they were within warranty,
they only seemed to get like, you know, one set of clutches or, you know, maybe
a valve body, like you said, and we would see these keep coming back and coming
back and coming back.
And it's like, why, why are we putting the valve body in when it's, you know,
obviously a slip in overdrive, which we knew on the trucks, why that was happening.
Right.
Those little cooler lines and burn out the planetary for the overdrive.
Right.
Like it was just, well, I remember dad getting frustrated.
He'd build one back when they didn't have good programming and it would just
destroy them.
He said, I'm, I build it.
It's going to come back and then finally Chrysler realized, you know,
change the software and you put a TCM in them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I can remember I saw more than one come in before they had a separate TCM and
they would have really built, this is like front wheel drive car, like say the
old shadows, you know, the kind of the, and they'd have like new overdrives in them
and they'd be back in limp again.
And they're like, it was just overhauled.
Why be in limp?
Be wiring problem.
Right.
Like it was, you know, and, and so that was always really, you know, it was weird to
me because it was like trying to get them sometimes, you know, it is to act up
intermittently before you can say, yes, okay, it's an electric problem or yes, it's a,
it's, you know, needs an overhaul.
Like you and I remember the input and output speed sensors that would go bad all
the time, but that became pretty straightforward.
Like you just, yeah, the 99 2000.
Yep.
And, you know, that got to be where it was like everybody could, could diagnose that.
But if you had one in limp or not communicating, then it was like kicked to
somebody a little more, you know, specialized or that wiring harness going to the, to the,
you know, valve, not the valve body, the, the block that sat on top of the
transmission.
Solenoid pack.
Solenoid packs that used to leak and, you know, like we all did solenoid packs, all of us.
Oh yeah.
But I can remember after you do the solenoid pack, half of them would come back with this
weird electrical problems because you just disturbed that harness that wasn't
very well.
And all of a sudden now your tear and that sucker opening.
Yeah.
Or I had a lot of round pin terminals on input.
Well, vehicle speed sensor.
When they used to put them on there and I had a dynasty, you, when the
speedometer quit work and listen for the door locks to kick in, if it didn't, it's
out there.
If they did, you had a speedo head.
Cool.
Yep.
And I, I'm old enough too.
I can remember when, you know, you used to get like a speed sensor fault and you
take it out and you, they didn't give you a new gear.
You took the old gear off the old one, put it back in and it was like same
sensor and a whole bunch of different gears, right?
Little plastic.
I can remember more than one guy going, um, my speed was not working.
Like, did you put the gear and he's like, oh shoot, sitting on the old part right
on my bench.
Like they just, you get rushed.
You forget to put the gear.
Ah, it was funny that way.
I enjoyed the product.
Like I really did, you know, I love, I loved caravans.
I loved, I didn't do a lot of Nissan or Nissan neon headgaskets.
I did a bunch of them.
Yeah.
Probably pretty quick at them.
Oh yeah.
It got frustrating in the beginning, all the different design changes and when
they went to MLS, that took care of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was the thing.
Like everybody's like, oh, it's leaking again.
I'm like, we'd see them and they didn't always leak again.
You know, like it wasn't that gasket seemed to fix a lot of the problems.
You'd see the rear main leak a lot after that.
We know why that happened.
Guys had pounded the balance around, right?
So the press.
The thrust bearing right out, but you know, I can remember the 27 being
when they first rolled, how big a turd they were if they weren't neglect.
Like if they weren't.
Oh yeah.
The maintenance wasn't done, but, you know, a 27 chain job in a
seabring was probably the worst job that I ever did.
Like I hated that.
Yeah.
I did a few of mine in care for it.
And the PT cruiser time about I never liked that either.
I know guys do them and they like it, but I hated it.
Though you thought you were going to break something.
You had to jack that sucker up so high to, you know, line your marks up that it
was just like never again.
So and there were weird things.
Right.
What favorite?
Yeah.
I just did power steering lines on a turbo cruiser a couple of weeks ago.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't miss them.
I still see them around and I'm like, holy crap, people are still driving
a PT cruiser, right?
Like it just, yeah, I can remember the when they first hit and in Detroit at
the probably it was a Chrysler building, how they had one look like it was driving
right out of the Chrysler building, right?
Like, you know, a hundred stories up and how everybody, how they flocked
to the dealer to buy that car and paid way above sticker because they wanted to
have it.
Oh, yeah.
That's the way the dealer was.
I was at the time.
It's like, that's insane.
Now you can give them away.
And then you're getting me to drive it and it's like, eh, it's it's not that
appealing.
Like it's, you know, I did like you're sitting higher up in it, like compared
to a car, but yeah.
Yeah.
I had a good customer, a young lady, she wasn't so she wouldn't be so young
now that the reason she and she hated everything else about the car, but she
had some back issues and it was the way the seat wasn't like you said, the way
you sat in the car.
It was the most comfortable car for her.
She ever drove.
So she threw good money after bad at that thing because she, she just, she
didn't want to get a car that would hurt her back, you know.
Yeah.
I had a few customers like that with them that that was the only small car they
could drive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The turbo ones were fun to drive, but I mean,
like I hated the, it was a blind spot, like which every Cricer comes with a
free blind spot, at least one.
And I hated the way they looked and sounded that stupid.
We called the Watts link at the back that would hit on the axle when it was worn
out and oh yes.
Start banging.
Yeah.
Control arm bushings, like they were going on a style like we just, just, oh,
yeah, just gross.
But I like the support Chrysler had back then for like training and yeah, you
know, tech, tech advisors that actually knew what they were doing rather than
just authorize you up parts replacement.
Yeah.
Well, I can still, the part number or a part number, the phone number for
Chrysler Techline used to have like you'd get a sticker that was stuck on your
work cabinet over 1-800-361-2702, right?
And then you pumped in your dealer plate number and somebody and I still
remember and everybody's like, holy crap, Jeff, you must have called them a lot.
I did.
I worked for the nine years.
I did call them a lot.
I did not have to call them on every car, but it just became part of the routine
that went like a month old and sitting there was some weird problem you called
them because I'm sure you know, Eric and experienced it.
You'd be able to call them up and say, I got one doing this, but I can't
get it to happen all the time.
And they'd be like, yeah, we've had five cases of that.
And, you know, three technicians found this.
Go check there.
Now, I don't know what it's like now because it's been a long time since
I've been at Chrysler, but now I know if it's anything like Nissan, you're not
talking to people anymore.
You're just.
No, it's AI.
The first response is AI generated and they just regurgitate the book to you.
I can read the book.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember you had talked to them and you'd call them up and I still, my buddy,
Mike is better, remember, in their names because he, he went to training with a lot
of them up here in the Canadian side.
And it was like, they would say, oh, you check the wiring.
Yeah.
Check the wiring.
Then they'd say, how'd you check it?
You go, what do you mean?
How'd they check it?
Oh, like how'd you check your powers?
And then they, that's where the first, like people started talking to me about.
It was like part of their process was loaded power check, loaded ground.
You know, they'd say, go get yourself an old 904 bulb, you know, and then like, if
it'll, it'll, it'll light up that you need a fuel pump.
They'd say stuff like that.
And I'm just like, how come that's not in the book?
Yeah.
You know, like the guys at Techline all know.
Why is it not?
So what, um.
So when you say the political thing, when you're talking about that particular,
um, recall was enough to kind of the final straws there.
What, what did a typical day look like for you?
Well, I, I would get a lot of the, you know, more diagnostic stuff and the
recall bit, once we had a guy start bragging, he could make that time.
Then they started pushing them over to him, but I just, I finally got tired of
warning, not getting paid properly for tickets because they had an outside firm
doing it.
Really?
You know, and then they liked the younger guys.
It was like a friend of mine still works there.
He's got three years left to go and he's going to retire for good.
And he's been a chaser tech all of his life.
And he's just hanging in there.
And I told him, I said, I, you know, I'm 50 years old.
Yeah.
It's time to do it or I never will.
Yeah.
But yeah, just in the service manager, not holding anybody accountable, you
know, that typical stuff, but I enjoyed working next to my friend, you know,
cause we would help each other out, you know, and that was the only thing
we're really worthwhile.
The first couple of years there at that dealership were nice.
And then they started adding more and more people will drive the total
shop count up.
Yeah.
And that brings individuals down.
Launch tech USA has established itself as a trusted leader in automotive
diagnostics and aftermarket solutions by delivering cutting edge technology
and reliable support to the North American market driven by a deep
understanding of today's repair environment.
Launch tech USA develops solutions designed specifically for the growing
demands of modern vehicles and professional technicians alike.
Each year, launch tech USA introduces new innovative products designed to
work with the latest advancements and vehicle systems, diagnostics and
repair demands from advanced diagnostic scanners to eight us calibration,
alignment and next generation solutions.
Every launch tech USA product is engineered with purpose built for
accuracy, efficiency and real world performance in today's professional
shops.
Our commitment to innovation is unwavering.
Focus drives our precision.
Innovation fuels our progress.
Together, they set us apart.
Launch tech USA is driving the future of automotive diagnostics.
To find out more about launch tech USA, visit our website at www.launchtechusa.com.
Tell them the Jada mechanic sent you.
Yeah, for sure.
And you know, I talked, I've talked lots.
There was a core group of us, like four of us that got a lot of the
dyag and drivability dispatch to us, right?
So we all were very good at sharing and helping one another, right?
Because that's just the only way you're going to survive it is if you see
something, somebody comes over your bay mate, right?
And says, Hey, did you not have this last week?
And you're like, Oh yeah, I know exactly.
And you'd walk over and pull the carpet up and say, you see that right there?
That's what mine was, right?
Or I can, I can still remember that when the tip homes got bad and the
the wiring connected underneath the tip, I'm like, it was bad.
Front control modules on the old caravans.
Like, oh, yeah, we all had a known good front control module.
And the first thing you did was just take the four screws out, swap it,
you know, cycle your key, see what it changed.
If it didn't change anything else, then you unbolted the box, plug the new box in.
You probably, when you turned your box over, saw the corrosion,
corrosion coming out of it and you just, you know, changed it.
And then you proceeded on your day and you do that 34 times a day.
I liked it because it was, it was just enough of a variety to keep me interested.
But it was like you could kind of come in.
And if you were having, you know, an off day, you could skate by it.
And there was always enough good work on the cars that, you know, you could,
you could make a good living.
Like I never was a hundred an hour, you know, every two weeks kind of guy.
I was always a 40 to 50 guy, you know, consistent.
Yeah, that's what I've always been.
The guys that were say they make a hundred.
Shush.
I never saw anybody across her hit a hundred in a week, you know,
I heard about a guy that, but to say that he wasn't doing the work would be.
Yeah, it would be.
Would be saying it too nicely.
He was really bad for not the
not doing the whole ticket, I guess is the right way to say it.
The highest I ever hit was about 85 a week.
And that was when I was doing 12 hour days in the shop.
Yes.
And I was living in there and I finally got I was like, that's enough for that.
There's more to life than this.
And I would do that a lot too.
And I would do it same as probably you had to sometimes just to keep
to catch up to where the other guys were.
Because right, like if you're doing the dyag under warranty,
maybe the best you could get would be straight time.
You know, like the retail dyag, once you knew the pattern
finishers was pretty good.
And a lot of customers, like if it wasn't a pattern finishers,
it was something weird.
They got scared away right away with like the three hours to start, you know,
and that was hard for an advisor back then.
I can remember when the door rate was 110.
And it was really hard for the advisor to sell, you know,
two hours of dyag to start like two hours of dyag.
Like that's crazy.
Like can't sell that.
And I'm like, you know, this thing only acts up every two weeks
and you have to hit a certain bump in the road and to get it to happen.
Like you're going to need at least two hours to duplicate.
Yeah, or you got to tear down something to get where you need to be.
Oh, and that was the thing.
Do you remember when the some of the caravans
and you probably remember the three fives more so in the magnums
and the Alex cars, but the valves would burn and they would get.
Yeah, I remember that.
And it was like the first because, you know, the caravans would do it
to the three threes and the three eighths, but not as common.
But until they came to the penistar and then they, yeah,
but I was happy.
But I can remember the first magnum I had that had that misfire
that would sometimes be there and sometimes wouldn't be.
And I remember tearing that down and I was like, look at this.
This is crazy.
Like he wouldn't think in a modern car that we get pitted valves like that.
But it was just, you know, the way they drove them.
I used to say it was always a magnum because just that extra weight
that the 300 didn't have, they didn't eat.
They got into the throttle even less.
And then for the people that aren't familiar, they revised the valve,
the keepers so that the valves would rotate a little more and keep the carbon
from burning the valve.
But I remember the first couple I did, I was like, this is, you know,
because it would come back somebody else tuned it up.
And it was still multiple cylinder misfire and you'd sit there
and look at your dad and it'd be jumping all over and put your fuel
trims would be perfect.
You're like, what's going on?
And it wouldn't show up always on a vacuum gauge.
That's just everybody's like, oh, a vacuum gauge would have showed you that.
Nope, not always.
I got in the habit of watching the misfire counter.
If it clocked at an idle and quit above it, usually your valve was joint.
And that's the, and that still holds so true, right?
Even now on the Pennestar, you see guys post them, they're like,
I got, you know, this miss at idle and it's like miss at idle on a Christ
verse is a valve.
You know, it could be the other, you know, an ejector, but it's 98% of
time it's a valve.
Don't overthink this.
Like, you know, find another way to go in and check it.
Like, and back in the day, you couldn't buy a Borsch scope the way you could
now for the price, right?
You can remember the expensive tool.
And now every technician, I'd argue, probably that does any kind of
diet has got at least one, you know, and it makes that a lot easier.
When I think about the ones that trip me up, that if I'd have had a work in
Borsch scope, I could have just jammed down on the hole and known in two seconds.
Yeah.
Very valuable tool.
Or lab scope relative compression nowadays.
That's, that's a game changer.
Well, and do you remember, you remember the DRB three?
Uh-huh.
Do you remember the lab scope kit that came with it?
Oh, yes.
I used it a few times.
See, I watched one guy in my whole career that actually know how to set
that up and use it, which was incredible to me.
Like, but he again, he had been at a dealer.
Uh, Colin was his name.
He'd been at a dealer that was straight time.
So Colin learned how to use it.
And he still didn't have to pull it out a lot of the time to use it, but he was
the only one that I'd seen.
And I can remember it was like all the other guys that have been in the dealer,
like as long as him, but a different dealer are like, what are you doing?
And they're coming over and what, Hey, like asking all these questions.
And I'm like, I was so green.
I didn't even know what an oscilloscope was.
And now when I think about how much we do within a oscilloscope now, it's just,
it's amazing to me that the dealers haven't embraced that in the sense that
like they, they make an essential tool and tell you to use it, but they're not
paying the text to use it.
Then they're still meaning them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause they supply a Pico now, but they don't pay you very well to use it.
No, I think I've only looked at a couple of cars ever with it just
cause why wouldn't you're not going to get paid for it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and you know what it is.
Like we, you know, we know, I can remember when the Chrysler's had our
Chryslers, the caravans had issues with the coils.
And I can remember when, you know, the PT cruiser and the neon, that generation
had issues with spark blood boots and the ignition wires.
Like you could drive it and you knew what you're feeling.
What you knew what it was.
I'm back and write your estimate.
Right.
And, um, it just became, you know, until the penistar came along, I always felt
they were pretty simple to diagnose.
And then not that the penistar is hard, but the penistar is hard from the
sense of like you're always kind of in the dealer, I think maybe you can confirm.
You're always kind of patching that thing together unless you do it the right way.
You know what I mean?
Because it's they're sold.
Yeah.
And different diagnosis, like variable cam timing, the early ones had the
phaser knock.
Yeah.
Um, then you got the oil pump ones.
It just the cylinder head, but I liked them.
I actually did pretty good with those.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
With the timing cover still on there and slam it in there.
My buddy, he loves them.
He'll do one a day.
You know, sometimes he'll start at eight in the morning.
It's two o'clock in the afternoon.
And he's, it's, you know, it's running again.
And he's, and he took a 30 minute break for lunch.
You know, like he's, he's fast at him, but he's done.
Well, into the hundreds of them at this point, right?
You know, there's that gas cam or like he's just, and then you see now, I don't know,
if you see the guys when they're doing the cams, they're leaving the phase, the
chain right on and they're back in the cam off the, off the phaser.
Yeah.
Because the chain won't fall due to the way the timing covers design, which I
think that's cool.
You know, at first when I bought my Jeep, I was like, Oh, you hear all these
problems with a penistar, right?
And then that's like, once you start talking to some guys in the know, they're
like, no, are you talking about, I do all the lifters in like two hours and like,
how do you do all that?
They're like, Oh, I just lifted up and cheat and slide it out.
Yeah.
You know, I love mine.
Mine's been so good to me.
Every Jeep, every Chrysler I've ever had honestly has been good to me.
Really.
Yeah.
You know, like I had a, had an 86, 600.
Oh, yeah.
Love that little thing, little two door car.
91.
A LeBaron turbo.
Love that car.
After that, it was all Jeep after that.
How little I got, I got a four liter Jeep.
That's enough.
Yeah.
I see they rot so bad up here now, right?
Like you see them once in a while.
I saw one day it was in good shape.
And once in a while, you see one pop up and Facebook marketplace and they want
like five grand and it's not rusted, you know, and it's low mileage.
And I'm like, I'm almost tempted to go buy that.
And I'm like, for what?
Like to get worse fuel mileage than my 36 gets, right?
Like to, you know, yes, it's way easier to fix.
But I mean, I, I, two of my Cherokees, I did head gaskets in like the four
liter would get a head gasket problem if you drove it long enough.
Now I'm talking like, yeah, up over 300,000 kilometers.
So well up over 200,000 miles when it happens.
Yeah.
But, you know, such an easy one to do too.
Right.
Like I never saw.
I saw 14 liter failed terminally ever in all my years at
Crieser and I had a window in the block.
They punched the hole right through it.
And he punched the hole right through it because he, he treated like a submarine.
Oh, water and then they drug it up on the bank and didn't pull the plugs and
just started cranking her over and, you know, how that goes.
But otherwise press liquid.
We never saw, you know, them come in for bearing issues in the bottom end or
cranks or nothing.
They just, you know, head gaskets and valves and that was it, you know, noisy
lifters while they were great.
That four liter when they, yeah, when, when they brought the 37 and
the Liberty and it was like, we knew it was, you know, not long for this world
for the Cherokee or like, this is such a letdown compared to Cherokee.
Like it was such a letdown.
So, but yeah, the 36 they got their problems.
But I think maintenance is a big deal because I got a friend that's got a
charger with 300 K on it.
No rocker arm issues.
Yeah.
He changes his oil religiously.
Does the maintenance.
Yeah.
He's putting oil pump in it.
That's about the only major thing he's done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've got a 15.
So I don't even know.
God, I can't remember if it's got that variable output oil pump in it or not.
They all do.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's what I've got.
I've had no issues with it.
No faults, no, no nothing, you know, no codes, no, I just changed my
oil every 3000 miles, you know, and so platinum and zero issues, 00
noises, zero check engine light, like none of that.
You know, I got a check engine light for thermostat being bad.
But I mean, what Panistar doesn't need.
Yeah.
And that's that's a piece of cake.
Did you get it?
Find one.
Yeah.
That's his back quarter day.
Did you get into the diesel stuff, Eric?
Uh, very little.
Um, when I moved away from the dealer, I was out with dad.
I got into him a little bit because the place I was at with him, we had a separate
truck shop and they did all the diesel work.
I only would might program one or do a fuel filter, but other than that, I've
changed an injector here and there, but I not real strong in diesel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I placed a few eco diesels.
Oh, oh, oh, they were a turd.
Oh my God.
Grand Cherokee was actually easier and I thought it was going to be doing one of
them.
Yeah.
Drop it out the bottom.
I can remember when that Mercedes first hit in the grand Cherokees and they were
showing us how if you had one, it was like five years old and you needed to put
a long block in it, do you exceed the value of the car, the grand Cherokee by just
buying the engine?
Just buying the car exceeded the value.
Before you ever in paid for labor, it was ridiculous.
You know, and I felt bad for the people to bought them because they were turds and
then they, of course, you know, that engine hangs in there right in the
tail.
Stilentist comes along and it's like, how did that engine that was such a turd last
so long?
You know, I mean, I can remember guys were trying to figure out how to take one out
of a sprinter and make it work in a grand Cherokee because there's a lot of
different parts that go into it.
But essentially it's like, oh, it's the same block.
Yeah.
But it's there's a lot of things that change to make it work in a sprinter
versus working in a grand Cherokee.
But like anything else, somebody found out something, figured it away.
That crank reluctance on the back of them.
That was the.
Oh, yes.
That was a brilliant design.
Yeah.
I did a few of them and then a member Jeep Liberty diesel.
Yes.
Oh, great.
Worked on a few of them.
That stupid EGR valve, which, well, you know, I had an.
Well, it was just like, and I, oh, I just what a what a turd that thing was in
very, very cool.
Right.
And I know I talked to way back in the day that were like in Europe, they sold
really well and people love them.
And it would have been if it hadn't had the like everything else, but I hadn't
had the emissions crap on it that we had to run here.
Like you could sell them like they're going on a style like it would have been
an amazing little little car like a little SUV.
But no, of course, we had to use that and each just, yeah, I can remember EGR
and turbo problems and I can remember like, you know, software updates
that were supposed to be going to fix it.
And it was just junk.
Yeah.
All joint recall paid good.
I like doing them.
Yeah.
But and the same with Dakota upper ball joint recall.
That was a great recall.
Yeah.
Love those.
Yeah.
They'd well hands and air hammer.
But I mean, yeah, it did.
Good, you know, God, what else, man?
Rollover valves on ram trucks.
I love that recall parking lot.
Yeah, I didn't get to do one of those.
I remember God, we'd go back to the PG Cruiser, that one where you would drop
the fuel tank and put the foam on top of the.
Yes.
So to sop up the fuel leak.
That was such that paid well.
Yeah, I could really the caravans when they still had a fuel filter.
Those paid really good.
They were so easy to do.
It was they weren't hard to make money on, man.
EGR valves when they first came out, like they were.
Oh, yeah.
You know, it's not in the parking lot, right?
Like you just it was never everybody jokes, but it was never
anything but the valve.
It always was the valve.
You know, never saw being anything but and it would really trip you up
when it wasn't like you didn't have a code for it.
But it was doing other things.
I I remember I had one and it was like it would throw a map sensor fault
in the meet and intermittently should say I have no throttle.
And I'm coming in and I'm looking at map sensor, map sensor.
And then of course the light bulb and you're like, oh, dumb ass.
It's EGR valve, right?
But, you know, I first one I ever did where I blocked off the flow, right?
Make make a gasket, stop the EGR from flowing and drive it.
Holy crap.
Do they ever ping without an EGR?
Yeah, like it was like, you know, you didn't think a modern car would
still rely on it that much.
But holy crap, I can just remember just off idle.
It sounded like, you know, gravel in a coffee can.
Like it was crazy, man.
But I remember when five to 59 Rams say when they did away with EGR 98.
How they had pinging and you had to reroute the plug wires and all that crap.
Do you remember the intake plenum gasket would blow up?
That was a lot of them.
I was a gravy job.
I put a steel one in it with new bolts and all send it down the road.
And I still remember the first customer that I saw one that had to do.
We'd done an all change on it.
Not me. It had been done on our drive through because we had a time
in a quick loop and he was gone three weeks and he come back in
and the engine was like ticking away.
He's like, you guys didn't put any oil in my engine.
You know, like, come on, send the drive through.
Like, you know, we had on camera, you can see the guy porno.
Well, there's no oil on dipstick. Sure enough, no oil on dipstick.
Like, and I remember they looked that car over that truck for like, where did the
well go? Of course, you call Techline or like, um, pull the throttle body off.
Shine a light down in there and see any app.
Sure enough, oil right up in that intake and you're like, oh, that's.
And then of course, comes back for catfault later, right?
But oh, yeah.
This was it burned.
But yeah, once you got those, man, they were such a good paying job.
That was the best way to do the tune up for the captain.
Oh, yeah. You already had it off.
Just do it at the same time, you know.
Yeah. But now, like, like, like now, like the hurricane engine.
Oh, I've done some phasers. Yeah.
Thermostats are a big issue with them on the straight six.
Yeah. They run a little door that moves.
And it's piggyback to the water pump.
So you got to take the water pump out to do it.
Of course. Of course.
Yeah. Done a bunch of them and that's one of them.
Yeah. I lose my ass on every one of them, but I'd rather do that than, you know,
tear myself up or whatever.
Yeah. Suck the AC down so you take the compressor completely out.
And then you got your air ride tank.
Because usually they were wagon ears that had that problem.
Yeah. That's a turd to wagon ear.
I mean, the hurricane runs good.
The numbers, I mean, but it's not as service friendly as a hammy.
No, no. And I've talked to more than one diehard
cruiser guy is like, why couldn't they just brought the four liter back to stick
in that thing? You know, it's like, well, never meet the emissions that,
you know, that thing is supposed to be able to do.
But when you think about inlines, like that was just like they,
they, the 25 and a four liter were the best inline I ever saw.
Maybe you could argue the old slant six was better, but nah, I would say no.
That four liter, the 25 always ran rough the inline a little because of me.
Yeah. Never designed to be that way.
But that like that four liter was just so bulletproof.
It was so simple.
Oh, yeah. They run forever.
They the three liter.
I mean, they're smooth.
They sound refined, but you're just asking an awful lot.
Yeah. Out of a small like the two liter
EVO engine now. Yeah.
Yeah, they run great, but you got to run the right oil
and that's usually what happens with them and they'll start scoring
cylinder walls and get a cold engine noise.
Do you touch any of the hybrid or EV stuff when you were there?
Yes. Yep. I've done some battery packs.
Yeah. A lot of heaters, battery.
Yeah. Yeah. They'll fail.
I see up here a lot more of the the four by E Wranglers.
The hybrid. I'm just like, thank God, I don't have one of them because,
you know, it'd be cool to get some mileage back.
A little bit.
I don't want to buy it when it's when it's broken.
You know, I don't want to fix it when it's broken.
Now, I had to do a battery pack on one shortly before I left the dealer.
And you take the straps off the do they take the rear doors out.
I just fold them forward and you take a cherry picker and pull them out.
Yeah. Yeah. Because it's just so heavy.
Yeah, it would be a for sure.
I mean, I like the idea that they put it there instead of putting it on the bottom
of the car where it's a lot more, you know,
I think that that's something that maybe we need to start thinking
about when we're building these modern EVs and whatnot is that we maybe think
about getting the battery pack up a little bit farther away from the ground.
Sure, what a royalty just did a video
on a Camry hybrid that the customer had hit something on the road
and it punctured the fuel tank and how it didn't puncture the battery pack.
I don't know because like it hit it.
It caused a leak in a transmission like they wrote the car off 15,000 bucks.
But like I've seen it, you know, I've talked about that high end
a iconic that was made the headlines here.
Customer drove over something caused a strike to the battery.
They went to the dealer.
They checked it.
They condemned the car, wrote it off because the battery pack was
the cost more than the car was worth.
Yeah, I'm just like, you know, that that's not that's not progress.
So now and then nobody's really rebuilding those batteries.
So they're just stacking up somewhere.
Yeah. Yeah.
Have you seen the the BYD cars that we talk about the?
No, I've read about them, but that's about it.
Pretty impressed, a little car.
Yeah, I think you can buy them up there.
Can't you?
Well, or not yet.
I think we're going to be like the first out of the gate with them.
I have a feeling because of some of the backroom deals that my government has done up here.
They've kind of made it very easy for them to get here.
Now, I don't know if they're going to be here by 27, but probably by 28, they're going to be here.
And then, you know, I've had people talk that like I had a guest on.
He'd been to Vietnam on a trip and drove them.
He says, like, you're just amazed at how how that car performs for the price of it.
Now, that being said, you know, without the product support, you know, and it's such a cheap car.
I'm scared in 67 years, we're going to have a bunch of them.
Sitting around in our, you know, land waste yards, landfills, whatever you want to call them.
Yeah.
Batteries that nobody wants, you know, or not fixing.
And then that's.
Does it really?
Sassardous waste.
Yeah.
Does it really serve our purpose?
What did like.
Kind of share with me when you left the dealer, what did they what do they say?
What do they think?
Do they care at all?
Did they say anything?
Nope.
Nothing.
I said, I said, I'm, I'm, it was today's my last day and because I didn't give them any notice
because I wanted to keep my benefits intact because I knew they'd kick them out from under me.
Right.
And the service manager goes, oh, okay.
And then that was a Friday night.
So then Saturday morning, I came in to get my toolbox and all that.
He only wanted to go through like four drawers.
So I don't allow that because legally they can't, but just to get out of there,
he goes, I don't know what I'm looking for.
And I said, all right.
And he goes, you got anything of the shops?
I said, oh yeah, I got two rolls of toilet paper.
Got some coffee cups.
Yeah.
Well, my locker, I keep an extra roll of toilet paper and paper towels because in the bath,
they forget to restock.
Well, I get sales and raid my locker.
And so I got the point I put in my tool cart.
But now they, he didn't care.
And then that Saturday, the general manager cross paths being the parking lot and he really just,
he just said, well, you know, we'll see you later.
I mean, no, what can we do, you know, to keep you?
What's the problem?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so how long have you been at that dealer?
Four years.
Four years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was at 22 Chrysler dealers for 10 years apiece.
And then I was at one for a year and a half just because it went out of business.
And then I know for a couple of years because that was that for 10 got bought out
and I stuck around for two years.
Now, Eric, when they, you know, when you kind of we joke, but it's kind of sad at the same time when,
when they don't do anything or say much when they know you're leaving, do you think it's because
like they've just kind of accepted that they can't do anything about making it better?
Or do you think it's like they're still holding out, you know, that they don't want to?
I think it's a matter of they don't know what to do.
Yeah.
I mean, I think they do.
Um, the service manager knows he's only limited by the general manager and the general manager,
he just, he don't know what to do about it.
Yeah.
He just sees it as you're being ungrateful for not wanting to work for him anymore.
And it's, that's not it.
I mean, it's just a matter of, you know, hey, you know, and I've told him, you know,
I've had meetings with him about, you know, what's going on in that shop.
And he just, then he flipped.
Then he spins it on me.
Yeah.
Well, like, like ours, well, you need to upsell, upsell, upsell.
Well, that works to an extent, but you're going to scare customers off or make them mad.
And again, you know, like, I see all these guys, the content creators and stuff, and even,
you know, the non content creators that are talking about the DVI process and all that
and how it's such a powerful tool it is.
But like, you and I know you can do a one hell of a DVI at the dealer, like absolutely stellar.
And they then have an estimate, you know, if we follow that 300% rule in this video,
and it goes to a shop with a door rate that's $20 less and say way cheaper parts and all
that work it's done there.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And that's, so for me, like, we knew you started to know by looking at the
history, because I'm sure you're like me, you look at the history and most, most of the cars
you're working on, and you start to see it right in there.
I called it a profile that like all the wrecks went somewhere else.
It came in with, you know, breaks on it from Midas and all that jazz and they were shopping
around for trying to save a hundred bucks or 50 bucks back in the day.
And I get it and I understand it, but like, when all of a sudden we keep saying now, you know,
all you dealer techs have got to do this DVI when we used to just do an MPI,
and used to pencil whip it because you were looking at your history to see what was do
and what was done.
We're, we're in a lot of ways, all we're doing is wasting people's time.
And we're prepping these amazing estimates that are going to our competition and getting the work
done.
Yeah.
Because
And then I also had problems with service advisors dropping the ball and not sending it
onward either.
That was kind of just as much of a problem.
Um, because you go up there, Hey, did you run it through?
I forgot.
Or they don't want to do it anyways and we'll try.
Yeah.
Like how do they not know that like, and I mean, they know it's not a case that they don't know,
but you've heard me, you know, in some of my past episodes and I talk all the time about like,
there's so many places that don't hold the advisor to the same level of expectation
that they hold the tech.
Like they say to the tech, Oh, you know, you got up some more, you got to, you got to
find more hours, you got to hustle more.
But we know there's certain advisors that like are underperforming every month
because they don't want to have, you know, the hard conversations.
They don't have the knack for it.
They're not that motivated.
And then all of a sudden they're just, they're, they're part of the,
they're part of the interior makeup of the dealer after two years because like
they've been underperforming for two years and they're still there.
And then people are like, Oh, I can't get rid of them now because they have a client base,
you know, and maybe they get a couple of CSI scores that made them look like they were great,
which again, if you did the repair for free, a lot of people just gave you a great fucking CSI,
you know, review because they didn't have to say nothing.
Didn't really matter, right?
That's always a part that just yanked me around when with the whole, you know,
lack of motivation from advisors is because
that's just terrible how the, some of them could be so mediocre.
Yeah.
And they kept their job.
I got a friend.
And kept getting the pay.
He's a really good one.
He looks at it as when he calls them up, only one of two things will happen.
Either going to fix it or you're not.
There's no bargaining, no cutting it down, you know,
take it or leave it.
And he sold, he sold a lot of service work.
Just don't take it personal.
Yeah.
I think that's a big part of it, right?
And this is not just in a dealer.
This is any advisor period.
Don't take it personal and realize that like if you set the precedents by saying,
I can find $200 to remove from the bill this time, they're going to want at least 200 next time.
And every time that, right?
Whereas if you start out and it's just like, no, unfortunately, Mrs. Smith, we can't do that.
You know, I'm already maxed out at what I can, if I found you all the overlap, like I, all that,
you know, I got, you're, you're, you're just opening up a can of worms by allowing them to,
to drive the ship because they're, they're just going to continue to expect that.
And then when you don't, that one time, and finally you got to knuckle down and say, no,
that's one to destroy you on the survey right there.
You know, it's because you always used to be able to give it to me and now you can't.
It's a, it's a, it's just the, it's, it's going down the wrong way.
And I, I joke about this, but I had an advisor who like he was not that motivated to sell
because his alimony check to his ex-wife would just go up exponentially
if he started actually really pumping work out.
And we're sitting here going like, dude, that's a you problem.
That ain't a me problem.
Like that's, you know,
yeah, give your ticket then to the other advisor, right?
Like that's who I want to handle it because he was a shark.
He just like, you know, I, that kind of stuff.
And to be allowed to stay when they're that, is their attitude.
I just never understood that.
That was daft to me that they were, you know, could, could perform like that.
Not that he was guy.
I'm not saying that it's just the directive was not there.
Well, and then like, like where I came from the last place, you get a good one.
Well, that other one's bad habits that they'll either quit or they just become the same person.
And then, then you got two, you know, horrible advisors to deal with.
Because that was starting to happen when I was leaving was they had a really good one out of the
gate and her attitude just went downward.
Like, I don't know.
Now, who trained, who trained the advisors when they would come on?
Like the senior advisor?
Uh, the service manager would train a little bit and then he'd let them kind of fend for themselves.
Yeah.
How did you think that worked?
Badly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, um, I saw them take kids that we'd hired and reworked in the quick loop.
So the drive up oil change bay and if they were like
polite and smiled at the customer, they'd make them a service writer in a very short,
but I'm not talking like after a year, I'm talking like after three months.
And I'm like, are you serious right now?
Like that's, that's not the right thing to do because last week they're changing oil.
And this week they're, they're selling $4,000 transmission overhaul.
So like it's, it's how do you, how do they learn to do that?
Yeah.
Oh, sales is sales.
Like no selling a $10 air filter isn't the same as selling a $4,000 transmission.
It's doesn't work like that.
I still think the less they know about, they need to know a little bit about cars, but not much.
Cause then you get the brainiac that wants to tell you what he thinks and like, no, why are they here?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's, did you see a lot of service writers that were, how do I say that?
Maybe washouts as tax.
Uh, I love you.
Not very many.
I was an advisor for four months at the dealer I was with dad.
That's how I got into the company.
They had no tech opening and the owner goes, well, you might like it better than ranching.
He gave me a six month trial run.
I only made it four months and he's seen the writing on the wall and put me on the line.
But, oh, it was okay.
We're still doing handwritten tickets, but I just didn't like it.
The senior advisor I learned a lot from, he could take, he can get his butt chewed something fierce
and let it roll off.
He did it for so long.
He could do it and it just wouldn't mean that the other owner knew that and then I became a line tech.
Do you think that ability to let it just kind of roll off your back?
Do you think that's lost now as a, do I say skill?
I'm not so sure necessarily Eric.
The younger generation has got that ability.
I don't think so either.
I mean, because I, I'm not going to knock them, but a lot of them want to feel special
and don't want, you know, they think, you know, if a customer is getting mad at them,
you know, it's personal and it's not like we got like there was a young one there at the last
place I was at.
I had an old farmer.
Well, he was in his, he's in his mid sixties and it would really tear him up.
He never nailed him on a survey, but when he'd walk in the door, the guy go, Hey, dude, what's up?
Instead of, you know, Bernie, how are you doing today or sir?
How are you?
And he'd come in the shop and talk to me and that friend of mine.
Cause he like, he said, you three texts.
There's another older one back there.
He goes, that's the only reason why I come in here.
I can't stand the rest of up there.
And I said, yeah, but no formal, you know,
you saw, need to be, you know, have my butt kissed, but, you know, just little formal.
Hey dude, what's up?
It's probably not how you greet your customer.
Out maybe at the bar, if you're a bartender, I could see that.
Yeah, but in a dealership or even just in a repair shop, you know, you really don't want to do that.
No.
What, what other kind of qualities do you think make a good advisor?
Oh, be able to multitask.
That was one thing we kind of ran into was a, we felt they take on enough work that they could
handle and it would hurt the shop because we weren't, you know, we'd run out of work.
They could only take on what they would.
Yeah.
Multitask and just a good personality, a little bit of knowledge about cars, just,
just a little, we don't need to be an expert on it.
Yeah.
Cause you know, I had, well, I had an advisor that she told the customer that the coolant flush
wasn't all that important because it doesn't really move that far through the car.
However she determined that to be, I don't know.
I think she was comparing it to, I don't know, she thought like the engine oil was way more
important, which she could make the argument. I think it probably would be, but like just,
how that got in her head that she was going to say something like that. I was just like,
I'm standing there like trying not to like let the cat out of the bag that like you just
you know, put a size 14 right in your mouth. Like you can't say stuff like that.
I had a few moments like that with advisors. She just stands there going, what?
Yeah. Cause, and again, you know, it's not about knowing all the answers. It's about,
if you don't know the answer, like, okay, let me go talk to the resident expert professional,
you know, and he'll give me the answer or she will give me the answer or ask AI or, or,
you know, ask the advisor that's got more seniority next to you if they've ever,
let's just don't, you know, and we would know a lot of the time, like some advisors, like, and
again, because we're all flat rate, all 100% incentivized, you'd have them come out and say
to the customer like, Oh, I know what it says in the owner's manual, you know, you should change
your brake fluid now, but like, I've been driving this car, I got in the parking lot and I've never
changed it and I've never had a problem. Like if you're my advisor and you say that, you became
kicking your lunch field on the road and it's like, it's, it's about what you do with your car.
It's about, especially when the customer is asking the questions, should I? The answer is,
yeah, you know, if the OE recommends it, yes, you know, you should always at least do the
minimum maintenance is what the OE recommends. There's worse, you know, we've had that conversation,
there's more maintenance needs to be done sometimes than what even the OE is recommending, but
like you never talk them out of doing something. If you're talking them out of doing a repair,
because you don't think it's going to fix the car, then that's a bigger problem, which is probably
then who was it dispatch to or that technician, you know, all that kind of stuff, but never tell
them that no, they don't need to change a fluid because your own car, you've never done that.
Now, if it's a car with a ton of miles on, they want a transmission exchange or service, no,
leave it alone. Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to ask you because like that's, that's a hot button
topic with some pretty big content creators lately. And it's like, you'll see, you know,
Sherwood talk about royalty, they will do it. But their process is very involved, more so than what
a lot of us would spend where it's like, it's, it's evaluated pretty good before they agree to
doing the service because like, and they, they have that open conversation with the customer,
this is not a guarantee this is going to fix it. And if it still has a shutter after we do the
fluid in it, you're not getting your money back. This is a service that should have been done.
You know, we don't think we necessarily need to replace the Torquilberger yet, but the fluid is
definitely degraded. You know, the Torquilberger isn't going to get worse by changing the fluid.
But most of us don't have that conversation enough. And then we get a customer comes in and they just
want a transmission tune. And you've never seen them before. And you never ask why and you dump
the tranny fluid out of it and you change the filter and then you send it down and they're back
a month later with it like missing gears. You're like, what happened? I can't believe it. And it's
like, did you, did you know this was happening beforehand? Customers going to say never, right?
But people don't just come in and ask for a transmission service unless there's something
wrong. And, you know, so then you go down that road of like, did we cause it? No, you didn't
cause it. The customer caused it by not doing the service in time. But how do you navigate that?
Well, I guess maybe you take whatever, you know, and look at, look at what a trans tuned cost now
in a Chevrolet and a Silverado. It's like a thousand bucks up here, right? You buy that much
fluid, that mobile one fluid for it, you're, you're $1,000.
Price for eight speed, you get, you to get the filter on some of them, you got to buy a
pan, the plastic ones and then that fluid isn't cheap.
Yeah. Yeah. So when people you're trying to sell, you know, what do you think about
Flushin versus doing it if it's got a serviceable filter? Because you'll see that.
I believe in just doing the serviceable filter because I had an eight speed I did a flush on,
they told me transmission had never been touched, a 100000 and the valve body goofed up on it
about a few weeks later. And the service manager got the customer to pay for it, not have a problem
with it, but she's wanting to get rid of the truck and I put a valve body in, she kept it for another
couple of years. But yeah, that and I told them, that's why I don't, I'm the only one that did the
exchanges in the Chrysler shop there because the other guys wouldn't. I'm like, I don't agree with
it, but you know, it's a paycheck at that point. But I would ask questions before I would just,
you know, see the RO and go ahead and do it because you have to.
And then I remember way back when a guy talking about how Kirk Robinson up here in Ontario,
he talks about how the way they had addressed in his shop was if it's got a serviceable filter,
they're both servicing the filter and doing the flush. And he would break it down as like
the first thing we do is we drop the pan off, remove that filter, clean that magnet so we're
not pushing that material through and then we flush it. Well, it was an expensive service
way back then, but he says like, we almost have no issues after the fact because that's the whole
argument, right? If you go and flush that, are you going to push that metal and that dirt?
Yeah, all the hubs, clutch packs and everything else. Yep.
But again, we're into, look at what we're the price of these, you know, transmission, people
still come in thinking of transmission and exchanges, 200 bucks, you know, and some of the
quick loops are probably still doing them for 300 bucks, you know, and it's like,
it's all fluid in it and that causes problems.
Isn't it the best? I used to, oh, I had an advisor again, my favorite advisor. He'd call me at least
once a week up to the front to do a relearn on a caravan because it had been at one of the
dump and pumps and they, and they did a transmission flush and now the thing is bump
shift and everything else. And you had to do your trailer. And of course, you know how that goes,
you can do it in like, what, four minutes in the drive-through, right? It's hot and
they sit there and watch it and he never charged them. And I'm like, you know, they would stop
going there if you'd start charging them for this because, you know, they, whatever they saved by
having them do it versus us, they would have lost that now by paying us to do the relearn.
And, you know, because the quicker the place doesn't have the faculty to do the relearn.
It's like, yeah, but like, they just went there and got taken advantage of, like, it's not,
they're fault. And I'm like, okay, so you have a customer that's already showing you that they're
not even going to come here for an oil change. And then they don't even have the trust in you to
call you up and say, hey, they're trying to sell me this, should I do it here? Now all of a sudden,
we're supposed to have sympathy for them that like they, you know, messed up their van and now we
have to fix it. No, we don't have to feel sorry for them. They've shown you that you're not loyal.
Now, just keep it as business and fix the damn car, you know? But this emotional, I was talking
to a good friend of mine, she's like, because we, you know, emotional wallet, right? We talk
about that all the time. She's like, I don't have an emotional wallet, I have an emotional suitcase.
And I'm like, well, then that's going to be your downfall, sister, because, you know,
Lindsay, if you're listening, stop that shit, like just let it go. They're, you know, when you do the
job properly and charge for it, they're not going to be upset about the price. If they are, they
were never going to be, they were never going to be right with it, regardless. Yeah, it's a customer
you don't want. The price isn't going to matter, is it, Eric? It could be a hundred bucks. I still
wonder if they could get it for 85, you know? Yeah. So when you left the dealer, were you scared
about making that change to go into, you know, a general, you know, call it a job?
Yeah, I was. But I got to thinking, I have been doing aftermarket training for the past
three or four years, in addition to the dealer training is went downhill.
And seeing the support online with like you and, you know, Lucas, like I talked to him at Vision,
kind of gave me a pep talk, all the support out there for the independent world that used to not
be there. That's what kind of helped push me. And I, you know, kind of like, I've always worked on
other stuff here and there and the variety. And that's what kind of helped me make the decision.
Plus I wouldn't be flat rate anymore. You know, just kind of make a more comfortable living.
And that friend of mine I worked with, he set me up with the shop owner because I never knew
the guy before. And he was a dealer tech for 30 years before he went to independent. So he understood.
And yeah, I, and I, like I said, told him, if I don't do it, I never will. And yeah, it's scary.
It's getting better. Kind of like Lucas said, the theory is all the same, just because I was
trying to master it like the dealer world. And you can't do that.
No, you can't, you have to rely. That's the thing. Like it sounds counterintuitive, but like when I
walked into the dealer, I had to rely on service information a whole lot more, a whole lot. Because
same as me, you know how to get them apart without reading the service information, right? Like you
know, and your visual and your repetition and your pattern failure and your tech line helps you get
through to kind of know where the, the trends and the weak points are. But man, when you start
working on everything and anything, you're, I have my head glued to that thing all the time. You know,
it's, we don't have identification where I work. But I mean, at the previous, like we used it nonstop.
It was constant. Not to give you the bullet, but to know, like I keep saying it isn't about
getting a bullet, it's about knowing. Thanks to test. If there's a, yeah, if there's a real
common thing, don't sit there and go, ah, it's not going to be that. Like, no, you better start
with trying to prove that it's not because otherwise. Yeah, that's it. And then I felt bad for a little
while that I would spend more time at the computer reading how to diagnose it and tear it apart.
And then like I had a Cadillac, I think it's been half an hour at the computer and then
five minutes on the car, figured it out, replaced the part.
You know, and it's, it's, it's, it's slowly, it's getting better about that. It's just, yeah, you,
you know, that dealer mindset of, you know, you want to, you know, it master it and be done.
Yeah. But your boss probably doesn't have a problem with you doing it. Does he?
Yeah. So, gotta get it over her own head, you know? Yeah. Cause Alex, I'll call, I work in a
separate shop where four, we have two buildings or four blocks apart, but we're connected in a
calm and all that. But I'll call him up and I'll tell him, hey, I tested this and it tested like,
you know, I got this result and all right, go ahead and fix it. You know, he's pretty cool about it.
You know, he don't want you to just call him up. Well, it needs this and then you leave it at that.
I'll actually tell him why and it helps him ease his mind. Yep. Sure. Yep.
Yeah. Is there, do you guys take in anything or is there brands that you don't touch?
They basically take on anything. Euro, Asian.
We got a military deuce and half outside right now that I'm not working on it.
We got a part timer comes in does that.
Yeah. Is that somebody's fun project? That kind of thing?
Yeah. Farm toy. Yeah.
All about a month ago, I rebuilt an 84 Chrysler Fifth Avenue. I only had 40,000 miles on it.
What did it need? Oh, belts, hoses, the HVAC wasn't working right and I got to wear blow cold air,
but that it needs an actuator for the blend air and oh,
the just a carburetor. Just, oh, it had sat for a while and the guy wanted to dry. I said,
um, fix the doors and I told the guys do not turn this into your daily driver.
I had, I had 12 years ago at the shop, I worked in the guy brought one of Fifth Avenue in
and it was the older, you know, rear wheel drive boat kind of thing there and we did some work on
it, but I probably trying to find, I can't remember what it was, something under the hood we were
trying to find and it took forever and then when we got the part, it wasn't exactly right,
but we got it. Oh, it was a window regulator. That was it. It's like, you know, we made it work,
but I was like, you know, what is that? Like, why do you want this car? Like to, you know,
but he'd had it forever and he loved it and he wanted to drive it around and I think it was a
convertible too. So it was like, that probably was what it made it harder to get parts for, but like,
that old stuff and he like, normally we wouldn't allow customer supplied parts, but he,
because of what it was and you know, he had friends that like, we're in the Mopar club, right? And
they're telling them where to find these parts and they, you know, they've, they've been tested out
and they, somebody else has put the same thing in and it works fine. So we allow, we made the
exception to the rule for him, but I can still remember like working on this car and thinking,
my God, like I'm so glad I wasn't, this is Chrysler era before my era, because like I remember doing
a water pump and belts and hoses on one of the front and old old like, you know, 318 as we call it.
And I still never forgotten how many stupid belts and spacers and bolts. Yeah, brackets. Like it was,
I was early in my career and I was an apprentice. I'm like, this is the stupidest
generic piece of junk I've ever seen in my life. There was an air pump. There was a power steering
pump. There was an alternator. AC compressor. All different belts, different spacers,
different brackets. I'm like, this is stupid. Oh yeah. Put the belts on it. I was like, wow,
I don't miss this. Yeah. Thank God. A serpentine belt came and fixed so many issues. I, they were
cool cars. But man, they were just like, nah, you know, I just know. And the weird, when they would
talk to you, the Chrysler's, when they would talk to you, that was a trip. And I can remember the
early grand Cherokees when they would tell you that the light bulb was out, but then a water really
wasn't out, you know, that would drive people nuts. And it's like, you know, we joke about it.
Yeah. Working on the old stuff like that now, it's just, it's frustrating trying to find the parts
and, you know, be careful because everything's so brittle. You know, I'd tear Dash apart a little bit.
And yeah, it just, you're just, it's not much of a moneymaker, but it's kind of fun. But at the same
time, I'd rather work on later model stuff. Well, you're getting into that, you know, where now you're
doing an enthusiast's car or into the rest of your dip in your toe in a restoration realm
versus just the regular every day, you know, in an out type of routine, right? Of what we're actually
supposed to be doing in this industry. And, you know, I hate to tell anybody, but the reality is,
is like a lot of these stuff, what their expectations are really don't line up with
what it actually takes now to do it. Like you said, to do some of these jobs without breaking
the plastic or, you know, yeah. So you take out the, you know, heater core, maybe as an example,
because they come out a lot easier in the old stuff than they do in the new stuff, but you go
in there and it's like, Oh, wait a minute, it doesn't fit. Yep. Now I've got this car off
apart, right? What do I do? You drive it outside and it sits there at the end of the lot for, you
know, two weeks until we try something that does fit. But I just like cringe at a Dodge truck when
they want one done in the dash, you look at it wrong, it'll crumble on you. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. Because we all know the cheat for that, but it's still the cheat is like,
you know, you're pulling the dash ahead, you're not doing it the way you used to, but you still,
you're taking a lot of that plastic apart and it's like you bring on it wrong and it's cracking.
Like you're, you just Chevrolet's the same way though. It doesn't really matter. I mean, any of
that junk now when it's 10 years old is, is fragile. Did you do a bunch of dash? Oh, yes.
I did a lot of evaporator cores, heater cores, actuators.
Yeah, I did. did actuators. I did a couple cores. I didn't have to do a ton of
dash work. I managed to, I was out before the, someone, all the casting sand was winding up
Yeah. 200s of engineers. I did a ton of them where you put radiator, heater core, oil cooler,
if it was a 36 flush or out. I remember, yeah. And I remember, I didn't understand the
guys were like, Oh, I love doing those heater cores. I'm like, why? And then you, you figure out the
cheat code that they were doing, which is they were not, they were uncrimping the pipes out of
the core and just sliding the core on right now, leaving the pipes in here. And I was amazed that
so many of them didn't leak. I think probably a lot of them did leak, but, you know, we didn't see it.
And I remember we had a caravan when I was at Nissan and they sold it. Of course, they plugged up
and they put three cores in it and it kept plugging. And finally they changed the engine in it.
And I was like, what are you putting in for engine? Oh, I used one. I'm like,
um, you think that's going to fix the problem? Yeah.
But it was, it was ridiculous. He got down to where he was doing a pretty fine, like he'd do them
in two hours to do that core and he was doing it the same way because somebody at the dealer told
him this is the cheat for it. But, um, I think the idea that they bought that car and then put
an engine in it instead of just buying it back in auction and I was like, this is ridiculous. You
know? Yeah, that's why I'm not a car salesman. I just, I'd want, I would, I got a conscience or I
want to do it a certain way. There's no money in it. The way I want to do it.
Well, that's it. And you know, I work at a used car a lot. So that's a daily struggle to be like,
because again, you know, if you, if you rebuilt the car, though, which is what they're telling
the customer it is and it's not, you know, versus just doing what it is to make it legal to sell
and safe and reliable, there's no money. There's zero money. You don't make any, the margin so
frigging stretched as it is. But like customers will come back and it'll be like, you know,
I bought it nine months ago and the AC is not cold and you're like, yeah, like, yep.
AC, it worked when we sold it to you. Um, but it's not part of the safety and then they're
flipping out, right? You're like, oh my God. And then you start giving them the quote now and what
it costs to fix air conditioning now. And they're like, I'm trading the car in. Okay.
You're probably going to buy something else and then next year won't have air conditioning working
either because it's just, you know, 1234 is the joke. Like it won't, it won't stay in the system.
And I imagine up there, um, how many rear evaporator cores have you done on caravan? And
they probably suck up there with all the corrosion. So I'll tell you right now, Eric, most of what the
guys do is, um, not dormant. There's another company I want to say is called CS, CSI. And they
specialize in like fuel line repair, coolant line repair, AC line repair, and they make a block off
kit. Okay. Right. Because, and that was, that was what a lot of them got because it was, it was
literally just like, it was like a furl that you had put on and then you'd like screw it. It's like
a compression thing. That's all it is. And it would seal up and block the lines off to the back
because like how many people bought a caravan and 90% of the time, if they've still got it now,
nobody's riding in the back of the damn thing anyway. Right. And then it's, so it's like,
I get it the few times you put the kids in there and the AC is cold in the front, but not in the
back. They're going to whine, but you know, you're talking a lot of money. I remember,
I remember the caravans when they had that rear heat line that I would always rot off on the firewall
there just underneath and we would do them so fast to make your head spin. They paid great too.
And then yeah, the rear evapses start to rot out. The rear lines run into the back would
rot out and guys would just lick their lips because it's like, you'd put that rear evap and that
line in and you tell the customer now, listen, no undercoat this. They wouldn't. Two years later,
rot again. And it's just like, what do I do now? Well, now I would probably cap it because,
like you also need rear brakes that are seized. Rear caliper, hot on every caravan.
Yeah. It just, we did a lot of them. I did a lot. I got no three town and country. I'd run it
through an undercar car wash a lot. Keep the, because we don't have a whole lot of problems,
road salt here, take off further north, but yeah, keep the dirt because around here dirt and grime
will kill them. Yeah. All for us. And even I say undercoating, I've still pulled lots of them apart
that have been undercoated and it's still rotten. It's still swell. Like it was such a
stupid design in the sense that it was exposed. And again, they're, A-C is another funny thing when
you're having customer conversations is cause like, you can run back there with a sniffer and you
know, you're going to find it leaking. You're going to find, ah, you're going to, but it ain't the only
leak in the car. Not even close, right? And then so you, maybe they do fix it and they put lines in
it and they put the rear evap in and then you're like, six months later, you know, it needs a
an evap under the dash. And then look, you know, we might as well do the whole box while we're here
because that's the right way to do a Chrysler because you get a new core, you get the box,
the actuator, the blend doors, the whole problematic junk and people are like, my God,
I spent $6,000 in HVAC on this turd. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So comfort's not cheap.
Right. The only reason I scrapped my last Cherokee is cause I was coming up on summer
and the compressor had seized up here before and I'd put a bypass pulley on it when you could still
buy one. And, and I wasn't going to buy a compressor to put on it. You know, it already didn't have
four pans really that were worth a shoot. So it was like, no, I'm not going to buy a compressor and
a receiver dryer for this. I'm just going to, you know, drive it to the junkyard. But I mean,
that was the only reason that was the only reason I got rid of that Cherokees because
otherwise I'd still be driving it if it had cold air, but I just wasn't going to, you know,
fix the air. It wasn't worth it. But not like heater cores anymore. The ones I see are 09 to
18 Rams plug up. Well, even the newest current body style, they're starting to have the same issue too.
Do you think that's got to do with how they, because some people show how they run like Chrysler
run the, the, the passages the other way, right? Like I think that's got a big part of the reason
why they plug up is because, you know, and why they don't fix that or somebody in the aftermarket
hasn't come up with a way. I don't know. Cause like you've seen it, you take them out, they're full
of, they're full again, that casting sand, right? And then it's like, I've watched Eric O, you know,
try to fix a couple of them with like, you know, CLR and a pressure blast through the,
through the hoses and he gets some heat back. But I also know I've had a bunch that like,
you know, my, my four liter, my Wrangler or my last Cherokee, it was starting to get like that
where, you know, I was flushing it every year blown through and it was getting the heat back.
But she knew that it was just like, there was so much sediment in it that eventually it was going
to be, you know, a summer only buggy if I kept it. I had a 93 acclaim like that. And the only reason
why I did that was it still had R12 and the AC system didn't leak. And I'm like, I'm not putting
a heater core in it and lose the R12. Yeah. Yeah. It was such a, such a better refrigerator. I am
like in terms of not yet, but progress. What do you hate to see come into your shop now?
Anything? Nothing really yet. Just it's a learning curve. I'll, I'll, I'll figure out about anything
really. Right. Like, yes, I was helping out a friend of mine back home and worked on an Audi.
He goes, you want to put a compressor in one of my, yeah, why not? The Torx bolts delight.
Yeah, I know. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's an Audi. I mean, it's not a summer, not terrible and some
absolutely suck. I think it's just a frame of mind. When you talked about you went to vision,
is that something your whole shop does? No, just me. Unfortunately, where I'm at,
they don't invest in training. He told me that when I was interviewed and I kind of
just okay, because I, you know, I've always kind of trained regardless and, and, you know, get used
to some people, you know, why, why waste your time, you know, kind of beat on you and I thought I
can live with this and no, I got a friend that I help out on Saturdays every now and then. And
okay. In return for work and some we went to vision together and he took care of it.
Very cool. That's kind of nice. And I went to full four days this year and it was
really nice. Last year I went two days to get a feel of it and I, like I said, it was really cool.
I got to meet David Roman and Lucas Underwood and Brandon Stekler. I had for an instructor.
He's amazing, isn't he? Yeah, he's absolutely. I just saw him a couple weeks ago in Pennsylvania
Tools and I mean, now it's like, you know, we see each other, I give him a hug, you know, and he's,
he's just, he's so, how do I say it? He's so professional, you know what I mean? Like,
he'll share his opinion, but he does it in a way that doesn't really offend anybody or, you know,
it's just the guy's a genius. He's just, that's the only way you can say he's a genius. And
I've enjoyed every class I've ever taken of his and what was cool this year is like,
I took a class with Keith Perkins. Yeah, I got to meet him. And Brandon,
yeah, another genius. Like the two of them feel the almost like when the two of them are in the same
room, it kind of gets all of a sudden very crowded because there's just no frigging way that much
IQ can be in that room together. Like they're just together. But it was so cool to have him in the
class with Keith because not that he's challenging Keith, but like he's asking questions and you
see the gears are turning and then these two guys heads and you're like, man, we're in such an
amazing place in the industry right now because like if you want to talk to people like that,
you literally just have to like send them, shoot them a message and they'll answer back. Like it's
incredible. I'm so fortunate that I consider them my friends now. Like it's amazing because for me,
I was just, I was a dealer guy that found them online and was amazed what they were doing, right?
And it just became so now 15, 20 years later from when I first started to see them,
I'm amazed. I pinch myself still all the time and I'm sitting there across the table from them
drinking a beer, talking about the industry. It just blows my mind. It just, it makes me,
I can't, I have to pinch myself some days because I'm definitely a duck out of water with those
guys. Yeah, I mean, it just was amazing. Yeah, Stoeckler just how he teaches and
you know, pick up stuff. And then I can't remember the other instructor I had. He was a shop owner
and can, Eric, he, I think it was last Eric shape. No. Can't remember his name. Eric, not Ziggler.
Is that right? Eric. Trying to think here. Eric Walker. Walker. Okay. Yeah. Hold that up. Yeah.
I really enjoyed his classes. I took two of his.
Oh, Adam Robertson took one of his classes. That guy's something else.
Richard Falco. You ever take him to his? Jim Wilson. That's another one I've taken his classes.
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I'm a big believer in continuous education. That's kind of what
because my friend told this shop owner, you know, hey, you know, and then when I met him, he goes,
yeah, we kind of train as we, you know, learn as we go. And I said, well, I'm going to keep doing
my education. And he's like, that's fine. I do lunch and learns every whenever they come on. Those
are really good. Andrew Fisher just did one last week. Yeah. Another brilliant, brilliant, brilliant
guy. Like it just, and Peter Coombs, that's another good one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it just that we could,
we could talk for an hour on just the, the supports amazing. Yeah. And that's what I love about this
industry. Like we, we can all wrapped up sometimes in the negative of it, right? And even I do, because
it's so much of what I do is people like yourself that are reaching out to me to talk about it,
right? And, and you know, you're talking about the good and the bad. And I wish that like I had
more positive sometimes to say. But it, you know, we don't, we don't get the problem solved if we
don't talk about the problem. But I should really learn to kind of highlight more the people that
are, you know, really making the difference in terms of our education. Well, like with you,
you know, when I got referred to start, you know, listening, I, it made me feel I'm not a,
you know, I always thought I was alone and no one here and others. I mean, you hear about it when
you went to dealer classes and stuff, but it's just kind of not the same, you know, because
everybody's still out for themselves. Yeah. Well, and that's, that's it. Like it,
I, you know, even my coworkers, like I wanted to help them and, and make sure that they weren't
struggling. But I mean, it was still very clicky in the sense of like, I go back to the four of us
that did a lot of the digon and, you know, electrical, we'd help one another. But if we,
like if we saw another guy struggling sometimes that we didn't really like necessarily agree all
the time with how he did things, we didn't rush over to like being all thrown to life preserver.
Trying a little bit. Probably split the head, you know, put her, put on his head a little bit
for a little while, right? Until you kind of go over there and go, okay, what's going on? Or if
you, if it came back and it got dispatched to you, that's when the shit got ugly. That's when
stuff got really bad because now, you know, now you've got people that are angry because the car's
back. And you know why they come back because we dispatched it to the wrong person and then you
can make every excuse in the world why we did that. And some of them are valid excuses. Sure,
they are. A customer didn't want to wait, blah, blah. But you got to
give them the reality of union. Don't just BS them. Yeah, like I, you know, I say it all the
time, don't give me, you know, air conditioning jobs that are super complicated because I'm not
trying to get from that. You know, I'm not comfortable with the dyke side of it. I'm not.
Can I get it done? Yeah, but I slow as hell at it. And I'm meticulous about it. And like,
I never think that even though, and here's the other thing, I think the very reality is like,
we do know that like, even when we get it together and sealed up, it doesn't stay sealed up. So,
that's always where I miss something. We didn't miss something. Pressure is pressure. Today,
it was stayed behind, you know, the seal, 10 more heat cycles and all of a sudden the seal won't
hold it. Yeah, you got a system that holds under vacuum, but since you put a little pressure on it,
do you do nitrogen testing? That's kind of the preferred way that a lot of us up here want it
done. Now, I'll tell you that that's not always the, how do I say it? Customers get really yanked
when they have an AC system that's like, because so how the mandate works for the government up here,
because again, it's government controlled, is that a system is like low and say you, so you
back the system, you take out their one pound of refrigerant that's in there, it's supposed to be
two pound system, you know, and you throw nitrogen in it and you find the leak and you give them a
bill and they say, I don't want to fix it. Technically, I'm not supposed to put refrigerant
back in that car because it's a known leaking system. So it's being, well, you want to see some
customers get angry. You, you know, they get angry when they had a somewhat working system
and now they have a completely empty not working system because you took out their one pound of
refrigerant, you put it in the waste tank, they get pretty pissed. So that's, I'll tell you why a
lot of places don't use nitrogen is because they want to leave whatever's in the system
and try to find the leak with that. You and I know that like a lot of it, when you're looking at it,
it don't, it doesn't work because it's empty. So what's the first step while you hook up and if
there is anything in it, you evacuate it and then, you know, you put a tracer die in, this is,
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it's almost do it. You put tracer die in, you charge
the system, you start looking for a leak, you charge the system with refrigerant and maybe you
find some leaks. Maybe you don't. Right? We all know that there's a lot of evaps that have always
been leaking that we don't find sometimes because they don't want to find them. And sometimes because
until we got to this where we started to actually maybe look for the UV die dripping out of the
hose, like the vent or till we got some of the sniffers that get really good and being able to
find them way up in the dash, we didn't find it. So then the customers drive along and next year
they come back in again and they get another charge. So that's why nitrogen isn't really like,
I don't want to say it's not popular, but it's not, every shop out there is not making it the
way to do it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. No, that friend I helped out, he does it, but where
I'm at, we don't. It just, yeah, charge it up and see where the die comes out or if you're lucky,
see where, you know, you've seen where it's leaking beforehand.
Yeah. And the 1234 is such an expensive refrigerator now. It's having to change sometimes,
I think, the way that we actually charge troubleshoot. Like my friend Josh is talking about
like a 1234 system to eval at his shop. He's in North Carolina, it's 500 bucks, you know.
And I can remember working at a shop two years ago that like it was 250 to eval a 1234 system,
you know, so because again, the price of refrigerant has gone up in price.
Now you look at what 134 costs and it's starting to creep up from where it was because again,
they're not moving as much of it. And then, you know, you talked to other people and they're like,
oh, I retrofitted a bunch of 1234s to 134 and you're like, not really supposed to do that.
Yeah, but at least we're going to identify around the 1234 machine.
Yeah. Yeah. Which again, though, that identifier, you've seen the conversations there.
That oxygen sensor that's in there is pretty problematic and don't last. And then guys are
buying, you know, an $800 oxygen sensor to put in their two year old machine and they're
cranked right up, right? They're irritating. So I see both sides. I mean, like,
I'll tell you, if I was in my shop right now, we don't have a work in air conditioning machine,
so we sublet it all out. And I asked a friend of mine, Ben, I'm like, what do you think about,
like, how would I go about this in my shop? And he's like, well, lots of guys that he talks to,
they're buying, you know, a standalone pump and a standalone gauge set and they're doing 1234
with no identifier. And, you know, they're finding the leaks and sealing the system and putting back
together. And, you know, I think that that may be in the name of progress. Unfortunately, it's made
some of these cars become, you know, they go to the junkyard because people don't want to pay for
fixing air conditioning. And that's sad again. That's just like, to me, it's just the same as the
EV battery argument, right? It's going to the junkyard because the repair exceeds the value of
the vehicle, you know, and that's pretty pathetic that what's essentially still a creature comfort,
you know, means that the car isn't worth repairing. I mean, we get, we're lucky in Canada, we don't,
like I haven't turned my air conditioning on yet, except for this weekend. That's the first time.
And so it's May and I'll probably turn it off probably by September, you know, like it's a
shorter season. You know, all people down in Florida and, you know, George in Alabama and,
you know, Vegas, Arizona, they're running it, you know, 12 months of the year, they're running
there. And it's, it's definitely adding to the cost. So I don't know. I don't like,
I don't like some of the progress that's been made and what it's costing our customers. But
at the same time, we had a conversation today. You see it all the time and you probably have heard
David talk about it, Eric. You know, a lot of us are living above our means, right?
And I think that that's when we haven't necessarily prioritized auto repair. So,
you know, I made the, I said to somebody this morning, we've got people walking in wearing
$300 sneakers and holding on to a $1,000 iPhone and drinking a $9 cup of coffee from Starbucks
and they want a break job done for $400. Like their priorities are backwards.
And that's where I think we've got to really start to, if we're going to fix this industry or
survive it or whatever you want to say, we're going to have to learn how to start having real
tough conversations. Oh yeah. You know,
you know,
yeah, I got like David, he goes, yeah, they'll wait three hours or so for an iPhone and
fix their car. But well, like car quality, I mean, like I had a talk with a friend of mine,
I used to work with dealer, he goes, a new car today, what one would you buy the last you 10 to
20 years? They're few and far between. I don't, I don't know if anything's made now with even
intending to get it to last 20, you know, I mean, seven years for parts support on them.
Yeah. And they're sticking to that real bad now.
Yeah. Well, look at the ABS modules that you can't get for a car, right? That's just one of these.
You know, the thousands of those things are parked because the ABS lights on or the modules
like and you can't get them. And then, you know, some you can make a use one work other ones you
can't. There's workarounds, obviously. That's just nuts to me that because I can remember like
in the early days of Chrysler, those frigging things lasted way longer. Like you didn't,
you didn't see them fail nearly as often as you do now, not nearly as often. So what did they
change that made them fail now? Well, right, we don't necessarily know. Yeah, exactly. COVID chips
all of a sudden going in. And then, you know, the fact that they can't make a workaround that says,
okay, because you know, it can be done. All it takes is software thing to say, okay,
we realize these aren't being supported, but we're going to go in and do a software tweak
so that you can make a use one work. I mean, if they can make an eco diesel run without the crank
sensor, yeah, they can fix a lot of these modules just for programming. Let's think about that.
They took a car, a truck that like, okay, we can lose the reluctance, the thing will still start
and run. If we can do that, we can certainly go in and with a patch or like we did with the, when
you couldn't get deaf quality sensors. All of a sudden now we released software that says,
it's not going to de-rate the truck anymore. You know, we know that you got a deaf problem,
but until we can get you apart, you're going to be able to drive your truck. It's as simple and I
don't like the fact that they're holding back, but people vote with their wallets. And if they
continue to keep buying new cars and then complain about the quality of the new car, what are you
really saying? Like, you know, you got to draw a line in the sand at some point. Yeah, you got, yeah,
you mean instead of feeding the machine. That's right. Exactly. I drive a 2015, you know, people
would look at that and go, well, you're driving a 10 year old car because I normally, you can still
always drive, you know, almost 20 year old cars. You know, I was driving, well, four years ago,
I got rid of my 96 Jeep. So do the math on that. In 2021, I got rid of a 96. You know,
how old was that? Like it was almost 20. I'm keeping more stuff closer to 20 years than I'm
keeping it to 10. That's how I am. I used to drive stuff, you know, less than 10 years old. And
of course, I was back when stuff was, you know, a lot more solid. You knew it was going to work.
Now it's like, yeah, take a gamble. I can remember buying 10 year old shadows for,
I joke all the time, I bought one for 250 bucks because somebody told me to need a head gasket
and you need a distributor. And like I sold that car, I drove it for three months and I sold it to
somebody and I doubled my money because they needed the tranny out of it. But I mean, I sold it and
safety did. It needed nothing. And it was already 10 years old at that point. And it wasn't all rusted
out. You look at stuff now that's 10 years old and in different climates, it's not worth fixing
because it's so rustic. It's like Swiss cheese at that point.
Yeah. And you look at even the, kind of the way the coil springs are breaking now on
six and five and six year old cars, it's ridiculous. Like the metal that we're being made,
you know, that we're buying from China and retooling back into parts is not the same as
as virgin metal. And, you know, it just makes everybody angry. And I don't know,
that's the part that I struggle with when people are angry at my industry. Like you can be angry
at the, the OE, but we're not the OE. We didn't build it. We didn't break it.
And even when you, you know this, when you're working the dealer, you're not the OE. Like you,
you move their product for them, but you have no input hardly at all on how that product's built
or marketed or what it costs. None. You get zero, you know, and that's, and again, everybody's like,
well, if all the dealers, because I hate that these dealer mechanics can't do this and dealer
mechanics can't do that. Yeah, some are pretty bad, but the reality is, is like,
nobody, if you're not going to pay them to do the job properly is going to do the job right.
Nobody. Like this idea that like, I'm going to, I'm going to do it right, even though I'm not
getting paid. That's a bunch of BS. You're going to do that maybe for a little while.
If you do your whole career, you're, I feel for you because you just got, you, you got taken
advantage of. You shouldn't do it. You know, it's like, it's the same as I tell, you know,
I don't want to advocate for, you know, revolt and revolution, but you know,
we had lots of conversations back in the day where if they gave us something and the time wasn't,
wasn't going to be enough, we didn't do it, you know, and it wasn't just like one of us wouldn't
do it. We all, you'd see that worker come back out and try to get another, and everybody would
stand fast and say, no, not doing it. Give it to an hourly guy or, you know, or they'd figure
something out to help the, yeah. Yeah. And that's where, you know, you've got to,
you've got to learn how to make yourself indispensable because if you're, if you don't
have anything to offer your employer and you take that attitude, they're just going to,
you'd be kicking your notch field down the road. But if you are, if you've done like you do and,
and take the training and, and make yourself, you know, a little more valuable to them above
average, whatever you want to call it, they'll listen at least. Sometimes they may be even
compromised. They don't like to do it, but they will do it. But if you're not making yourself
indispensable, you're just, you're at their mercy. And I don't like to be at anybody's mercy. That's
why I don't work flat rate. I don't, I don't want to be at somebody else's, you know, mercy to what
defines my paycheck. I want my paycheck to be defined by, and everybody goes, well, how hard
do you work to find your paycheck? No, it doesn't because we've all seen where people don't market
properly. We don't dispatch charge properly. And you're not making the kind
of work that you used to make your hours, your, your pay, whatever you want to call it. And that's
not then me not doing the work, right? That's them not accounting for their shortcomings,
their bottlenecks. I always felt like, you know, we're the only industry, the more you know, the
less you make, it fails. Like, yeah. Did you have when you started to get before he got out of the
dealer, did you find that the young people coming in just wanted to coast pretty much?
Yeah, they couldn't die. I get to one of the older guys, and then they just want to do the grunt work.
Now, when you were there, how did pay work? Because I mean, we all talk about like,
pay works from the standpoint of like your hours. But I know for me, like,
hours weren't it because once we all in Canada, once you all had your license,
every deal I ever worked at, you all got paid the same per hour. And then you just had to
sell more hours if you wanted to earn more pay. You guys are, they varies on your certifications
and your experience. One dealer, two dealers I've ever worked at, we're all the same.
The first one, it was a percentage of the labor rate. And you only got a raise when the labor rate
went up. The second time, we were all masters anyways. And they paid us all the same. But no,
the last dealership, it varied based on experience. And like one guy did all the RAM 45, 5500 pro master,
he got the most and he can have that. He had the work area for it and everything.
And then the younger guys, it was an hourly slash how many, how much work you kicked out of
performance bonus. So they would go after like services like BG stuff, eat breaks, easier stuff to
get their performance bonus. And yeah, that's the dealer I worked at. We all grabbed the low hanging
fruit. That's what you, that's what you're looking for with every MPI that you did. You were hoping to
sell the service because the thing that they were there for didn't pay for the dam, even if it was
like a seasonal oil change, entire rotation of brake inspection that paid you .8. That was coming
to the shop and not to the quick loop up front because they wanted you to find work on it. And
yeah, you'd find a tie rod that was bad. You find control arm pushers that were bad. But like you saw
so many guys that like they made a career out of never learning how to diagnose the basic
electrical system, but they could sell 50 hours a week because they could do all the front end and
all the flushes. Like they were masters at it. I have a picture of my Facebook of me at the Nissan
dealer and I'm not, you know, and I've got three flush machines going at one time. I've got a brake
flush, a coolant flush and a fuel system service going. And it was a high enough mileage on the
car and the car customer came in requesting all we did it. But I mean, that's not real skill at
that point. Like it's just, you know, it's putting reps in. It's not the same. It's not what,
what the customer really needs. They need problem solved. You know, you get a car,
you're doing all them services and you find a wheel is loose and you're like, you could have moved
that money over to that. Well, that's the thing. You see it all the time. That's the big argument
that comes up in a lot of the owner groups is the customer comes in for, you know, these pre-sold
jobs or they come in wanting this and you don't do the DVI. You start immediately doing the, you know,
services and then you find out that it's like, oh shoot, like she's here for a transmission flush,
a brake flush and, you know, a tune up and then you're like, well, shoot the left rear tires bald,
the right rear tires got braid coming through it and it needs brakes and a tie rod and alignment
all the way around. And because you've already started on the gravy, you got to call her up
and sell her more work. And then she's going, well, can I, can I hold off on doing the gravy and get
the safety? No, unfortunately, we've already started on that. Well, shoot, how do you look to the
customer now? You don't look like an advocate, you know, you look like a, we took your money,
you look like a rich, yeah, right? Because they were, and again, the customer's just trying to
look after their investment. But like, we're supposed to be advocating for their safety.
First, their longevity and reliability. Second, and we don't do that when we're, when we're
coached or taught to, you know, find one thing, get them out of the dealership or get them out of
the shop and then look the car over work. That's not, that's, I got a problem with that. So,
you know, I don't, I don't believe that that's the right way to make this industry better. But
well, and I know, you know, I don't have a private jet. So it's, it's a funny conversation to me
because like, even back in the day, I just learned when I was writing the estimate, and it could have
been a neglected turd, right, Eric? And you'd be like, you knew how to write it where it prioritized.
And, you know, yeah, the customer's there for an AC complaint on the caravan. And the, you know,
that rear evap and lines is going to pay good. But there's no rear brakes left, the tires are
shot, tie rods, bad steering racks, leaking, like, you know, all that stuff that should be done before
the AC is addressed. They have the right to know everything that's wrong with it. I like Sherwood's,
you know, you hold back and then they're mad at every time they come in, it's a thousand bucks,
$2,000, you know. Yeah. Yeah. If it needs $6,000 of work the first time you see it,
you better tell them that it needs $6,000 worth of work the first time you see it. It doesn't mean
that they're going to do all six right then, but they're not going to get a surprise next month when
it's another thousand, you know, until you're at $6,000, you
know, that's, I saw advisors that tried to do that. They would have this whole plan laid out with
their customer and then they would say go on vacation and the customer would come in, make the
appointment and the other advisor get it and all that work would get done in one shot. And you're
like, hmm, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Like, and that goes back to what I again, you know, and people
hear me say it all the time, like you got to have the conversation, but you got to realize that like
they have, most of the customers have the means to fix this stuff. If you don't, and this is,
this is going to blow up when Braxton does, this is a short, this is real, it's going to be, my
comments are going to go, most of the customers have the frigging money. If they don't, they don't
even bring it in. Like they don't have, if they don't, if it comes in on a tow truck, they've got
money. If it comes into the bay, they've got money. Now, do they necessarily have all the money? That
depends. Can they find the rest of it? Almost always. Yes. The cars that they can't afford it,
they're sitting in the driveway and we know the ones when we see them when you drive by because
the tires are flat and it hasn't moved in a year. That's the customer that doesn't have the money.
If they're in front of you right now, they've got the money. That's what you have to tell yourself.
So, you know, it doesn't mean that you go and empty their, you don't fleece them, you don't empty
their pockets. Let's take their idols on what they want done, but safety comes first though.
Always. Any closing thoughts, Eric? It's kind of been a, kind of hit the two hour mark here and
could be going for a lot longer. Nothing really, like I said, it's, I'm glad I made the
jump to being an independent. Like I said, it just growing different atmosphere, but I think in
the grand scheme of things, it's really, it's working out for the best and I don't regret it.
You know, at times it's tempting to want to go back to the dealer, but I was like, no, I don't,
I'm too, I'm more calm. I'm not ready to bite somebody's head off that, you know, that sort of
thing. So, yeah, you seem pretty calm to me. You don't seem like the type that got, I'll get fired
up every now and then. I did. I was that guy, like, you could, you know, I was a guy that had a storm
cloud over my head most of the days, you know, it was just what it did to me. I mean, it was,
and I was an arrogant cuss too. I was, because I worked really hard at it and I expected everyone
else to work as hard as I was. And when I felt like everybody wasn't, yeah, you could see me
coming, you'd know about it because I was, you know, I held them to a standard, which is not,
you know, David jokes that he's unemployable. I was, you know, I'm not there yet, but I'm very close
to there. Like I'm very lucky that my current employer, he's very understanding of how I expect
things that should be done and just the way I see things, what we can handle, what we can't pick
your battles, you know, know you're, if we're not too luck, I'm not even interested in trying to,
you know, impress anybody, any poor, we're not the tooling, you know, the info, send it out to
somebody that does. Yeah. The only thing I put the woe on is diesel. And luckily my boss,
he'll go like I had, I've had a couple of Duramax and I'm like, you know, I don't, he goes, give
it a shot, check engine light. If it's something beyond what you want to mess with, then we'll
have somebody else work on it. And I, you know, and that's fine because there's times where that's
the only thing you got to work on, you know, at least he's cool about that rather than shove it
down my throat. I'm married to it and, you know, everything else. Because that's the part I always
hated is you, and I was, I'm good at that. I'll give them warning, go, hey, I'm not strong at this
or hey, there's some special tools that we're going to need to, if we get into this, and if we get
into it, we need to see the way out, which is going to be, are you willing to do that? We had it
just with the Tesla. And, you know, he's like, no, I get it. Okay, we'll send it to somebody that's,
you know, more familiar. It's these, these jobs that go sideways and everybody gave them notice
that it could. And then when it's all said and done, they're not pointing the finger back at them
that made the decisions or pointing the finger at you. And I can only do what I can do with what I
have, which is A, the tooling or B, the training. And, you know, if you give me neither, like,
do you want to see a magic show go to frigging Las Vegas? Like that's where they are. I'm not
working magic here anymore. Like it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen that way. I mean,
sometimes yes, you can find the way and work around. Sometimes that's the right thing to do,
because it's the only thing to do, but we don't need to fix every frigging car. That's such a,
Yeah, you can't fix all the last cars. No, there's more frigging cars than, than we can all get
through. And if most of us would stay in our damn lane, we wouldn't have such a shit reputation with
the, with the motoring public, because we wouldn't seem like we didn't know what we were doing. We
would have been upfront and honest and said, Hey, I'm not your guy. I'll acknowledge my strengths
and weaknesses. I mean, because I don't want to, you know, cost the customer or the company, you
know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, when you're the dealer and it's under warranty, you know how
we do it, right? Sometimes you go and grab the part or the one in the bay next to you,
and you put it in and it didn't work. Good. You're done. You know, like,
or, or it did work and you're, you know, in the, in the aftermarket, we don't have that luxury too
often. It can happen, but we don't have that. More accurate on your, on your diagnosis, because
you can't just wing apart at it for nothing under warranty.
Yeah. I tell the story. We had a Nissan tight with a diesel and it was going to get ready and go on
a Christmas parade, Santa Claus parade. So you go out and fire it up and all of a sudden it's
running like a bag of hammers and barely no power dash lights up. So let's put this at, say, the end
of November is when we're getting this ready for this parade route. Well, they don't take the truck,
they don't put it in the parade. Monday morning technician looks at it, he finds
a bunch of corrosion in the ECM and a bunch of corrosion ECM connectors. It's under warranty.
Call up Nissan, Nissan sends him a harness and an ECM. He puts the harness, the ECM in,
actually he doesn't do it. By now he's so swamped when it finally comes in, like two months later,
it goes to another tech. The other tech puts it in. Truck runs exactly the same.
Well, it ended up being a shorted fan clutch. Right? If you've worked on any of the old
Cummins diesels, you remember that those, those fans would do the exact same thing.
Now, when you're under, when you're dealing with shit under warranty, right, you make two claims.
You go and write up another VIN number for, for a fan clutch and you put a fan clutch in it and
you've solved your problem. Right?
You become one hell of a story writer.
Not advocating for that, but this is, I'm, I'm giving some of the secret sauce out.
But the reality is when we're in the aftermarket, we can't do that. It doesn't flow.
And so that's why sometimes when we go to them and go, Hey, like I'm going to need three hours
to get to the problem here. We can't roll our eyes and go, What, do you not know what you're
doing? No, I really don't know. And I'm trying to avoid, you know, doing it the way we used to do.
When the, we're a lot less money and a lot more interchangeable and a lot more common, you know,
I remember working in shops where they always had a set of Ford coils ready to go for the
Tritons because they were all needed a coil eventually. And I can remember having, you know,
Elite Detection Pump on my box or an ESIM on my cart for, you know, every Chrysler plug it in and
run the bay test and done, right? We all know that when you're in the aftermarket,
it changes your process. And if we're not, if we're still trying to charge what the dealer charges
for Diag, realize that the dealer's got an advantage on you and you probably should be
charging more than them. And it's not me running the dealer down. God knows by now, if anybody's
listened to me, I'm the last person going to hear running that down because that's my, that's my
history. I don't throw my people under the bus. I'm proud of what I accomplished in the dealer world.
Yeah, me too. Me too. It, I tell the story and God, we're getting long winded today. I tell the
story of it hadn't been for the dealer job that I took in 2000, actually it was 99. If I hadn't
taken that dealer job, I wouldn't be in the industry because I was going broke working at that little
shop buying tools. I was not getting exposed to anything but a C level tech. And if I hadn't
taken that job of the dealer for five bucks, four an hour hourly and got handed a DRB
three way back in the day and said, here, Jeff, go figure this out. Here's the service information.
There's a recall. There's a, there's a bulletin that tells you how to update this module.
It's part of a recall. We're doing like 10 a day now. Go learn how to do that. I wouldn't be sitting
here. So I have no hate for the dealers on me. Neither. That's my roots and what made me who I am.
Yeah. Eric, you got a succession plan going out, man, to get out of this industry or
how many years you think you got? I'm hoping for another 10.
Yeah. Okay. My body's still decent. You're 53 now.
50. You're the same age? I'll actually be 50 in December. Yeah, I'm a young. I'll be 51.
I'll be 51. Well, that's, if you think you got another 10 years, I'm hoping out for you, man.
It's, I think you can do it if you keep, you know, I wish I'd have taken better care of my knees and
my back when I was younger, but I'm pretty lucky I work with guys that their knees are in back or
worse than mine. If I couldn't, I wouldn't mind teaching. Like I said, doing like what they do
at vision and stuff like that. I would enjoy that. I don't think I could do vocate, like
vote tech or high school. I don't like, I got the patience for that. Yeah, that's a different
obstacle. That's a different channel. Yeah. I think that would be my only, because I love the industry
and what it's provided despite the frustrations. I mean, but talking about it helps a bunch. I mean,
yeah, it really does. Hey, it's, you know, like you said, when you, you said to me, you know,
you didn't feel like you were alone anymore. I get that almost every week. Somebody telling me that,
and it's hard for me to still like grasp what they're saying, because like I feel like I'm just out
here talking. And, you know, but I realize how many people feel the same way and don't feel like
they're being listened to. And, you know, much more that needed to reach out like that latest
change in the industry, how few people in the automotive world watch them guys less than 1%.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I get frustrated sometimes because I get frustrated with tax
when it's like, how do you not know who Paul Daner is by now? Like, how do you not? I've been,
I've been online for over 10 years talking about them. You all should know that's in my narrow brain,
what I think. And then it's like, when you see shop owners talk when they're struggling,
I'm like, how are you still making this mistake? Like, you know, you got Lucas and David who've
been talking online for six years about how not to let customers leave without paying the bill.
Paul Daner
But yet I remember that like less than 5% of us even know who the hell Lucas and David are,
who the hell I am.
It's like vision. Sure would say the same people go into it every year. It hadn't expanded out. And
don't you guys have something similar to it up there and your turnout's kind of similar?
Paul Daner
We have an event in Toronto, which Toronto is the largest city in the country.
And there's enough shops in Toronto that could send their people to that show and they would
break the capacity of the show. They wouldn't be able to, like they would have, and I could call
up a hundred people in Toronto that are into the industry. I could call them up and they wouldn't
even know the show was going on. And I'm not throwing mud at anybody. I'm not throwing shade.
It's just the fact is all these events that I've said for years, and I'm, all of them,
all of them have so much work still to do in getting their name and exposure and date and
prices out there. They're not even, they haven't even scratched the surface. And it's ludicrous to
me when, you know, they think that a Facebook page is enough. You have to get everybody,
like, so when you have all these people that are coming to the expo and they're trying to sell
their product, those are your people that you need to be empowering to be able to sell the event to
the people that want to come to it. And maybe you got to work out something where it's like
you give them a, I don't, and I again, I'm not an economics guy. Maybe you got to
some kind of incentive so that they come, but they talk about where they're going to be or you need
to be here. Like all of these events are you need to be here event. And yet like the one in Toronto,
nobody friggin knows when it's happening or what it's going to be.
It's like going to a car show, like in my area, you walk around cars, you'll see flyers for other
car shows, kind of do something like that, you know, for some of these others, trade shows,
you know, or put them in magazines like Motor Age, you know, how many shops get, you know,
those publications. Well, and see the thing is like, you know, Ratchet and Wrench and all those
magazines, like I don't know because I can't, I don't, Ratchet and Wrench is hard to get in Canada.
But like you should be pulling a print ad every month for your show for the year. Yeah. You know
what I mean? Like it should be to like, they, then there's no excuse. And that's the excuse then
becomes as well, what if they don't read the magazine? Okay, that's where then social media
comes in. That's when it becomes like they shouldn't be able to walk into a part store or every time
the part store makes a delivery, there's a flyer from your event with the stack of rollers till
they're piling up and they don't want to look at it. Like you can't tell me you've done everything
that you can to make these shows, people aware of them, if you haven't done those things yet.
And I understand, listen, it all costs money. I get it. And maybe, maybe the future isn't for
these destination events because of the cost. And maybe then that means that people like are going
to shift to, you know, more online training and more bringing the trainer in. But here's the
beauty of these events we keep saying, and it isn't what you learn in the classroom. It's the people
that you meet when you're networking around the pub, around the bar, having dinner, that is really
empowering you to change your business. And in turn, when you change your business, you change
your industry. So you can sit there and go, it costs too much to go for training. No, it doesn't.
And, and these events, they need to start seeing instead of seeing each event as an opponent or
as a competitor, they need to start working together to be like, if I was at Asta and, you
know, Asta and tools, we've got kind of the same, a lot of the same people attend those two shows
because they have the same kind of vibe. But there's a lot of people that attend vision, right?
There's a lot of people that attended tectonic. I'm not saying everybody needs to go to every event,
but holy frig, it'd be pretty cool. It'd be pretty cool if like, when you're at vision,
somebody could be handing out flyers for tools or somebody could be handing out flyers for tectonic.
Somebody could be handing out flyers for Asta and onward onward. Like,
because it's only so much that like, we're all in and dated with information now and advertising
and Facebook that there's a lot coming across that we don't even notice. But if somebody
hands you a flyer and goes, Hey, did you know that, you know, you're here super Saturday,
but tools is going to happen, you know, five months from now, would you be interested in
coming back down this way? Oh yeah, I would love to. Well, shit, that's, that was a small investment
to make that happen. And that's why as long as I can be on here, I'm going to continue to tell
everybody about the events that I know that are going on and the events that I've been to. Now,
if I've never been to vision, so I can't tell anybody what it's like, because I
ain't been there. But I can tell you that like people rave about it and people rave about every
event. So like the next one I want to try to go to is Vegas, the one out there. Yes. Just because
Seema shows also going on too. So I'll tell you, Eric, I went for the first time two years ago,
right? And everybody knows that story. I've been wanting to go to Seema since before I had a driver
license. And Vegas is, I mean, it's an expensive city to be in, but it's incredible. It's a, it
changes, it changed my life to be able to walk around Seema. Now, I'll tell you, Asta for me is
a work, like I'm working, I am doing interviews. But to be able to walk around Seema and get my
batteries recharged on the inspiration that you see there as a gearhead, I think everybody
needs to seriously make that trip. And I think everybody, I think still needs to make the trip
to vision. I hope to get there one day. Hope they help me out in getting there. Asta has a feel like
it just feels different tools. It's got the exact same thing. I'm still on a high from coming home
from tools and I've been home two weeks from it. Like it's, you know, you meet people. I met so many
former guests and future guests, you know, people that, you know, I never got to meet in person. I
only talked to them on here and all of a sudden they come to tools or they come to Asta and I
finally get to give them a hug and shake their hand. Like that's life changing stuff, you know,
that's where that next level of connection. Yeah, and that's the only way to do it. It's on,
is actual real life, you know, connection, not just through a webinar or whatever.
Yeah. Well, Eric, I don't want to keep any more of your time. We got to let you go.
All right. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
Oh, dude, we'll do this again for sure. I would love to have more conversation, more,
you know, more kind of share with us what you're doing at the shop and tell us about that because
I'm kind of touched on the dealer thing, but I mean, that'll be always interesting. So we'll
have you back on at some point for sure. I just want to say thank you. Like he said, you know,
you're not alone to reach out to me if you feel like you are to my family at, you know,
Promotive and LaunchTech, you know, Techmetric. I can't do this without you guys. So thank you
for everything that you provide me the ability to do. You know, I try not to let you down.
Um, so everybody, you know, try to be just 1% better tomorrow than you were today and love
one another, give your service writers a little more grace, service writers, pick your game up.
Yep. And collectively we'll all change this industry. So thank you everybody. I love you.
We'll talk to you all soon. Thank you.
Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on and share this episode,
I'd really appreciate it. And please most importantly set the podcast to automatically
download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their
perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey
of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the changing the industry podcast.
Remember what I always say in this industry, you get what you pay for.
Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.
About this episode
Dealership and independent shop work get compared through real technician stories: how dealer training shapes diagnosis from the work order, why recall and warranty pay can feel mismatched, and how flat-rate incentives and service-advisor pressure can distort what gets sold. The conversation also dives into practical diagnostics—oscilloscopes, leak testing, and recall workflows—and why comebacks, documentation, and transparency matter. By the end, the “better” option depends on pay structure, tooling, and whether the shop can solve problems without creating new ones.
Original notes
Like the show? Show your support by using our sponsors.
Need to update your shop systems and software? Try Tekmetric HERE
Launch your tool game to the next level with Launch Tech USA! HERE
In this episode, Jeff Compton sits down with Kansas technician Eric Schoenberger of Holt Motor Company. Having grown up around Chrysler dealerships alongside his father, a veteran drivability and transmission specialist, Eric shares his experiences in dealer life and why he ultimately transitioned to the independent repair world. The conversation explores flat-rate frustrations, warranty and recall work, shop politics, diagnostic strategies, transmission repairs, evolving technology, and the value of ongoing training. Eric also discusses how independent shops offer less stress, and a different approach to customer service and technician growth.
Timestamps:
00:00 Podcast Welcome and Holiday
00:45 Kansas Guest and Vision Talk
01:30 Shop Intro and Dealer Roots
06:03 Family Influence and Career Path
08:12 Flat Rate and Recall Frustrations
17:25 Favorite Dealer Work and Transmissions
23:03 PT Cruiser Love-Hate Jobs
25:35 Diagnostics and Techline Support
27:49 Dealer Life and Shop Politics
32:37 Misfires, Burnt Valves, and Borescopes
36:31 Pentastar Problems and Tips
41:26 Diesel Disasters
44:04 Recall Work Realities
49:21 Hybrid Battery Discussion
52:37 Leaving the Dealer World
55:47 Advisors, DVI, and Communication
01:01:38 Training Great Advisors
01:08:35 Transmission Service Debate
01:14:38 Moving to Independent Shops
01:16:27 Learning Through Service Information
01:18:46 Oddball Repairs and Old Mopars
01:27:05 Caravan Rear A/C Repairs
01:33:05 Training Events and Mentors
01:38:49 Shop Culture and Dispatching
01:40:44 A/C Diagnostics and Leak Testing
01:47:37 Parts Support Challenges
01:54:02 Technician Pay and Flat Rate
01:56:23 Gravy Work vs. Diagnostics
02:02:27 Independent Shop Mindset
02:12:28 Training and Networking
02:20:06 Final Thanks and Wrap Up
Follow/Subscribe to the show on social media!
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffcompton7
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheJadedMechanic
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091347564232
The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
0:00
142:36