Episode 45 - Mastering Transmission Rebuilds and Repair Shop Growth with Jimmy Purdy
The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Episode 45 - Mastering Transmission Rebuilds and Repair Shop Growth with Jimmy Purdy
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Having that ability to look at things differently. Right. And I just think that all technicians are like that. And to have that knowledge, you should be compensated for it. Whether you're doing an oil change, doing an inspection, or you're rebuilding the transmission, obviously they should be paid more accordingly, but you should still be paid for your time. Just because you can go out in the parking lot and go out with Miss Jones. That came back after oil change. That's free.
You get to go drive and than what, five minutes? You knew it was a wheelbearing. You drove the car for five minutes and you knew it was a like. How is that not worth, like, you know what I'm saying?
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another exciting, thought provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. My name is Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. Support yourself. A strong coffee or grab a cold canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. We're sitting here at AsE 2023.
That's it.
And you are? Jimmy Purdy.
Jimmy Purdy. And shifting gears garage.
Shifting gears garage from.
And the gearbox podcast.
Yeah, I was going to say that line, but shifting gears garage is located.
Where in Pasa Robles, California.
Paso Robles, California. So that's a bit of a trek.
For you to a little bit of a drive. Yeah, no, I flew in, but my arms are exhausted. You like that old joke?
That old joke is, I can't help it.
I just can't help it.
No, it's good, man. It's good. And we were talking just before we hit play, the shops, four lifts.
So we got four bays, so it's 5400 sqft. It's a big shop. And the way it's set up, we're kind of in a complex, right. So the whole building is like 50,000. We kind of take a chunk in the middle, but it's three big roll up doors that are 12ft wide. Okay, so the lifts are kind of set up diagonally.
Yeah.
And I think moving. So I bought the shop in 2017. That's when I technically bought it out.
Right.
Not the shop we're at right now. It was an old transmission shop. It wasn't ran the way I thought it was. And I think my big motivation was, I want to see this thing do good. It was in the community for 39 years when I initially started the purchase.
Right.
Maybe doing 250,000 a year.
Wow.
Yeah. It was not good for a transmission shop.
That's not a good number.
It's not good. And, I mean, my paychecks were. Here's your paycheck. It's a personal check. Don't cash it till next Friday.
Well, then why are you giving it to me today if I got to wait to cash it?
That's all I knew. Right. I started as a smock technician out of high school. I worked at a shop that had eventually went out of business, and at the time, the guy that owned the shop was my stepdad. So I just rolled my toolbox down the street. Cool. I'm going to start building transmissions now.
Right.
That's kind of how it all started. And I was like, well, that sounds good. That's, like, the hardest thing in the industry to do. Right. So I'm going to learn how to do that. Yeah. So that's where I ended up.
And you had a history of smog tech as well, so you kind of had a pretty good, probably fundamentals under your belt.
I really enjoyed. I don't want to say that because I hate the smog being in California, it's just the bureaucracy behind it. But I love learning the chemistry behind it, how an engine runs. It's just so cool. That really drew me in. And then getting into the transmission side, using that technical mindset to know how the hydraulic circuitry works.
Right.
Super cool stuff. And then you tear it apart and you see it and you put it back together and it works. All of us as technicians. That's what we do this for.
Yeah. And you and I were talking last night, and I'm weak at automatic training. I haven't had one apart in over 30 years. Probably it's closer to 30 than closer to 20, because it's just like my background at the dealership was. We had specialized guys that did it right. That were our transmission people. Like our transmission guys. I got the electrical side of it to know, and I pulled a couple out once in a while, but I never had to go into the guts of one.
When I was the most re and Reese I did was at my tenure at Nissan. And like you and I were talking last night, there's not much point in rebuilding a. There's just.
There's no money in it.
Yeah. They're trash.
You can do it. You can fix.
Yeah.
And then you'll do it, and you'll fix it, and then you'll do it and you fix it. And hey, congratulations, you're married. Yeah. And it's not a profitable marriage.
No me up in Canada, Nissan, when they did their cvts and you know how they had that extended warranty that was like what, ten years and 100,000.
Miles or whatever, they just kept extending it.
Yeah. In Canada, we weren't doing the rebuilds on them. They were being sent off. They started implementing in the dealerships in the US that they actually, depending on how it was billed out for, and I say bill out. Like, bill out warranty, tear it down, inspect it, whatever. It's specked out as requiring more if it was less than a dollar amount.
And that's all you got though?
Yeah. So immediately, guys were always running the ticket right up on everything so that they didn't have to put it back together because just like they knew, right, you go and put the valve body in for your jutter code, and then you go drive it down the street, and 5 miles later, guess what? You get the next code of death.
Right? Yeah. And usually it was a valve body and torque converter, because that was Nissan's. If you got jutter code, replace the valve body. If that doesn't work, replace torque converter. So what do you do the next time it comes in? You say, we're going to do a torque converter and a valve body, because I've already been down this road.
Right.
And then all of a sudden you get the motor fault. Like, great. Yeah, we should have just replaced this stupid thing.
It all comes in one crate eventually, right? So lucky. By the time I left NiSsan, they hadn't brought that into Canada where the guys were rebuilding. Mean, I didn't have any interest. I hated that product anyway, right? The product's trash for a whole lot of other reasons besides the.
Yeah, back to the shop. So we got the shop set up kind of with diagonal lifts. So it's just the creative stuff that happens. So when I purchased the shop, it was a handshake deal. I didn't have any paperwork, I didn't have a signed lease, nothing.
Wow.
Right? It was just, he wanted out, and I thought I could do better. I was young. I'm still young, but younger, and I can do this. So I said, what do you need to make? Doubled his salary and started giving him a check and started running the day to day. I don't know. I don't know if that's easier or harder than StartinG from the bottom, but at least I had a client list coming in. Right. But the problem was, once I had them paid off in 2017, the shop got sold, the owner died and he ended up selling the shop.
My rent tripled.
Wow.
Yeah. So I started looking at a different shop. What am I going to do here? So I went from paying $2,500 a month lease on a 2200 square foot shop to going to a 5400 square foot, paying $4,500, and now it's up to $5,000. Yeah. It's like, what are you going to do? And it was the only thing available. So I get a lot of people ask me, hey, how many bays you got? And I was like, I don't feel like it's like a normal shop.
Right.
But I guess the point is I got four lifts, so I got four bays. Technically, they got to drive in and kind of park diagonally. I don't know.
But that's how we. Because the math is always, well, a lift should generate x in the day per lift, right?
Yeah.
That's what we were trained to think. What's the question I was going to ask? So at your shop, are you strictly transmission or will you get into some general as well?
No. So we changed the name from. It was automatic transmission service of pastor Robles. We changed that as soon as I took it over to shifting gears garage.
Right?
Actually, it was shifting gears transmission and auto repair. Because being a smog tech background and seeing the numbers, once I started realizing like, man, there's a lot of freaking money in doing a water pump on a Chevy pickup, and we would normally say no to that stuff. The car would come in, needs a transmission. Should we look at everything else? Cool. No, we're just going to pull the trans rebuilt, put it back in. See ya down the road, man. There's a lot of money we're missing out on here.
Yeah.
So over the years, that's what we've slowly progressed to. More and more just preventive maintenance, auto repair. I still enjoy transmission diagnostics and electrical diagnostics because there's something wrong inside of my head.
Right? It's not something wrong.
Everybody likes to take the problem no one else can figure out and figure it out.
It's an ego thing, right?
I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not a financial thing.
No, because you said everybody thought you're not so handsome and not so smart. But I mean, just a few minutes ago, before we got on, right, you said that.
No. You said that. No. You're like, you're not as good looking as I thought you're going to be.
No. You look younger than I thought you would be in your one picture.
That's a very nice thing to say. Yeah.
So I think the smarts thing is, I think a lot of us, the routine day to day, if we don't challenge ourselves, gets to me almost like torture.
Yeah.
Assembly line work, right?
That's been my biggest struggle this year, and it's hard to call it a struggle because I do nothing right. And that's been pulling myself out of the day to day. I stopped building transmissions in. Not stopped totally, but in 2021, I'm not doing the dailies, right. I have a classic car division. I do hot rods. I do 700 r, four e 40s. It's going to a hot rod something performance, right? I'll take a week and build it.
But the pull Mrs. Jones car in Chrysler minivan, 41 te, 62 te whatever. Rebuild it, put it back in. Hey, you got two days. Because she needs to get her kids to soccer. No, I can't sit back there and dedicate my time to that because my time is more valuable to helping the rest of the team. And that involves me sometimes not doing anything because, wow, we're doing something right, and everybody's got something to do, and everybody's on the ball. What do I do now? And so that's tough not to have someone call or another shop bring something in.
Hey, can you take a look at this? I can't figure it out. I'm like, yeah. I'm just sitting here staring at the computer screen. I'll go do that. And not that I'm just staring at his computer screen, but you know what I'm saying? And anything to get me out of that chair and out of the office. And my wife's like, you don't need to be doing that. If you need something to do, I'll give you something to do.
Is a lot of your customer base, then other shops just sublet transmission work.
To you a lot in the area. If it has anything to do with transmission, no. And I'm sure you and everyone listening, if you run an auto repair facility and you got a code says po seven, anything, you're like, no, I don't know anything about it.
Well, not so much myself, because, I mean, my background at the dealership was like, if it had a code, a check engine light, because we had to figure it out now. We knew what codes meant, that it was like, okay, that's an internal issue. And then I would just take my little 0.6 diag, and it would get dropped to the transmission guy, and then he would maybe change a valve body, maybe change the torque converter, put a whole unit in, whatever, do a tear down, and then outside in the aftermarket a lot of the time now it's like you drive it, you scan it, and the customer is already coming in with a transmission complaint a lot of the time. And my service writers were like, quoting a remand unit because we had one guy that is kind of well known in my area for overhauls, and we took him an eight l 80. Is that the right number, eight l 80 or six l 80? It was at a 2018, like a GMC 3500, probably the six l 86.
L 86 speed.
Yeah.
And close enough.
Which it had 180,000 km on it. It had already had a remand put in it once.
The kilometers.
Sorry. So it had maybe 120,000 miles, maybe. Right. Transmission had already been done the first time at around, say, 65,000 miles.
Okay.
Two years before. It's a box truck. It's used in town, stop and go in town all the time. Overloaded, hauling around. And of course it goes again. So this time it had been covered under the powertrain warranty before, but now we have the car because it's out of powertrain warranty. There's no warranty left on it. We look at it and I'm like, that needs a transmission.
You can tell it fluids burnt, doesn't want to shift.
Easy to tell.
Yeah, right. Thank God, because the unicorn dust in there to me. So I take it out and we drop it off at the local transmission shop, and it sits there for two weeks. We don't get a call. We don't get a call. We don't get a call. Now, this is a fleet company, so they have other units they can be driving. Right? But finally we call the guy up and we go, what's going on here? I can't get any parts for that.
Okay, dude. Well, we're just going to come and get our core back. We came and got our core.
The strike for GM, the six L 80 was one of the biggest impacted ones because the pumps were getting. And this is like, was it the chicken or the egg? Where did the converter come apart and wipe the pump out? Or did the pump fail and wipe the converter out? It doesn't really matter.
No.
In the day, you need a torque converter and you need the front pump. Well, the pump is integrated into the bell housing.
Yes.
Right. And with that GM strike, you couldn't get them. And that was about the time, because that was that.
2020, 2021, something like that.
That was about the time I said, screw this. This is not profitable. Like, you start looking at the numbers and then you're dealing with these part shortages. And I could buy a remand, six L 80 still, but I couldn't build it myself in the shop. And then you start looking at the numbers, it's like, how much am I losing doing this? The guys aren't waiting on me. I can have it the next day or in three days, right? We just schedule the client to come in. Then when we get the unit and it's a one day job, sure. I'm losing, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 1000 or $1,500 in labor, right? Because I'm not building it myself, but what else can I do with my time? So that was about the time.
It was like, yeah, it was a kick for us because then we literally like, okay, we call up the dealer, we're like, we're in a bind here. We need a remand. And it was there two days later. And I follow some guys on social medias and stuff, and they talk about that transmission. Like you said, torque converters are always an issue on them, right front pumps and the same thing. And it's like, so I think now what it's going to get to is like, how many guys are going to run the risk that are in a regular shop, not a specialized shop like yourself or somebody with your aptitude is going to run the risk on just taking that out and putting a torque converter in front of it?
Well, and that's where to be, in my opinion. And I don't want to sound like I'm being egotistical here.
No, be yourself.
No, but you take transmissions and you kind of put it at the top of the list. And if you don't have a good mechanical engine repair background, you should not be a transmission specialist. Right. I feel like as you start gaining more, I don't know, accolades just how I've always thought about it. And that's why I always like to get into the transmission field, because I feel like that's the top, right? Yeah, it definitely sounds like a lot of ego when I say it out loud like that. But that's how I look at it and that's how I think about it. And I say that because I get a lot that comes in clients and other shops, they say, hey, this transmission is slipping. And you go drive it and check your misfire counters and guess what? It's just a misfire.
Torque Converter goes into lockup and the thing shutters.
Yeah. And they say, hey, it needs a torque converter. In all reality, it's just a misfire. Needs a tune up. Yeah, I don't want to say tune up, but you need spark plugs or whatever the mechanical or whatever the issue is with the engine. That's what needs to be fixed. And the torque converter is fine, and I get that a lot. And the same with shift solenoids.
Hey, this thing's not shifting. I must need a shift solenoid. And you pull the fluid, and it's very simple to know if a transmission is not working, and you pull the fluid, and it's like, burnt. Well, whether you needed it 10,000 miles ago, it's too late now. You've been driving around in limp mode for the last 10,000 miles. You ruined it. And so it's an easy diag. 90% of the time comes in, there's no reverse.
Yeah, the thing's got to come out. It's not a shift solenoid. No, it's not a shift soloid. It's got no reverse. But there is the cases where you have, like, say, first and third or second and fourth. And sure, you could have a bad shift solenoid that's causing that, but like everybody else, they drive it around for six months like that, and then, well, now you need a transmission.
Well, because the warning light's been on. Right, but it's been on for a gas cap. Nobody friggin told me, like, can't I have a check engine light that comes on for.
And can I have codes for everything? Right?
And you scan that card and it's like, well, there's your slip at first and second, and there's that gas cap code that you've had for three years. Congratulations. You might have been able to prevent your transmission overhaul by just fixing your.
Yeah, and that's a great point. I bring that up all the time, especially being a transmission specialist. I tell them, hey, just because you had check engine light on and you had that diagnosed, if everybody can see my air quotes, you got the code pulled up, and Jake said, it's a po four four two, or whatever. Well, six months later, if you get a transmission code that's buried behind that, you have no idea. Yeah, and like, the five r 55s, like in the Mustangs, which was technically a five speed, it's in the Ford Explorers, too. If you lose third gear or fourth gear in those things, no one really notices. It'll just skip shift from third to fifth.
Right.
And it's like, yeah, it's been kind of shifting a little weird when I get on the freeway, but nothing I really noticed. Well, you also don't have lockup in the converter either, so now you've been scorching your converter and the fluid for the last ten. I don't preach into the choir, but it's good information that people. It's like, whether you're an auto repair tech and you're not into the transmission field or not, you should have that background to know. And that's why the whole ASE program is so important to me.
Really.
I love the ase program. I am 100% behind. I pay my guys to go test. I pay them for the day, and I pay them for the test. I pay them for the train. Like, whatever it takes to get your ase. And a lot of people are like, oh, just because you're a master tech doesn't mean you know everything. No, but you know enough.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I got my master's shirt. It's been 15 years now, and I know what it felt like when I first got my master's shirt. Oh, yeah. You better listen to me. I'm a master certified ase tech, so I 100% get that thought process of these egotistical techs that get it and think they can take over the world. I know. I've been there. I was 100% that guy.
And 15 years later, I finally realized I don't know anything. You know what I mean? But it's just so important to have that background, that fundamental understanding of how all these systems correlate with each other.
Yeah.
Not to dive too deep into the tech side of stuff, but I'm a technician at heart.
No, that's what we want. And, I mean, we didn't have you on here just to talk about transmissions, you know what I mean?
Or just talk about how to make money in your shop. Right. Because I'm the best auto shop owner in the whole world.
You're not even the third person today to say that.
Yeah. Right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Is there any cars that, when they come in, that you just won't touch?
That's a good question. I've got away from euro stuff, but as soon as I say that, I get a mini Cooper in and we're doing something on. It's really. That's a good question. I don't like having that kind of rule of not touching anything. I feel like my dad always taught me when I was real young. I remember him always saying, like, oh, it's funny how these Ford guys won't work on a Chevy or the Chevy guys won't work on a Ford. He's like, if you're smart enough to fix something, you're smart enough to fix anything, right? And that's always stuck with me.
And it's probably something that I shouldn't base my business around, but for the most part, you just take a look at the last six months, see it was profitable, and try to market to those specific people to say that I would never work on something euro. You look at a BMW, right? It's got a 540 gm transmission in it. So is that working on a GM, or is that working on a BMW? You know what I mean?
Yeah. Look at some of the early 2000 Chryslers. It's a Mercedes Beach Nag 17226.
Yeah. And that's easy money. Those transmissions are fantastic. They never fail. And when they do, it's because of negligence. So it's such an easy fix. There isn't an engineering fault that I have to redesign. It's just an easy fix.
That plug out the back, that leaks the oil all through the harness and kills the wiring conductor plate.
Pull the valve body down, the conductor plate pays. Like, was it 3.5 or four? And you do it in 45 minutes. That's easy. And most guys want. Oh, my God, it's all the torx bolt. How do I get the valve body out? Like, oh, it's easy. I hate doing valve body work, but upside down, when it dripping on you. But, I mean, you get my point.
It's easy money. Okay. I don't work on Mercedes, but I work on a Dodge sprinter van.
Yep.
Well, it's the same damn thing, right?
Right.
I don't know. It's a great question because it's hard to find something to say to tell your service advisor, hey, we don't work on these. Right?
Yeah.
Like, where do you draw that line? In the sand? Yeah.
And then you'll get the occasional customer sometimes. That'll give you, like, a screwy look when you tell them that we don't. And you could say we don't because we're not your best choice. And they get all butthurt and go, well, you're supposed to be able to fix anything. So you really want me something that I don't have 100% confidence in doing. You really want me to jump under the hood of your vehicle and start to grab some tools and go at it.
That brings up a good point, because it really comes down to clients. So the client comes in depending on who they are. If they have a vehicle that I don't normally want to associate the shop with, it just depends who they are. If they're patient and they're understanding, sure. But if they're, like, demanding and why can't you fix it, then it's 100% no. This is obviously not going to work. And I do have other shops that I recommend all the time. Okay.
Yeah.
So I'm here today or this weekend with Lalo and Judy. They're with password repair.
Okay.
They're about a mile away from where my shop is. We came here together. We sit down and do podcasts all the time. So, yeah, I've done a lot with Lalo. We talk all the time about how we run our shops. The furthest thing from being competitive with each other that you could ever possibly like. It's not like that. And so I feel like the whole town's kind of like that.
We send a lot of work around, and maybe that's why I get a lot of transmission work, because it's kind of the old school way of, hey, I'm an auto repair shop. You're a transmission shop. I'll send you the transmission stuff. That doesn't work anymore. No, but I get a lot of it, and I don't want to say I get the work from the other shops because they don't know what they're doing. I think it's more like the camaraderie of, hey, this is a transmission problem. You're a transmission shop. So I'm going to send it your way, and I'm not going to get a smog machine anytime soon.
So we just mentioned your podcast. Tell us a little bit about. Because it's kind of a new thing, too. This podcast is a relatively new thing. Yours is a new thing. But have you been involved in other things besides the.
The. There's an AM radio station that I took over. Oh, man, it's been three years already. Yeah, something like AM radio. Yeah. So it's KPRL.
Okay.
It's called gearhead radio. For a long time. It was called Lions auto clinic. There was a local guy, and he was kind of someone I looked up to for a long time. I'd go to training events that were local. He was always there.
Right.
And he was an older guy, and he's like, wow, this guy's still training. That's so cool. There's always stuff to learn. And that's watching him and seeing him and all these things. I always looked up like, oh, man, that guy's got the shop. He can figure anything out. But he was always at the training. I thought, he's got it all figured out.
What's he doing? Still learning because I'm young and I didn't understand. Anyway, he did this lion's auto clinic. It's on Saturday mornings. People can call in if they got problems with their car, whatever they want to talk about with their vehicle, obviously. And I just thought it was so cool. So when he started retiring, I just called up. It's like, hey, if he leaves, I'd like to put my name on the list or whatever it takes to get in the door. It was like, the next day, the owner station calls me, hey, so let's get you down here.
I want to talk to you about this. It's like, cool, cool. And went down there. It was 15 minutes conversation. He's like, all right, you're starting on Saturday, right? Okay, do it then.
Is that a weekly?
Every Saturday.
Every Saturday.
Every Saturday. Going for an hour. People can call in. I pull up articles. Obviously, ev is the big one. So I've been talking a lot about electric cars, right? I'm not like Ford or against it. I think it's a cool technology. I don't think it's right how they're shoving it down everyone's throat, right? Like everybody else.
The infrastructure is not there. It's not good for everybody. If you live out in Montana on a ranch, it's not going to work. So talk a lot about that. But I like to bring up the positives. Like, we shouldn't just ball it up and throw it away either. Right? So there's a lot of talk about that. And then obviously with the shop, like, hey, if you got a transmission issue or everyone wants to call and ask me for a price, like, hey, what's it cost to do a transmission service? Is like, I can't give you a price on the radio right now, but I still think it's important because transmission services aren't.
Two hundred and fifty dollars to three hundred dollars anymore. No, you do those eight speeds, nine speeds. The fluid is like $60 a quart. The Honda 3.1 fluid for the new Honda. It's like $75 a quart from Honda. And I don't get a deal on that. No.
Wait a minute, though. Are you trying to tell the people that are listening that you can't just dump any fluid in that you can.
Do whatever you want to do.
The valvoline stuff is supposed to be fine. It's got the label right on the label.
Go ahead and do that and then give me a call if you're in the area and we'll make sure we get you a replacement.
We had a Nissan come in one time and it was still within that warranty period. And of course, so the customer comes up because, hey, I got a transmission issue and somebody told me that I still got some mileage left before in this ten years and everything. And of course, the service advisor, they go ahead and order a transmission, right? Bounce by the, doesn't hit the shop, go and pull the plug out of it. That's not the OE fluid in there. It's completely wrong fluid.
Supposed to be blue, not red.
Completely wrong fluid.
Yeah.
And then what do you do? You can't just put the plug in and fill it back up. You've already got the customer there.
What is the procedure there? Because that's not something we normally deal with. You put gas and diesel or diesel in a Gas, it's like one way is a lot more expensive than the other. And of course the dealerships, when they do that, they want to replace the whole dang fuel system. And it's like, is that necessary? Do we really need to replace the high pressure pump, all the fuel injectors, the lines like, spend $20,000 because they put some gasoline in the diesels. I don't know where's the book that tells you what to or not to do? So when it comes to doing the wrong fluid, all you can do is drain out what's in there, refill it, run it, do it again. Hey, come back in 5000 miles, let's do it again. And hopefully you don't have any issues in the meantime.
Yeah, RSM was like, why do you not want to change that tranny? It's going to fail anyway. Just change it. It's covered. Look, take care of the customer, get it done. We're like, okay, I guess.
Yeah, right.
But was it really a defect at that point? No, I don't think it's supposed to have ATF four in it.
I guess when it comes to client satisfaction, I mean, we base our shop on giving the information to the client, make the decision, and it's like, in that situation, I would tell them, here's our two options. We can put this thing on life support or we can replace it. If that were to happen. I haven't actually personally dealt with that, but in that kind of situation, like here's your cut two, let's move on with our lives price and let's put it on life support for the next six months and just hope and pray that we don't have some issues that develop in the long run. And for the most part it's going to shift weird. But there's nothing really that you're going to damage necessarily that I could possibly think of with the cvts. The fluid is just so critical. It's a hydraulic fluid, there's no detergents in it.
So you put detergents in there, it's going to start foaming, you're going to start sucking air, it's going to start doing all kinds of goofy stuff. I don't know. And I think that's a big debate is like oil and fluids, the hemis, when they came out, everyone's putting the wrong Motor oil in those hemis with the variable displacement and you're getting misfires. Guys are pulling engines apart, doing head gaskets on them, head jobs on them because they thought something were the valves. Well they put all back together, put new oil in it and the problem is fixed. Like oh, there's a defect in the cylinder heads and you're just changing the oil.
And now look at how many times we fix stuff or part of our diagnostic process is to do an oil change first. Yeah, because we got this junk that's coming in that's burning oil and then you get a VVT fault, right. And it's still saying, well I still got 2000 miles before I'm supposed to change the oil, but I'm down three quarts. Okay, well what do you want us to do? Well, put three quarts in and all of a sudden you drive it. That VVT faults.
That's better. That's a great point to bring up because that brings into the next question of diagnosticians all around the planet. Comes in with a VVT code, no history of an oil change. It's two quarts low. You bust out the lab scope and charge them 3 hours of scope time. 2 hours of scope time. Or do you charge them for an oil change and say, hey, let's see if the code comes back, what's right, what's the right way to go?
How I would handle my customers every time is you're going to get an oil change.
Right.
And if you want to argue with me, then I'll gladly take your 3 hours labor to prove to you that the system will function a lot better when it's got good oil in it and the amount of level. Right.
Well, step one is get it to the specified level. Right, right. But it's one of those things like, well, if you're going to have to do timing change, you're going to have to change the oil anyway. But is it the timing chain stretched? Is it whatever, is the freaking actuator off? Whatever the problem is, should we scope it or do we just change the oil, clear the code and drive it? Yeah, and that's such a big issue with transmissions because it comes in and the fluid hasn't been changed in 150,000 miles. And we had a Shift solenoid code. We clear the code, we go drive it to replicate it. We can't replicate it in our 15 minutes drive because I'm not charging you an hour to drive this thing.
Right.
You know what I mean? Well, it happened when I was towing my trailer over the grade, and the grade is like a 30 minutes drive from our shop. We're not going to the grade and putting your trailer on. I'm not doing that. Sure you want to pay me to do that? I guess, but I got better things to do with my time than that. Right. And the fluid is burnt and it's like, so if you do this $600 transmission service, this is going to fix my problem? I can't tell you that. But what do you want me to do here? This is the best, like you said, we're going to start with the oil change. And if you argue with me, then sure, I'll take your money.
But, man, when you're dealing with these transmission services that are getting to be $1,000 and you got to change that fluid anyway. If that valve body is going to come off later, what's the right thing to do? Do we drive this thing to failure again and keep it for a week? It's such a hard. And moving the position from obviously being on the floor and being a tech and being a builder and moving to more of a manager role, and hopefully by this time next year, I'll actually be in the owner role, supposed to be. You start seeing these kinds of things and trying to think, well, how do I pay the tech to keep moving? How do I make the right decision for the client and then obviously have the service advisor be able to replicate that? How do I put this into an SOP where when they come in with that problem again? Because it's not going to be one time, right? Ain't going to be just that one time. They come in with 200,000 miles. Never had a trans service with a ship solenoid code. How do we handle that situation? And it's, man, communication is key because.
You kind of segued right into the next question. I was going to ask you. Do you get cringey when sometimes. Maybe not cringey from a business standpoint, but cringey from the sense, like we always used to when we were back in the day of the dealer and a customer would just randomly, would never seen before show up and it'd just be the ticket would say, transmission service. No complaint, no nothing. Just transmission service. And you can go drive that thing and it's like, okay, he's got a flare or he's got a slip.
Always there for an issue.
Exactly. So I was going to ask you, how do you approach that?
So my wife is key in these situations because I get into the everyday and I was brought up and used to people coming, I just want a trans service. So I've gotten a lot better of questioning that. But she's like, from the get go, oh, you're here for a transmission service. Yeah. Interrogation time. She watches a lot of them. Murder shows. She loves being a private detective for sure.
So are you having any shift issues? No. Bucking and she'll start asking. No. So do you put it in drive? Do you get any delays? Well, then, now that you said that, and it's so crazy how you ask these question after question after question. No, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Then you nail that nail on the head. Oh, you know what? Now that you say that every once in a while, when I put it in reverse, it does delay.
Oh, so you are having a transmission problem. Well, thank you for letting us know before we change the fluid in it.
Because now if we do an $800 fluid service, and then the tech notices something.
Oh, man, what did I do? Right?
Yeah.
And so it's so critical to have the service advisor get that information because otherwise it slows the whole process down. Every tech out there, I don't care who you are, 99.9% of them, if they did a service and it didn't work the way it supposed to, they're going to question themselves and they're going to wonder what they did, and they're going to spend time that's not on the ticket, and they're not going to ask anybody about it. Right. Because we're all stubborn and hard headed. Hey, I'll figure this out real quick. Maybe I moved something, maybe I didn't fill it up enough so they're triple checking fluid. They're doing this, doing that, and all of a sudden 20 minutes is burned you times that by ten, you know what I mean? And we just lost $5,000 this month.
All because when the customer communication, I learned my thing is like, if they come in for a transmission service, I'm going to probably drive that 510 miles.
Yes.
Before I dump that fluid.
Absolutely.
Because I'm always going to drive it after I do the service because I'm going to have to probably do a reset. Right? Get it up to temperature, maybe to check the level, to update the adapters, all that kind of stuff. I'd rather know that. Okay. On the test drive, it had a really crap shift and I went to flushing the fluid. And when I drove it after, it had a much better shift, but it still had something wrong. Now at least I've covered CyA, right? Covered my butt. To say to the customer, this is customer.
It's not $600 on this service wasted. Right. So I don't want to say that that's part of the diagnostic process.
No, but you cross the possibility off.
Yeah.
And that's important because if they spend $8,000 and all it needed was $1,000 service, you know what I mean? That's nice to know. Before you did the replacement or the rebuild or whatever.
And what I found with transmission, just like your Mustang references for a lot of that customer, you got it back to where it's drivable for them again. You know what I mean? The issue is not as bad. And you've now put the bug in here that this thing is maybe going to be rear its ugly head worse in six months time.
It's not going to get better.
Yes.
It's not going to fix itself.
So then they can make that decision of like, well, I can go trade.
Uh, yeah, whatever they want to do.
Whatever they want to do. Put it up for sale or know.
That they shouldn't be going to Las Vegas with. Yeah, or whatever.
Don't jump on an eight hour road trip. Right. Keep it for a nice short.
And that brings to the point of the way we conduct ourselves as a transmission shop. And one of the most important things that we started doing was our dvis and our full inspections. But before I even knew about 300% rule and all that kind of stuff, car would come in, transmission issues, obviously needs a transmission service. They think it's going to fix the world's problems and it doesn't. Okay, so now I've miscommunicated the start of the process. Now, come to find out, we pull the pan and it's full of material. Call them. Hey, was this thing shifting funny? Oh, it was.
That's why I wanted to get it serviced. Oh, now you want to tell me that? I have it on the lift with the pan down. Okay, well, you need a transmission. There's like everything on the inside is on the not. I can't pour it back down the dipstick too. It doesn't work that way.
I thought it was in Yellowstone, panning for gold when I had your pan.
Yeah, we always say that. Panning for gold, you pull it down. See, converter materials, like, oh, gold in this pan. We're getting paid this week.
Eureka.
So at that point, it's like, okay, we got to pull out, rebuild it. So we'd rebuild it, put it back together. Okay. At the time, I don't know, it was like $3,500, 4000, whatever. Let it off, take off down the road. Wheel bearings are just howling, right? Coolants leaking everywhere. Oh, I thought that noise was going to be in the transmission. Right.
So we missed the wheel bearings, and now they're upset because they're under the impression that the transmission was going to fix that and it didn't. And is it their fault for thinking that? I don't know. I'll let you make your own decision behind that one. But then it's leaking coolant, too. Oh, you didn't tell me it was leaking coolant. If it had all these problems, I wouldn't have had you do the transmission. And that happens so many times. It's like, okay, from now on, every vehicle that comes in, it's a 1 hour charge inspection.
I don't care what it's here for. So when someone calls, that's how we start the process.
Because I've had that where you bring it in and it's like you can look at them. It's like, holy crap. Those brakes are rotted. Those pads are shot. Them tires are bald as hell. I got cords coming through that one, but the tranny won't shift. It's like we had to push it in. That CVT is making that old money music in the thing when you're trying to.
And nothing's happening, right, and you get it in there and then you give it back to the customer.
That was pretty spot on, by the way.
Thank you. I heard a lot of it, man. I heard a lot of it. So what do you do now? And then the customer is like, so then the advisor is calling up and going, well, I discounted the brakes.
Right. Well, they have to.
Why?
I mean, they don't have to.
Yeah, but you get what?
My mindset. They think they have to because it was all missed. Right. Do they come in. It's like you're paying us for an hour of our time. We're going to go through the vehicle. We're going to do a DVI. There is no free inspection.
I don't do that. Comes in, it's a 1 hour charged inspection, and the techs get one full hour. Look at the vehicle. Everybody wins. And if the client doesn't want to move forward, that's fine. There's no high pressure sales because guess what? We already met our bogey. You know what I mean? They can do the 1 hour inspection in under an hour. So they've already met their alr.
They're getting their effective labor rate. It bumps up sales. We get time for the advisor because now he's selling an hour, so he gets time to write up with the proper estimates and send it over and have the communication. It just slows the whole process down. And then if they decide to walk away, it's fine. Hey, you want an oil change? Sure. I'll give you a free oil change with an inspection. You know what I mean? And that's what I'll do.
I'll give the guys time to do the oil change. Just discount the labor and just charge them for the parts. So it's worked really well for me. And I hear a lot of other shops going the other way where they'll do an oil change and then they'll pay their text, like, 0.3, but the client doesn't pay anything for. It's like, why are you doing a free inspection on a DVI? The management program is expensive. The tablets are expensive. That whole process. And I get it.
It makes money, right? You're hoping for it on the back end. But I like the transparency of like. And I tell when the clients come in, like, oh, I got to pay for that.
Yeah.
And here's the reason why. If we find a bunch of items that your vehicle needs, I want you to know that there is no pressure for you to buy anything. We already had our financial exchange. You've paid me for the time. Here's everything your vehicle needs. Go somewhere else and have it done. If you want, do some of it yourself. Come back to the hard stuff with me.
Doesn't matter. I don't need to pressure you into buying anything because we gave you a free service.
Yeah, it's a lot better than we used to get whacked all the time. You do an oil change, right? And then it would leave and then it would have because it was just a straight. Pull it out of that parking lot into the bay. Back at the door, it's a 0.3 oil change. It gets done 18 minutes. You never rotate. Test the car. Customer leaves the next week, they're calling, they're back in the service drive.
You're getting a page. Come up here. You just changed Mrs. Smith's oil. Now she thinks she has a noise in the front end.
All free time.
And you go drive it and it's like, yeah, there's a wheel bearing because it sounds like it's a helicopter taken off. Right? And you're like, what the heck is going on? Well, then she's like, well, why didn't you tell me about that? At what point? On the 18 point. And I get it. That's what I always hated about the free inspections. It was like, we're going to tell you that everything's. Yes, I checked it off, because if I don't check it off, you're like, I didn't check off your DVI sheet, but I didn't really check it. You know what I mean? I didn't road test that vehicle. I didn't perform.
What do they call it? A pencil whip?
Pencil whip. So this is the thing now. And I see the DVI as a weird thing. I think we're in this turning point with the industry because we're starting to sell value by showing them that. Okay, here's a picture of a master cylinder and its fluid levels perfectly up and the fluid is clean. We're going to give you a picture of that. So that we show you with. We're going to show you ten negative things.
We want to show you ten positive things, too.
That's a good point to bring up.
My training is always like, if I check it off, it was good. It was good. I didn't have to. Oh, I still got to take a picture of it now. I'm starting to feel like Spielberg with some of these dvis that I'm doing because I'm taking so many photos of perfectly good things.
Yeah, I was just in a class today and 45 pictures is what he's wanting on DVis for his text.
Yeah. What's he pays tax for that?
I think it was 0.3.
Wow, imagine that, eh?
Yeah. Sounds like an industry stand. And that's my. No, it's not my issue. Yeah, as I learn more, I hope I don't, and I hope my wife checks me if I ever do. But I always stand behind the tech and think of myself being in that position. If I'm going to have them do 45 pictures, I want to make sure they're compensated for that time, 100%. I would never sell my tech short.
There's a tech shortage. Not sure use that kind of pun with all that's good, but it's true. And the problem I see is when you're dealing with a full vehicle inspection, the knowledge it takes to know every aspect of the vehicle and what's good and bad, that knowledge is being overlooked, I think, in my opinion. And they think, oh, the inspection is so easy. I can just hire a GS and have bowl. No way, man. If I brought my vehicle in and to a shop, I want the master technician. I want the guy with 15 years experience going through my vehicle.
I don't want the GS doing an oil change in a courtesy check. Courtesy check, courtesy inspection, whatever you call it.
But look at what we'd have to charge in Jimmy to do an oil change. If we're going to have a guy with 1520 years experience doing the oil.
Change, that's what it needs to be. And I would pay that if I don't have the knowledge to look at a vehicle myself. And I want my vehicle to last as long as possible. I got no problem spending $150, $200 on oil change four times a year, knowing that it's being thoroughly inspected and every component of it is going to be safe for whoever I let it borrow or whatever I need to go do. Because when I get in my vehicle and I'm going somewhere, I'm not just joyriding, I'm not retired. I got somewhere I need to be, and that's how I go make money. And it's the same with plumbers. And who do I have this conversation with about plumbers? It's the same thing where our mechanical knowledge allows us to fix things that are outside of our shop.
Right? Most plumbers, most electricians, most framers aren't going to fix their vehicles. Their brains, and I don't want to make them. No.
But I don't know what they're doing.
They don't have that same plasticity where as technicians, we're plumbers, we're electricians, we understand AC DC, we understand how coolant works, pressurizing, we understand hydraulics. We can do transmissions. We understand a lot of different components in a vehicle. That applies to a lot of other blue collar jobs, right? I'm sure if your toilet backs up, you're going to fix it. If you have a problem with an electrical outlet, you can replace it, right? And I thought for a long time it was just me, baby. I'm special. I just know all these things because my dad taught me so good and I'm Mr. Handyman, right? And it's just over the years, I've realized the issues I've had and I've overcome in the shop.
Being a technician has taught me to just relax, reevaluate, assess the situation and fix it. And if it takes a little bit of YouTube, it takes a little bit of YouTube. But that's the point. It's like having that ability to look at things differently, right? And I just think that all technicians are like that. And to have that knowledge, you should be compensated for it. Whether you're doing an oil change, doing an inspection, or you're rebuilding a transmission, obviously they should be paid more accordingly, but you should still be paid for your time. Just because you can go out in the parking lot and go out with Miss Jones that came back after oil change. That's free.
You get to go drive. And within, what, five minutes, you knew it was a wheel bearing.
Yeah.
You drove the car for five minutes and you knew it was a wheel bearing. How is that not worth money? You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Remember that old statement or whatever? And the guy says he walks into a ship and there's a $50,000 or way back in the day, right, like an ocean liner, and it won't run. Right. And the old gray haired tradesperson comes down the steps and he puts his little bag down and touches a few knobs and feels a few valves and he takes a little hammer out and he bangs on valve and they hit the key and the motor and the ship fires up. Yeah.
Wait till you get the invoice.
They hand him a bill for $20,000 and he says, you were on it for two minutes. And he says, you're not paying me for the two minutes. You're paying me for all the years that it took to know exactly which valve to hit with, which not how.
Many times I hit it, it's where I hit it.
Yeah.
That's what you're paying me for. Same with a float on a carburetor.
Right? Now, when you mentioned YouTube, do you get a lot of that where people kind of come in? Because there's even within. I mean, we're at ast with a lot of forward thinking people. There's still a lot of people sometimes that think them damn YouTube mechanics, right? Like they're giving away all our secrets. They're teaching stuff. Do you get a lot of customers that kind of come in that already have done the self diagnostic on the car maybe, of all?
Absolutely, yeah. I wouldn't say a lot, but it obviously comes up. Leanne does a great job of just no fending that right off. And it's a very simple, you want me to fix it and warranty it. It's a three or 36,000 miles warranty. Do you want that? Oh, yeah. That sounds really good. Okay, so it's going to be a 1 hour inspection.
We're going to tell you what it needs, and then we're going to move forward with the repair. You can either tell me yes or.
No, right back to the process.
It's like, yeah, that's very nice. That's a very nice story that you said. So this is what we're going to do. Don't even entertain it. And with the YouTube thing, I think it's great because I have shops, not because I have shops, but there are shops in the area that really base their entire operation around YouTube.
Really?
Oh, yeah. It's like every repair that comes in, they're jumping on YouTube and they're just trying to find out what it is, how to fix it, what part? They look up the code and it's crazy. I know plenty of them that way. I like it because it gets people excited in the industry, right? And in this day and age, everything's social media, everything's online, everything. That's what they're doing. They're on their tablets, they're on their phones. Everybody is all the time. And if you're 18 or 19 or 20 years old and you're just out of high school, you're going to be on your phone playing.
If you come across a YouTube channel and you find someone that you relate to, you like. Right. And they're working on something that's going to interest them. That's fantastic, because now they're going to start that. And once you start that, there's no going back. Once you see that repair, I think I can do that. I can do water boat, I can build a transmission, and then it doesn't work. You're either going to dive in headfirst or you're going to say, I don't want anything to do with this anymore.
And for the guys that dive in headfirst, you're never coming back. You are addicted for life now.
YouTube. And I'll age myself like it's a.
Drug or something like that. But you know what I'm saying? It's a bug.
YouTube. I'm going to age myself here. YouTube has, like, replaced what I grew up on. When we went and bought a Haynes or chilt manual for our car.
Well, don't feel too old because my pops used to take me to the public library and we would go and find the books. And then until you put it on the scanner and you scan out the sheets and microfiche. Oh, yeah. You get your little paperwork and you'd go back home and this is the repair manual. Or we'd go to shops. And this was back when dealers had techs. You could actually go to the dealer and say, hey, can we talk to a tech? It would just embarrass the hell out of me. But now, of course, I look back, it's very fond memories.
But we'd go to the dealership and, hey, I just like to talk one of the tech, because I got this problem with this car that we're trying to figure out. And the tech would come out and we would talk. It's just crazy. I remember going to finding where guys lived, get their address, go to their house and say, hey, we're working on this thing, and we want to, like, what do you think we should do? Or whatever the question was, it's like such an OD thing to think back on now. But it taught me how to ask for help, right? How to have a conversation with somebody, how to be okay with not knowing what you're doing and saying, hey, can you help me?
You still have a community you reach.
Out to as far as, like, if.
You'Re getting one, so you're something you're unfamiliar with. Right.
Okay.
Are there other rebuilders that you kind of go, hey, I'm going to do.
My first one of this Facebook has been. I mean, I hate to say that I'm a Facebook junkie, but I have a group on Facebook, translogic rebuilder group.
Okay.
Jim Mobley, Sonics is on it. Robert Trans goes on it. We're talking high level transmission technicians or. I don't know if you're familiar with sonics. They do.
I know that brand.
Trans go shift kits, performance parts. These guys are on Facebook waiting for, not waiting for messages, but they're on there. And you can send a message to him, have this issue. It's like within an hour, they give you a response of what they think. The next test that's so invaluable.
You and I, the other night when we met in the hospitality lounge, I was talking to you about how the one guy that I mentioned was supposed to make it to this show, Brandon Sloan from performance transmissions, right. Who's got some YouTube channels, but he's really big on TikTok because I'd said I wanted you to meet him because he's got a similar story to, um. But he didn't. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. But the way he talks, or the way he presents himself is that I think his phone goes nonstop all day long, between his social media account and other transmission builders reaching out, going, I'm not trying to put this between just behind a stock unit. I'm trying to put it behind something that's going to make 1000 wheel. How would you go about that? And then he puts these little TikTok videos up, and it's like, I'm using this. He's fascinating to watch.
He's really cool. Which to you it would just be like, yeah, that's what. Exactly what I would do. But even, like myself, that's not in a transmission thing. I'm watching it going, I didn't realize the level of detail that was in a transmission shop. And you're going to say, well, why not? Because I watch guys do them. Flat rate.
Yeah. I mean, that's fair.
So remember how you're supposed to soak your clutches and all that? I never saw a guy soak clutches.
I don't either.
You don't?
Yeah, I go and drive, but even, like, I did it for so long, and by the time I learned about it, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know.
Cleanliness is not something I always saw either when I was a working flat rate.
Right, right. Not in a transmission shop, but it's key. It is. And I hate when anybody touches my bench when they get stuff on it. But it happens. Everyone needs to use stuff. But going back to the early years, we'd have a grinding wheel, right? Like a wire wheel, to clean the silicone off Pan. So I'd pull a transmission apart, and one of the guys that I was working with, they weren't working for me at the time.
He'd come over and clean his pan off, and all the rubber would go all over my valve.
Come outside for a minute. Yeah.
Why would you do this? It's, like, emotional for me here. Why would you do something like this to me? If you ever rebuilt a valve body, you know what? I'm talking about, like, a freshly rebuilt valve body, and now it's, like, covered in silicone dust. I got to redo this whole thing. Like, not even mad. Like, just disappointed.
Jimmy, are you telling me that all week, it's more to it than just hitting that thing with a can of brake clean now and then putting it in the car? Are you trying to tell me, Jimmy, there's more to it than that?
There might be if you want it to work, if you want it to last.
Are you saying there's to flushing a cooler out than just shooting some air through it and hooking your lines back up?
I like hot flush, and hot flushing is nice. That's good. But again, it depends on how long you want to last. And that comes down to how much you're getting paid. And that's why the transmission rebuilding is, like, getting so prehistoric and so hard to find someone that'll do it, because those are the steps that they're missing to try to make up the time and to do bushings. And then you get a bushing a little sideways in the drum. You got to redo the bushing. There's just so many nuances, and then you want to upgrade it, right? Like, why did this happen? And then you got to vacuum check your valve body.
So I have a tester that vacuum checks all the passages on the valve body, because if it's going to hold vacuum, it's going to hold pressure, and the aluminum mplugs, and they'll wear out over time, and they start leaking, you get pressure losses. So I always look at it like it's kind of like a garden hose that got hit with a shotgun. So say you want to water your flowers, right? And you open the valve up. The idea is you want as much water coming out of the end as possible. They always leak. So the idea with, like, a shift kit, it's not to performance anything. I call it a shift correction kit. And there's guys out there with the performance side.
They're putting actual shift kits in there, but it's not a kit.
Right.
They're putting their recipe on it. They're putting their little twist on it. They know what fails and what to strengthen. That's the bottom line. There is no kit that you can put in that's like a stage three or stage two kit. I hate that.
I remember talking, seeing them, though.
Oh, yeah, they're all over the place.
You used to be able to buy them for 1999 summit racing, and you got like, oh, you got a 400th 400. There's your stage one kit.
There's your stage one.
Here's your blow up.
Good for 400 hp. What are you talking about?
And you move the BV from here to here.
It didn't need to be there in the first place. Anyway, with, like, a shift correction kit, it basically starts patching some of those holes, and you just get higher line pressure. Higher or more flow at the end of the hose. That's the idea. And over time, it's like the hose gets shot a few more times with a shotgun. Everything wears out. Mplugs wear out. Ceiling rings start getting worn.
Gaskets start deteriorating. So the internal leaks become more and more and more. And so, yeah, when you go back in there, you want to tighten everything back up. So when you turn the faucet up, you get more hose coming out. Now, the problem is some of these shift kits, all they do is just crank up the valve a little bit. You're not fixing the holes. You're just turning that faucet up to get more pressure out. Right.
So then you go through and you fix it. Right. And all of a sudden it starts shifting real hard because the pressure's been turned up. Yeah. There's a lot of nuances. And the guys that get in there, like you're talking about with Sloan, right?
Brandon Sloan.
Brandon Sloan. It's next level even for just because they know the internals of these. And most of the time, they only do, like, a few specific transmissions, right. They know their stuff, and they stick to it. And I've followed that pattern. So I have a few that I stick to. Now, I know my recipe. I know what leaks.
I don't have to spend 3 hours testing every vacuum, you know, area that AFL leaks or whatever. I know what they're going to leak, and I just go through and I just do them. I don't even need to test the lockup valve or the PR valves. Like, no, I'm going to ream it out. I'm going to put an oversized valve in it, call it a day. I roll through them, I do my thing, and I know it's going to work. I don't even need to test it because I've done so many of them.
What about when we see some of the known things that go. I can remember way back when Hyundai was Santa Fe or something else, but I'll even say some of the early Nissans, the rad cooler would mix, right? The transmission.
Oh, the Pathfinders.
Pathfinder.
The re five ro five a.
So when you're in there and you're doing a tranny, do you immediately kind of like, obviously, some diligence to make sure that it already hasn't mixed. But do you take an idea about. Okay, that might be the original rad, right? Because I know when neons were really bad, when I was at Chrysler, it's.
A tough one because it's like nobody has a crystal ball. And if you've never seen that on those pathfinders or the frontiers, you don't know. I know I've seen enough of them. And so, yeah, if we do a transmission, we're doing an external divorce auxiliary cooler. That's it. Bottom line, there's no if, ands, or buts about it on that specific unit. But you can't.
Like, what about the thermostatic valves you see in some of the lines now? And you'll talk to some of the guys, and they.
What a great question, man. That's a good one.
Is it really?
I get a lot of people ask me about that thing. It's like pulling a thermostat out of your vehicle.
Yeah.
It's the same thing, in my opinion.
And there's a lot of probably guys.
Yelling right now at whatever. They're listening to this right now. No, pull that out. You know what I mean? But it's there for a reason.
Obviously, the engineer put it.
Obviously, the engineer is a lot smarter than I am. A lot smarter than most of the people out there, because they're not engineers. And, yeah, there's some engineering stuff that doesn't make any damn sense. We're technicians. We hate engineers. Right. Or so I'm told.
They're not as smart as they claim to be, is why we get some of them.
Most of them. But some of them are pretty damn smart. So is it bad to keep it in there? I don't know. It's like, are you going to pull a thermos out of your car? And then you start risking cavitation, and then you never get it to operating temp. So your air fuel ratio is all a little off. There's a lot more nuances to it than that. And to pull that cooler, that valve out. Yeah.
You're avoiding the risk of it getting plugged. Right. But my thought is, if it's getting plugged, you already got a problem. Where'd that material come from?
Because that six L 80 that I did. Yeah.
Those plug up all the time.
I just took it out when I did it, and it was plugged, and I wanted to say it hadn't been changed when they'd done it under warranty.
Right.
So my customer was very cool. It's like, well, this is only like a $50 part. One c clip. Out it comes, bang, done. And I'm showing them the metal, and they're going, I bet you some of that metal was from transmission failure number one, right?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They didn't pull it out and clean it then. That's shame on them.
Yeah, but it's warranty. Warranty pays you 0.3 to flush the cooler.
Yeah. Right, right.
So what do you get for 0.3 when you're flushing the cooler?
A little bit of air.
Right. In a washer bottle. Like a dirty old washer bottle.
As long as it flows, it's good.
Because that's what I always found when I was doing diag. I kind of liken it to this. If I'm under the hood of your Ford and I've got three coils that are junk, I probably should change all six.
Oh, you better change all six.
Right.
And that's not even trying to upsell. That is a whole different conversation about client service. And that's one thing I've been learning a lot in the last couple of years, is servicing the client. Right. Advocating for them. Absolutely. And moving from a tech to an owner position, that is the hardest thing to do, because as a tech, you want to just replace that one ball bearing. Look at me.
I am the hero. I was able to look at this whole vehicle. I pinpointed this problem, and now you're fixed, and it's only 299. Right. Like, I am the man. And then you realize later on, when that client comes back six or eight months later with another problem, and you start seeing a pattern, like, oh, man, I should have just like, you can do a timing belt and just replace the timing belt. No, you can do the water pump that runs off the timing belt and just do the water pump. No, they sell the whole kit.
Yeah.
You rarely can only get one of those components that just goes across everything, just like with the coils. Like, well, you're not going to do one spark plug because that's the only one misfiring, because you can guarantee it's coming back in six months. And even though you saved in quotes them money because you're trying to do them a favor, they got to come back. It inconveniences them. They got to pay again to have you get back under the hood. Now who's ripping who off?
Exactly, because it feels just like it felt six months ago. And you go and die again. You're like Mr. Customer. You're right. It should feel exactly the same way. It's another misfire because it's the exact same thing. It's on a different cylinder, though.
Yeah.
Remember how you only wanted that one coil put in? Well, we're up to two now. Should you want me to order the other four.
Yeah.
No, I don't want you to order the other.
Well, it's too late now. I can't get 10% because I'm not buying all six. So you lost your discount, too.
I'm sorry, but you're paying dying again. Because it could have been an EGR that was causing it to misfire this time. But I just dated myself again then, right? What's the last thing you saw with an EGR valve?
No, that's not too bad. That's not that old.
You know what? I had a 2020 transit in.
Yes.
I said yesterday, last week.
It's got a kn back that dated you right there. That was the old man talking right there.
I am old. I am. I'll be 48 in the morning.
It's not that old.
I feel.
Catching your stride.
I feel old. Every morning when I wake up, man, it gets harder and harder to move around. Yeah, the elbows and stuff take a pounding, right? Everybody thinks, oh, he's this diag guy. I worked in a heavy truck shop for four years, right? I swung a sledgehammer into more kingpins than anybody.
That eats you up right there.
Yeah. I used to live and die by that air hammer, right? Wheel bearings and stuff like that. Now I look at all these guys at YouTube, YouTube certified, and you see the different ways they're pulling a wheel bearing out without hitting them with a hammer. I'm going to try all of those ways because if I hit a wheel bearing with a hammer, trying to get it out the next day, I can't swing that.
Know, that's another good thing on YouTube is like, you don't know what you don't know. And it could be, I don't know, an entry level tech, that's when you're the most creative and you come up with these ideas that's like, man, I've been doing that for ten years. The wrong way, not the wrong way, but that's obviously a much better way. So just because you only got a year of experience in this field, you can still come up with more creative solutions than guys that have been doing it for ten years because they got taught away ten years ago, right. And we just kept doing it that way. Why do it any other way? This works, I'm not even going to get creative about it.
And that segues right into my next question, because there's a contingency that says that somebody like myself or some of my northern friends that have dealt with a lot of rust. We're just immediately a better technician than somebody like you who's been in southern California and everything. Just literally, you look at it and it falls out of the car.
A better smashy to.
We owe David such a gift for that term. Full on smashy bear. Yeah.
You're just a better smashy bear than.
I am, and that is, I immediately, when you said that, I had a mental picture in my head of what a smashy bear would look like.
Yeah. Was it rust covered ball joint?
No, it was. The smashy bear was like, I was thinking like this bear with a hat sideways, a pair of dirty overalls and a rag carrying the biggest, like a Thor hammer in his hand.
That's quite a visual right there. For some reason, I think of a gummy bear. I don't know.
Okay.
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's just like a colored gummy bear. I don't know why.
But have you ever worked on a rusted vehicle? I mean, heavily rusted. Like, do you know some of the stuff that comes.
That is so strange? You bring that up because just last week. What year are we in right now? So it was like maybe two weeks ago, we had a Jeep Wrangler come in.
Oh, see? Yeah.
And it was from Pennsylvania. Yeah. And my tech, he's a rock star. He was telling me about this before we even looked at it. Oh, man. I remember doing these jeeps, and the frames would be rusted out. We'd have to replace the whole frame. I was like, they sell frames for these? I didn't even know there's a thing.
You know what I mean? I've been in this industry for 20 years. They sell frames for jeeps to replace them. Why don't you just throw the thing away? What are you talking about? I asked him. People do that? Oh, yeah. It's like books. For like 28 hours. There's a book. Time to replace the frame on a Jeep Wrangler.
I don't know. I live in California, man. We don't have rust. But see, we used to have that jeep that day. Was that bad? Pictures.
And Toyota, I think it was the tundras, had a frame recall up in the northern climates. Wow. Because it would rot so bad, they.
Have no coating on it or something.
Whatever they put on there, whether it.
Was, wasn't good enough.
Something from Japan that obviously didn't hack. Because up here, for instance, when we do a transit, if I have to take the tranny out of that, right. You've seen it. You've been underneath some transit.
Yeah, that's the ones with the, they got the updated motor mounts on them, too.
The subframe is right. When you go to try to take those bolts out of that body where it goes up through to get that subframe, they're not coming out. Mr. They're stuck in there. They're like, so people sometimes get that.
Big pipe on there and it's, no.
You'Re doing it good. And then all of a sudden it's just like, that's it. You punch yourself in the side of the head, right? Because you broke the bolt off and the studs hanging down looking, that's like.
Getting kicked right between the legs, isn't it? Like insult, like that moment of elation because you think you got it loose, and then you realize that your whole day, just the whole week even, and.
You just want to remove this damn transmission to get the reman in it so the guy can go back to work with this stupid transit. Ugly piece of junk. And guess what? The last one I did, it's like I was welding to the stud, trying to build it up to weld.
I think I heard about that story. I think I was listening to you talking about that one time.
Listen, I'm not a good welder, but if I can weld where I'm making a rope come down the stud and it's dripping on my helmet as I'm building the thing up to be able to put the nut on. And it came out.
It came out.
But I'm like, there's slag hitting my beard. There's the whole thing. And you're so Zen about like, okay, if I just keep puddling, that weld like this, hit the ground and poof.
4 July on the floor, workshop floor.
I managed to get five out of the six like that, and I got the one to back down a little bit more and wind up cutting it off. And I welded a stud to the body so that we could put the subframe back up.
That's a big note for me.
Yeah.
The only issue I have is with the gms. I mean, it's just the collector bolts, and they come in, and my process was always, get it racked up right. Get your toolbox, get the torch out, and I just heat up all six of them with the torch, get them red hot. By the time I put the torch away, they zip right out. That's the only rusted bolt that I ever have to deal with.
I can remember them when they'd be like. You'd see that when they had the old school manifolds and the collector was up closer, and those long bolts that used to come down through the collector, we used to say they would just, oh, I got another set of sewing needles over here. And that's what it would be, is because that bolt that used to be like a three 8th coarse bolt now looked like a threaded spaghetti, and it had a nut on the bottom, and it was threaded into the manifold. And how am I getting this apart?
I don't know. I don't know. I might have changed careers if I.
Had to deal with that. So everything became a manifold job before they were ever like, yeah, that's fair. Breaking the bolts off into the head, we were so used to. Well, I'm going to have to take that manifold out to get the studs out of it anyway.
Yeah, cut two. That's a good point to bring up for text, too, is just getting to cut two. I think a lot of guys really get themselves wrapped up into wanting to do it the way that's in their mind. This is how I'm going to take it out. So I have to make that happen. Like, bro, just step back for a second. Is there another solution here? You see guys up in there drilling the stud on the collector? Dude, pull the manifold off. What are you doing? Oh, I guess I could.
Yeah. And I don't deal with that very much, but there was a time when, early on in the shop, when I'd hired text, and it was like, that be like 2 hours in on an hour and a half job. It's like, I better go check on them. I don't mind getting a little extra time, but it's like, all right, something's going on here. It's like, what are you doing? Just take the alternator out and you can pull the power. Oh, yeah. I was just trying to avoid that. Why? It's two bolts, man.
It's like such a fixation on how they want that process to go, and it's not going that way, so they just keep fighting it. It's like, just stop. Just stop what you're doing and just reassess.
I struggle with that sometimes, too, because. Especially on dash work, because I'll get into doing a dash work, and if it's an older one. We know that when I start to pull on that, it's going to crack. So you start to think about other ways. How can I get to that research motor without having to take x, y, and z off, right?
Yeah.
And I've seen some creative stuff that gets done, but it can sometimes take longer. And then you go out to the advisor and go, I know it says it's a two hour, but really, ideally, it can be a two hour if we replace the dash, but it can be a four hour if I go about it this way. How do you want to do it?
Right?
And then something used to make me laugh, and I never, like the Chrysler front wheel drives, 200s, for instance, had the heater cores that would plug up over and over and over and over and over again. And the guys would be in the dealer, and I'm like, well, the service information says the whole dash has got to come out. He's like, 6 hours. And the guys in the dealer were like, I'd love to do that, man. I love doing that job all day long. And I'm like, how you can get the dash out in 6 hours? He's like, hell no, man. We don't take the whole dash. I'm like, what do you do? He's like, there's only three crimps on the heater core that hold the lines into it.
You uncrimp those three crimps, you pull the core off the lines, you put the new core on, crimp it down, ship the thing.
Easy money.
Easy money, right? But is that the way the process is supposed to be? No. There's a reason they sell it to you with the lines on the end of the core. But I know I talked to enough guys that did it and did that sheet and never had a leak.
And that goes right back to being taught a certain process and just using that. And that's the way you do it, right? And having someone new come in and just getting that fresh new look, you know what I mean? Even if it's like green a year, in, two years in, it's like they get more creative because they're not set in a way. Right? And I don't know if that's better or worse, but you definitely come up with different solutions to a problem. And it just goes back to our mindset of being on that straight and narrow, and like, this is how I want it to done. And then you're already thinking about what you're doing tonight, what you're having for dinner, and you're just worried about getting the alternator or transmission out or whatever you're doing, and you can't stay focused and in the moment to stay plastic enough to reevaluate the job halfway through because you're just. No, this is how I already told myself I was going to. And it's so strange because we all do. I do it.
Everybody does it. But there's this thing called free state where it's like snowboarders or whatever, and they're just freestyling. Right? You know what I mean by that? Obviously, skateboarders are snowboarding. When a tech operates sometimes in a freestyle, you can come up with that. Really like, the ball is on that guy the first time to go, you know what? I'm going to try and cheat this, because if it works, dude, I just took a six hour job and I whacked it at 45 minutes and I made five. That takes some guts and some confidence to be able to say, I think.
That'S a diagnostician, too.
Yes.
I think you have to have that freestyle mindset to be a diagnostician, because otherwise you go in thinking you already know what it is and you're just verifying your findings. Right? Is that not your mindset? When you're like, if you find a code and you're like, I bet it's going to be this, let me just verify it, instead of going in with an open mind and looking at a crime scene. And just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts, right.
But that's the thing. I think as I've aged out, I've realized that a lot of times. Maybe what I was judging as hacky was really somebody that just freestyled something.
I've brought that up before. Is it a hack or is it a know? And sometimes you look at stuff as like, am I being a hack right now? Or is this a knack? Right. It's a thin line. It's a little bit of a gray area. Am I doing this up to par? But I don't know.
And at lunch today, Cecil and Paul, Dan, are you probably sitting in there? You watch the know. We don't never know how necessarily the backstory of how that Tech that was doing that job. Before we say we inherit a nightmare car, say it gets, like, looking. We're looking at something and it looks like it's rework, maybe not even from our shop, but somewhere else. We don't know necessarily how that was played out. We might get a bill that says the customer was billed this and was told that, but the reality is that tech may have had to diagnose it for free. He might have had to do his DVI for next to nothing. Right.
So I'm getting better about not immediately throwing so many people under the bus because I don't know the, you know, Lucas always tells me all the time and he doesn't have to tell me as much. I'm getting better. Seek first to understand, and then there's some cases where you're not going to be able to seek. Like you mentioned earlier, we don't have a crystal ball. I don't know the history. It's not like the cars are getting that way, where eventually we're going to be able to plug it in. The car is going to be able to tell you who touched it every time and what they did, but we're not there yet. So I love the fact that that technology is coming because it's going to hold us all to a different accountability.
But I'm much better than I used to be about saying, oh, that guy was just a hack.
I think that happens with time, especially when you, I mean, you get seasoned either way. But moving from that position of being a tech to an owner, you learn that very quickly. And the very first thing you do is try to, you try to find all the faults because you're trying to provide a service that's better than everybody else's. And you're so close minded about how to do that. The easiest thing to do is to find someone's fault and correct it and say, now you're the hero. Please come back to me and spend your money.
Right?
And that is like what I've noticed with all new shops, the very first thing they want to do is try to find someone that they are better at. And it's exactly what you said. There are situations, whether it be the client didn't get along with the service advisor and they pulled out early. Maybe they didn't even have the story correct. Right. And then you're basing on what's the advisor write up from the tech, right. There's so many lines of communication.
Check noise.
Yeah, check noise. And it's like, the tech's like, what are you talking about? Check noise, where? And then the service advisor doesn't get along with the technician. Right. So then he writes up something that's not even close to what he said, and then that gets translated to the client. And now the client leaves upset and then he takes that story, or she takes that story and goes to the next shop, and it's like, that's not even how it went down, and I've had that happen before. So the very first thing I do when I get something like that, because it's always a client that comes in that wants to throw stones, living in a glass house wants to come in. So they had look at it, and they don't know what they're doing. Like, first phone call is to that shop.
Really?
I just want to let you know I got Mrs. Or Mr. So and so in. This is what's going on. I just want to clarify what you guys do, and that's my very first call. And whether it's me or my wife, that's our procedure. If it comes in from another shop, the first call we make is to that shop.
Jimmy, that's so different, because how many shop owners don't do that? I mean, why know?
I don't know. I figured everybody would. Why wouldn't you want to do. If I get a bad review, which is rare, first phone call I make is to that client.
Right?
I don't care about getting on Google. The first phone call I make, I mean, we've all gotten the weird ones that are out of left field. Like, really? Dude? Okay, I'm not calling that guy, but nine times out of ten, I'm calling like, hey, what's going on? I thought we were good. Is there anything I can do? It's just what you do. You call people out, find out the story before you start giving your opinion. Just the facts. Find out the facts.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Yeah, just the facts. Don't be like, getting your opinion all tied up into somebody else's opinion. Like, oh, man, we're not in politics, man. We're not politicians here. We don't need to be doing that.
So kind of go to a lateral move. Are you finding it hard to get people in all facets of the business right now? Technicians. Advisors.
Advisors. The last ad we had out, we had a plethora of solid applicants, majority from the dealers.
Okay.
Which is really tough to decipher if that would work well for our fit. I feel it's a little different, but I think the advisors are really getting cut pretty hard at the knees by the dealerships. It's a dog eat dog world for the advisors in the dealerships. And I don't care who you are, if your advisor is not treating you well as a tech or whatever, you got to understand their situation, whether they're on the top or they're getting cut low, they're having to do things that I don't think they would normally do as a person because of the environment they're being placed in. But beyond that, techs, I've been getting more qualified applicants. I've been getting a lot of entry level.
Okay.
A lot of entry level or in a different trade. And they want to get into the industry and not a lot. I'm talking three a month maybe. But I feel like that's a lot in this day.
That's a lot.
It's substantial. I'm happy with. It's like, oh, wow, the ad is actually out there. Because for a while there, it's like, is this ad even live right now? Is this thing on? You know what I mean? So at least it's like we're getting some form of communication. We don't use any sort of recruiting platform, though, other than. Indeed.
So. See, when I was at lunch and they were trashing on. Indeed. Right. Indeed. Is this not indeed. Just got me my most recent job.
Yeah, indeed is fantastic.
Because I left my resume up. Since I've been laid off from COVID in 2021, I never took it down.
Right.
Because was I happy where I was? Sure. Am I always going to be?
Is there always something better? Is always someone smarter?
Yeah.
Is there always someone better?
So I laughed at that. I'm sitting next to Paul Danner's wife, Kirsten, right? And I said, he bragged about how they hired 52 people for that one company that had, whatever, 20 stores or something like that. They hired 52 people in three.
I don't need 52 people.
But I looked over her and I said, you know what, I really want to know. And she's like, what's that?
I'm like, how many of them stayed?
Why did all 52 leave?
That's a good point.
Right?
I think it was a new store that they were putting in, so they were trying to staff new stores. From what I understood. I don't know. I was on the same thing. I don't know. The way they're talking about text, not being able to write up a resume. Like, look, if you can't get me a good looking resume, you're not a technician.
Right.
I'm sorry. If you can't put a coherent sentence together for me, that is our base level sop. You look at the vehicle and you write up a detailed story to then hand to the service advisor so he can, or she can make heads or tails, sell the good, bad and ugly to the client. That is like, what? I need them to write a coherent sentence. Yes. So having a detailed resume isn't like, I need to see where you worked. It's like, no, I need to know that you're a professional and you know where to put periods. You know how to put there, there or there your.
Or your. Right. I mean, I need to see this stuff that you have some common sense grammar, and it's not even about what's on there. It's just that you write something nice up and you take pride in you as a person, right. Because if you have a nice resume, that means you thought enough. And whether you wrote it up or you had someone do it for you, you see yourself as enough of a professional to say, I want this to represent me. Right? Like, write it on crayon, on a notepad. How do you think your toolbox is going to look? Right.
Like, I don't want that in my shop.
The next time I have to redo my resume, David Roman's looking at it first.
There you go.
Yeah. Because, I mean, if anybody could pick it apart, it's going to be David, right?
Yeah. He's one of those guys that's like, I'm really good at finding things that are wrong. So my father in law's like that. He comes in the house and he's like, picks out this because I do a lot of construction stuff, right? I have a contractor's license, and, okay, before I got in this field, I did drywall and actually have a spray foam company that I've been running for, like, six years. And by that, I mean I go out and spray foam, right? Spray foam insulation. But anyway, so we converted our garage, right? And so anyway, he comes in and starts picking all this stuff. He's like, hey, don't be too offended, because I'm just really good at finding things that are wrong that nobody else sees. I'm like, dude, everybody sees it.
Just nobody says anything. Anybody can walk into a situation, point out the things they find obviously bad, right? Some people have tacked money.
Yeah, they saw it, too. They just had tacked. They don't want to hurt my feelings about that.
They're just not worried about it. Like, well, this is yours, not mine, so I don't care what it looks like. You know what I mean?
So in wrapping up, what do you hope for yourself in the next five years to be owner, right?
You got to go there. Well, no, you got to go with the hard question, the universal question. I'd like to win the lottery and be in the Bahamas. Aside from that, I couldn't do that. I got to work every day, really. I mean, as far as the business side, I like providing a good environment, a good learning environment. I like treating the technicians. I like having employees.
I like giving them what I didn't have.
Right.
I like that their checks can be cashed when they need it. I like that they can pay for their families. I had the biggest mind shift beginning of this year in realizing that, I took something and built something where there's technicians that are paying for their family, their kids and their wife. And it was such a strange. I can't even put it into words, but it's just a cool and strange thing, because the impostor syndrome is real. I just don't feel like I've made that position to call myself an owner.
Right.
And so I'm so much more comfortable calling myself a technician, calling myself a transmission builder, call myself anything but owning a shop. It's very hard to hold that label. It doesn't feel like it's like I've made that position. But then you look at the numbers, and then I realize I got three technicians plus a service advisor that are all making a livable wage in California. And I feel like if I acknowledge that and accept that, I'm going to lose it all. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? It's so hard to be, like, pat myself on the back, because then I've made it. And then what? And that's, like, kind of where our sales are this year. We've already met our sales goal for the year.
Now.
You got a quarter left almost.
Well, right.
Just a couple of months. Quarter, yeah.
And it's tough. That's harder than not being there, because it's like, well, now what? And when you're in that process and you're building and you're growing and you're trying to. I'd like to really have one tech. I'd like to have one guy. I'd really like to have two guys. Man, that'd be great. Oh, you know, it'd be really cool is have three guys, a service advisor, and make a million dollars a year.
And have a QC person have a QC position.
Right, right. And you start growing this stuff in your mind, but you start checking these boxes off, and at the time, you make these goals, and they're like, unobtainium. Like, this isn't going to happen for me, but I'm going to keep trucking every day. I'm not a quitter. I like a challenge. I'm going to keep building. But then it starts happening. And then you're like, well, now what? And that's what I mean when you asked me that question is like, man, what is my goal? Obviously, MSo would be great, but it's like, what does that even entail? I haven't even had the time to accept this first kind of goal set.
Like, I'm here at Aste. The shop's running on its own right now. It's the first time we've walked away, and the shop's been open while we're at a conference. It's like, wow, we're doing, like, the wife and I were just talking about that, and she said it last night. She's like, hey, you know, we're doing it. We did what we set out to do, and it's like, fantastic. And then it sits in like, well, now what? Well, now we have to keep this momentum going. We can't dial it back.
And it's like you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop, in a sense. Is this going to keep going, or is this like, we just had a few good months, and so we're in this weird period of like, well, do we not set a new goal? Because we got to make sure this goal stays where it needs to be. Does that make sense? You don't want to keep dangling this carrot when you haven't even sowed the seeds yet from this. So it's strange, but I think in five years, it'd be nice to actually own a shop, not be renting. I mean, I think that's a big one in California, though. If I'm going to set an unobtainable goal, that just might be.
But because it's not just necessarily having the money, it's all of a sudden, will they zone it and allow you to do that?
Oh, my God.
I mean, it is a democratic state. It is a situation where they're going to be.
We're in a red county. Yeah, absolutely. And the amount of money that's coming into town is just absurd. It's big, big money. We're talking lots of land. Lots of land being sold for one point five to two million dollars for a lot of land. That's it. Just dirt.
You're talking about building prices between $250 and $300 a square foot to build a shop. I don't know. I obviously would love to get to that point, but I think there's a lot of things I need to work on in the meantime. And I think at this point, I just want to really focus on getting the text. I got now paid as much as they possibly can, getting them into training, getting them educated, and just getting what we got really dialed and polished. I felt like we've kind of put the cart in front of the horse in a sense, whereas we've met this goal, but we still have a lot of cleanup to do. Does that make.
No, totally.
So kind of take it not a step back, but kind of like, okay, so it's achievable. We've done it. Now let's polish this baby and keep it moving forward. Obviously, with evs coming in, figure out what we're going to do with that. Do we make that push to start working on evs? Do we get the Adas machine in? It's a tipping point right now. I think a lot of guys are thinking about that. Like, is it time to do it? Should we wait? It's tough. It's a tough decision.
It's a big financial jump, and it's a whole nother service you got to provide. And that's not just, hey, you're going to do Adas now. You know what? You know. Hey, Timmy, why don't you come in and you're going to be my Adas guy. It's like there's a lot more behind providing another service in the shop. Exactly.
Well, I want to thank you, man. I think there's no ceiling for you. I think you've got all kinds.
Well, that's nice of you to say.
No, but I think it really does.
I think everybody, if you just set your goal and you get to work every day, that's the big part.
Eh?
There's no ceiling for anybody. Get out there and just do it. I mean, I had an interview with a good budy of mine, Christian, and the biggest takeaway from him was like, just do it. Just do your.
Put on your nikes and just do it.
There you go.
All right, man.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much. Enjoyed this.
Right on.
We'll talk to you soon. 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 ten millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.
About this episode
Jimmy Purdy, owner of Shifting Gears Garage, shares insights on transmission rebuilds and the growth of his repair shop. He discusses the challenges of running a business in the automotive industry, including the importance of fair compensation for technicians and the need for effective communication with clients. The conversation touches on the evolution of repair practices, the impact of electric vehicles, and the significance of continuous learning in the field. Purdy emphasizes the value of building a supportive work environment for technicians while navigating the complexities of the automotive repair landscape.
Original notes
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This week, Jimmy Purdy from Shifting Gears Garage and the Gearbox Podcast joins Jeff Compton to talk about the delicate transition from technician to owner and the realities of running a successful auto repair shop. They cover everything from the nuts and bolts of transmission issues — think valve bodies and torque converters — to the grime and grind of day-to-day operations.
Jimmy also brings up shop expansion ideas, the challenges of setting new goals, and the art of mastering client service. Plus, Jimmy aims some common industry misconceptions and shines a light on the under-appreciated expertise of veteran techs.
Also, the guys discuss digital trends, from the role of YouTube in vehicle repair to platforms like TikTok and Facebook that are driving conversations and connections.
00:00 Jaded Mechanic podcast: Reflections on automotive repair.
06:32 Young entrepreneur doubles salary, loses business.
11:21 Diagnosing and repairing transmission issues at the dealership.
17:56 Transmission specialist highlights the importance of thorough diagnosis.
25:53 Rural infrastructure challenges and importance of services.
28:37 Client satisfaction based on the informative decision-making process.
32:06 Challenges of transitioning to a management role.
41:45 Issues arise during inspection and communication misunderstanding.
44:16 Invest in regular car maintenance for safety.
51:47 Couldn't meet Brandon, an engaging content creator on TikTok.
55:08 Tester checks valve body for leaks and wear.
01:01:32 Heroic problem-solving reveals profitable long-term solutions.
01:03:57 YouTube fosters creativity, regardless of experience.
01:12:17 Learning process leads to a creative problem-solving approach.
01:16:54 Miscommunication leads to upset clients and shop conflict.
01:22:42 In-law is critical of construction work.
01:24:53 Tech feels uncomfortable owning a shop but is successful.
01:30:23 Please like, share, and subscribe to the podcast.
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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