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Frank Wiebe of 3D Auto Talks TikTok and Change in the Auto Repair Industry
Frank Wiebe of 3D Auto Talks TikTok and Change in the Auto Repair Industry
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About this episode
Frank Wiebe from 3D Auto shares insights on the evolving auto repair industry, particularly the impact of Ontario's new safety inspection program. He discusses the transition to digital inspections and the challenges faced by shops adapting to these changes. Frank emphasizes the importance of maintaining high safety standards, even as some shops opt out of inspections due to increased costs. The conversation also touches on the significance of proper training for apprentices and the need for technicians to understand both the theoretical and practical aspects of their work. Frank's passion for quality work and customer safety shines through as he reflects on his journey in the automotive field.
Topics:
safety inspections
digital inspections
apprenticeship training
customer safety
auto repair industry changes
electrical diagnosis
cooling system issues
exhaust repairs
shop management
social media presence
Cars:
BMW M2
Buick Enclave
Dodge Journey
Ford Fusion
Ford Ranger
Honda Accord
Honda Fit EV
Jeep Cherokee
Jeep Wrangler
Nissan Murano
Renault Master
Volkswagen Bus
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In this episode, Jeff is joined by Frank Wiebe of 3D Auto in Elmer, Ontario. Frank shares his experiences with Ontario’s new digital vehicle safety inspection program and how it has impacted his business, leading to a significant increase in inspection volume as other shops opted out. They also discuss the importance of integrity in safety inspections, emphasizing why they hold higher standards than the minimum regulations require. Lastly, Frank reflects on his journey from technician to shop owner, highlighting the challenges and rewards of running a family business in a changing industry.
00:00 Adapting Safety Protocols with Technology
10:36 Busy Used Car Lot Success
13:36 "Bilingual Hire: Six-Year Apprenticeship"
18:13 Family-Run Business Dynamics
22:21 "Privileges vs. Hero Complex in Auto Shops"
29:19 Tie Rod Dilemma: Pass or Fail?
35:58 Regulating Safety Standards Concerns
42:39 Motorbike Dispute and Indifference
46:08 Faulty Car Repair Issues
53:00 Lesson Learned: Consistent Rotor Replacement
58:41 "Hands-On Learning: Beyond Floor Sweeping"
01:00:53 Early Trade Reality Check
01:07:18 Lost Art of Hands-On Learning
01:14:01 Understanding Shop Hiring Challenges
01:15:20 Mentorship Shapes Technician Skills
01:21:14 Realizing Electrical Concepts Simplified
01:30:25 Investing vs. Expanding Decisions
01:34:40 Faulty Auto Parts Frustration
01:39:11 "Industry Accountability and Safety"
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Buick Enclave
"...I don't want to anymore. But I told her her Buick Enclave needs a torque converter. So why don't we start w..."
Car
Ford Ranger
"...y own brother had a. What year was it? 2011. Ford Ranger. And we just retired the car and sent it to the s..."
Car
Jeep Wrangler
"...le. So you got lucky on that one. I. I drive a 50 Wrangler, and I'm very lucky. It's not ticking yet, but I ..."
Car
Dodge Journey
"... right now we're waiting on a tire because it's a journey and no one has a used tire for a journey. So we'r..."
Car
Jeep Cherokee
"...it. I've done. I welded floor pans in a couple of Cherokees I've owned, you know, rockers, the whole things. ..."
Car
Master Tech
"...emember going on lots of test drives with, with a master tech years ago, early in my career and him teaching me..."
Car
BMW M2
"... to. And, you know, it's the same thing. The. The M2 officer. The same thing. They always reiterate, w..."
Car
Volkswagen Bus
"...always been a bit older. And when I worked at the bus garage, they used to love using our bus garage as..."
Car
Honda Accord
"...re, go and test this. My apprentice had his Honda Accord. The AC wasn't working. Okay?"
Car
Nissan Murano
"...little service information. We were looking at 23 Murano last week for service, you bet. Yep."
Car
Ford Fusion
"... on evaps. So that's. I know. Yeah. We got a Ford Fusion or something, Focus or something like that that n..."
Car
Honda Fit
"...one of my earlier videos, I, I did that for. On a Honda Fit for a customer. And, and man, I got, I got roaste..."
Adapting Safety Protocols with Technology
Busy Used Car Lot Success
"Bilingual Hire: Six-Year Apprenticeship"
Family-Run Business Dynamics
"Privileges vs. Hero Complex in Auto Shops"
Tie Rod Dilemma: Pass or Fail?
Regulating Safety Standards Concerns
Motorbike Dispute and Indifference
Faulty Car Repair Issues
Lesson Learned: Consistent Rotor Replacement
"Hands-On Learning: Beyond Floor Sweeping"
Early Trade Reality Check
Lost Art of Hands-On Learning
Understanding Shop Hiring Challenges
Mentorship Shapes Technician Skills
Realizing Electrical Concepts Simplified
Investing vs. Expanding Decisions
Faulty Auto Parts Frustration
"Industry Accountability and Safety"
Select text to request an explanation
If you take a dash out the way that they put it in at the factory, you don't have to take the whole thing apart. Four bolts across the top, four here and a couple here, and you take the center console up, the whole thing comes up.
Yeah.
And since I started using that method, it's like, this is not so worse anymore.
Good evening. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic. It is a hot one here. First of all, shout out to all my friends in the great United States for Happy Independence Day. This has been recorded a couple days after, but my Facebook members are showing me that two years ago I was flying home from Charlotte after visiting with my good brother Lucas Underwood, where we've been at the fourth of July celebration, his new shop. And I was nursing a moonshine hangover and a little bit of jet lag. So it was a good time. But back to the Canadian content that we're always trying to pump up more for people here.
I'm sitting here with a new friend of mine, a fellow Canadian, fellow person from Ontario, which is a lot of us from Ontario, Mr. Frank Wieb, who is from 3D Auto in Elmer, Ontario. Frank, how are you tonight?
I'm doing just fantastic, Jeff. Thank you for asking.
Yeah, it's hot, isn't it?
Man, oh, man, has it been hot and sweating just standing around doing nothing.
Yeah. So I got to know you kind of a little bit from TikTok, which is everybody, like, you know, rolls their eyes and they say TikTok, but, I mean, you've been on there longer than I have and. Oh, yeah. And what. Realize that what really kind of has taken off for you is the people that maybe do know or don't know Ontario rolled out a new kind of safety program. The way we do it now for cars, it's what, a year old, Frank?
Yeah, about that. Because it started, I think, in August of last year is when we actually went live with ours.
And so when he says go live, what it was, guys and gals is now everything is done with a tablet. So essentially you're LinkedIn via the Internet, right, to what we call MTO in Ontario, Ministry of Transport of Ontario. And so we're documenting the condition of the car, identifying the car. You need a picture of the VIN number, you need a picture of the compliance label. You're supposed to have that anyway. Some cars don't have compliance labels. And. And then everything is.
So they're. Frank, are they live, do you think, when we're doing this.
In a sense they are live. There are certain, I think there's certain triggers that somebody sitting there watching for triggers. And if that, if that trigger hits, then it's there. But as far as actual live. No, there's no way. There's no way they have the bandwidth to do that.
Yeah. Have they called you yet?
One time I got. I had a. It was an old Lexus and after I entered the VIN number and did the computer scan, all of a sudden this. And well, I made a video about it and one. And it all suddenly came up and it's. It said, please wait. And I'm like, what the heck is this? Yeah, and that's exactly what it was. Apparently the VIN number that I had scanned and entered was different.
Yeah.
So then I had to go and show them that the VIN number on the dash matched what I had entered and then off we went. But that's the only time that I've gotten flagged on it yet.
I've had them call me twice. Both times I think it was a Kia or Hyundai product. Seemed to be. Number was same thing, erratic or whatever. Right. And they just asked me to repeat it. Both times I repeated and they said, okay, cool. And then they get off.
So I mean, that's been it. But what we're essentially, we're doing, guys and gals, is we're going through the, through the process of inspecting these cars for essentially sale or if somebody has bought it and wants to sell it, that kind of thing. And you log into the provincial, you know, website and they're essentially looking at the photos that we take. And you have to have quite a few photos of. They want photos of the brake thickness for your rotor or your diameter of your drum. Pictures of your brake. Shoes, pictures of your, you know, lots of pictures. Tires, tires, tread depth, tire pressure has to be all checked.
It's quite a bit. Now, Frank, when, when they first talked about this, did you kind of go, oh crap, these safeties are going to take a lot longer or.
No, not for me. I was excited about it. I always tell everyone it's it. The people that were doing safeties, they're the ones that went, oh crap, what am I going to have to do for me? Like. Like for you? I've never compromised on my safety since day one. And I've been doing this 26 years now. And so when it came about, I'm like, oh, all it's going to be is just entering into a tablet. I knew it was going to take a little bit longer, but I remember about maybe 10 years ago, I was talking to one of my fellow employees and I said, you know what? This would be really cool if it was on a tablet so that we didn't have to write it down all the time.
That's right.
And lo and behold, here we are. So maybe they were listening to me back then already.
Because I'll tell you, maybe you've seen the same thing in your area. For everybody that's listening, he's in Elmer, Ontario, which he just informed me is like relatively near London, Ontario. So I thought it was near the barrier and I was completely wrong. So he corrected me on that. But in my area, Frank, we had one, two, we had three shops shut down that just decided they weren't going to stay open anymore. Now, these were heavy truck shops that were known to do a lot of safeties. And they were like, we're not piss on this. We're not going to bother.
Right. It was too much. So that says something quite a bit like that's, that's a pretty bold statement to say as soon as I have to do it this way, I'm not going to bother doing it. Because for the people listening, like the investments that you have to pay to be put in a program and buy the equipment and whatnot, is small compared to what it really means to have it. And your ability to do business and doing inspections, because essentially, if you're not set up with the program, you can inspect all the cars all you want, but you can't give the people the legal certificate that they need in order to be able to then drive that car and operate it in the province of Ontario.
Yeah, exactly. We had a. We had a few shops in our area too, that the shops didn't shut down, but they just wouldn't do safeties anymore. And for me, I said right away, my wife and I run the shop together. And I said to her, I said, when this first came up, I said, we're definitely doing this. I don't care what it costs. Like, even if it was going to be $10,000, I would have done it. Right.
I said, the revenue that we're going to get out of it is going to be far away, the cost. And it has like the amount of safeties that we have done.
Yeah.
In the last year is probably about, I would say, 60, maybe 70% more than we did in the years before. Oh, yeah, it's. It's been phenomenal. The amount of safeties that we do. Stuff that other shops just won't touch anymore, like motorcycles is one that we are. I did probably 20, 25 last month of motorcycle safeties. Shops around here won't do the annual yellow stickers anymore on trailers.
Right.
So we do a ton of those. Yeah. So we've, we've really benefited from getting signed up and being part of this program instead of just sitting back and saying, oh, I guess I'm not going to do it now.
Yeah. And I know some shops like, they continued to do them, but they started like the cost of what they were charging the customer to do a safety. They put it up quite a bit to offset the cost of the new equipment. And then the fact that like everybody was like, oh, it's going to take two people. One guy's gonna have to run the camera and the other guy, you know, has to hold the measuring. I've gotten pretty good to where I can, I can whip through one in about 35 minutes. Now when I say whip through, what I mean is like I've already pre inspected the car.
Everything is apart.
Everything is apart. And then it's like, okay, so I'm getting my, my key measurements that I have to get. You can hold the tablet with one hand, put your air pressure gauge on, get a reading, tread depth, all that kind of stuff. Now it's a little, it's a shitty tablet.
It's, it's uncomfortable, it's heavy. I had, I had problems with my wrist for the, for a while until it got, got used to it. It's really heavy.
The lighting sucks. Especially in my new, my new shop. The lighting is terrible. So there's often some creative ways to hold the light and have you put.
A light on the back of your, of your tablet yet.
So I was going to ask you what, like later on you'll have to show me what kind of.
I'll send you a link to the light that I got.
It works really well because I find that that's when you're sticking it in a wheel well or something like that. My shop is really dark, really dark. You kind of hold, you're trying to hold a work light with your right hand and it's like you're getting a glare on the screen and then like it's, it's a lot.
But I don't. First thing I said when, when I went to the training session, they said that the, how nice the pictures needed to be and I'm like, there ain't no way. Like I already, I really need a light everywhere I go. And I said I'm going to need a good light. So the first thing I did is I bought a light that'll clip on the back of it. So it makes it much, much better. Like the being able to take those pictures, it's just like click, click. Instead of trying to get the light on the, on the freaking tablet to work.
It doesn't work with crap.
Yeah, so what? And so when the prices went up, I know a lot of shops just were like, they were so scared that they were going to lose the used car business that, you know, the used cars were going to look up immediately. The used car lots for the cheapest place to, to get a safety done. We had a few people in my ear that were like, oh, I'm going to leave my prices down because like, you know, I get all that work. But did you put your price up, Frank?
We did actually quite a bit. Margarita, my wife Margarita, she, she was like, you know what? Everyone else is going to go up in prices. We started hearing what the prices were in the cities, like in London and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And of course we're not going to compare to that because our labor rate doesn't compare to them or anything like that. But she's like, you know what, we need to go, I think this is what we need to do. So what she did is she actually called all of the shops that we would normally deal with in the area and say, look, this is what our labor rate needs to be at. This is what our safety checks need to be at. This is the blah, blah, blah. And surprisingly she got most everybody on board to get to a certain level. So now it was kind of like a level playing field between the shops that it wasn't like we were competing against. One had a way cheaper safety check rate than the other one.
So that worked out really well. But you said about the used cars, we actually, surprisingly we have one used car lot that we do probably between three to five safeties for them a week because they, they're so busy they can't keep up with all of them. So you send them over and we do all the work for them and do the safeties for them. And so far they haven't complained. So I guess, yeah, I guess the price, that's good. I mean everyone realizes what it is. Well, and as far as the reason why the prices went up so much for us is that our insurance, like we, we had somebody on tick tock said, oh, you weren't properly insured. We were properly insured, but because we had to go now to a 5 million, no, 3.
3 million liability or something like that. Our insurance went up 40%, and I was like, holy cow. Yeah. So that made a huge difference on their monthly payment. And I'm like, well, it's got to compensate somewhere. So if you want the safety checks, this is what's going to happen.
Yeah, very cool. I. I love that your wife went and actually did that because I keep saying so many times in this industry, I really think whether it's pricing on anything, we need to be more in line with each other and do stuff like that. Now, when I suggested to other places, you know, in other groups and other forums, they call that collusion, I guess, and it's not really. It's kind of frowned upon. But I mean, I. Hats off to your wife for doing that and trying to get everybody in the local area to. To be, you know, not undercutting each other.
Right. Like, I just. That's the part of this industry I can't stand is somebody always do it for five bucks cheaper. Drives me crazy.
Well, that's what I always tell everyone. I said I'd rather them come to me because they, they like me and they like the work that I do, not because I'm $5 cheaper than the next guy.
Right.
If they want some cheap labor, rate you whatever, go ahead. If they're coming to me, they're coming to me because they want the work done properly and they want it done right. So I feel good that I'm not out there being the cheapest guy and getting all the work and that I'm around the people are there because they want to be there.
Of your reputation. Yeah. So let's back up a little bit and kind of tell me your backstory, because, like, you. You mentioned in one of your Tick Tock videos how you had worked for another local shop quite a few years, and then now he brings you all of his cars to be safety. So how did you get into this crazy industry?
Yeah, okay. So actually, I've been doing this right out of high school. I was actually, when I was in grade 12, I was in the automotive class, and all of a sudden the. The teacher comes up and he said, there's one of the local garages in town that wants an apprentice. And so they asked me for three names. And you're one of them that they're. That I want to send over there.
Okay.
Like. Okay, cool. Like, I, I was, I wasn't. I was still in school. I had no intention of even looking for a job or anything. Like, I figured I'd have to do it eventually. So anyway, went for the interview and it was at a muffler shop, believe it or not. So.
And the reason he hired me is because I spoke low German, right? So I bilingual, and there's a lot of low German people in our area. And so he told me later, he said, that's the reason I gave you the job. Super nice guy. So I worked for him for. It was only six years because that's. I did my apprenticeship, I got my license, and basically at the time, it was about, oh, maybe four months. Four months after I got my license, then he was getting ready to close shop, he was going to retire, he sold the property. And so then I went and worked for this other guy, and that's who I worked for for 14 years.
That's my long stretch. And I was just, you know, I was basically managing his shop. I was. I was. It was a used car dealership. I was the head technician. Like, I was his first technician to begin with. He had just been open a year, so I was his first technician.
I went through. We went through a ton of other employees and apprentices and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, so then it was like, I was already running his shop. I always say I was running his shop, except for the money side. He would never. Other than, you know, payments and stuff like that, but that was. Other than that. I was basically managing and running the whole business for him.
And one day I woke up and I'm like, I'm looking at my wife and I look at myself and I'm like, I can't retire on this. Like, I'm not going to be able to do this. And then, then the seed was planted. Like, my, My brother, my wife, they've been constantly like, oh, you should have your own shop. No, I never wanted to. I had no desire ever to have.
My own shop, right?
And they kept saying, oh, you should do it, you should do it, you should do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. And then one day when I'm like, I can't retire on this, and then I'm like, okay, maybe it's time. So then. Then I started looking and we actually looked at, like. And I don't know how many properties and how many shops we looked at, and we just, we. We put an offer in one, and it fell through and we did it here and it fell through. And we're like four or five of them that we fell through.
And finally this one other local shop, he, he. I've been. When, when we were doing all the E tests, so he was pretty smart in the E test. And. And so I never had a question. I would call him up and talk to him, and one day he's like, hey, why don't you come work for me? And I said, no, I'm good where I am. I'm happy. Like, I live.
I think it's about 900 meters from my house where I was working. So I was like, ride my bicycle or walk or whatever. I said, no, I'm good. Then he comes up and he says, how about if I sell you my shop, will you come work for me? And I'm like, okay, that's enticing, because that's exactly what I wanted to do. So, yeah, he's like. So we talked about it and made the decision, okay, we're going to do this. So put in my notice. The last two weeks were pure hell.
I should have. I should have just walked out the door instead of giving him two weeks. But anyway, I went over there and it was. Whatever. I didn't really enjoy it, but I was there and I was in. I was working. I got all my banking figured out with financing and stuff like that. And I go to him and I said, okay, I'm ready to buy your shop.
And he's like, oh, so this is six months after I started working there. And he's like, I'm not ready to sell. I'm like, oh, really? What about me? And he's like, well, you can keep working for me. And I said, nope. So then we're on the hunt again, looking for something. So.
Man, that sucks.
That sucked. Yeah, that was. So then it took another three months, and then we finally found the shop over. Now it was basically an abandoned building. This guy had bought this abandoned property. And if you. If you look up Aylmer Meat packers, there was a story about it 25 years ago, a huge ordeal. Anyway, you've been shut down, Pin.
Shut down for years and years. So this guy bought the property cheap, was renovating all through, and this one, this building that we're in was still unoccupied. And somebody else told me about it and went with him. And we made a deal, and here we are. It's like, been like five in March was five years that we've been in there. And I wish I could expand now because we're, yeah, quite busy and overflowing with work.
So how many? How much? Like, I see your wife is with you a lot at the shop. And I see sometimes you can post a Video. She's doing some repairs and everything, which I think is cool as heck. You have any other people?
Yeah, so we, I consider us a pretty family run business or our, our daughter's boyfriend, he is the office manager, so he works in the office. And then my wife's nephew is actually our apprentice. So that's who we have working for us right now. We've gone through some employees over the years. I've had some other apprentices, just some other employees and stuff like that, but this is, this is what we got right now and it's working out pretty good. And we were just talking this weekend about, I think that we're gonna have to take the initiative and sign Margarita up as an apprentice and get her license just for the sake of what she's already been able to do. She said on the weekend, she said, I think I'm ready to start changing engines. I said, honey, you ain't there yet, but you're, you're gonna be there soon, but not quite yet.
What a, what a thing to want to do, you know what I mean? Like really.
Right.
That I think will wear off really quick after your third. Nah, I don't want to anymore.
But I told her her Buick Enclave needs a torque converter. So why don't we start with that? Why don't you see if you can pull a transmission out and change it. Torque converter.
Well, that's. So I gotta ask because I always wonder, the guy that kind of gave you the shaft for six months like that, what happened to him?
Still in business? Yeah, I, we, we've done a little bit of business back and forth. We're good. But yeah, I don't think he's, he's probably not going to retire. He's. He's not old enough to, to just hang up this hat and. Right. And give it up. So I think he'll probably be there another 10, 15 years at least.
Seems funny though why he changed his, why be so fickle and change your. His mind like that? Whether, you know, because some shops get taken over by people they hire. Right. Like the previous employer I had. That was kind of the agreement is he wanted out and it was in a lot of debt and he hired this, this really good technician who was looking to buy business and that's how they kind of came together. And you know, he worked with him for I think it was like 14 months. Paid a bunch of the debt down to where it was worth something again. And they signed the papers and he walked away with it for a very Good price.
But, like, what do you think was his reasoning?
Just, I've, I've talked to more people since then, and I'm not the first and we're not the last to get that story.
Yeah.
So I don't know if that was his way of recruiting employees or what, but it seems, kind of seemed like it after the ordeal was over. I think that that was maybe one way of doing it.
Shady. Shady opera, man.
Yeah, it sucked. But, I mean, it got me out of a place. Like I said, I, I worked for this other shop for 14 years. I was comfortable, I was happy. Like, I was generally happy. I, I, I love my job. I always have. And, and I was comfortable.
Right. It was like I say, right. Close to work. If I needed time off, I just take time off. It was no big deal. I could do whatever I want.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it, it helped get me out of my comfort zone into a position where like, okay, now I gotta do something.
But that was the right step for you, right, Was to go into business for yourself.
For sure. 100. I don't regret it one bit. That's not one bit.
Because obviously in, in the circles I run with, I talk to a lot of shop owners that, you know, been in five years, six years, 10 years, and they still wish they never had. You know what I mean? They still wish they really got. Yeah, yeah. I talked to a guy, a young man, made a post where he said he'd been in it, I think, five years, and he realizes finally that he should never be in business. He just doesn't have the. He's not cut out for it. He says. So, you know, not words.
I think it's. I talk about all the time, some people. And again, I'm not like, if there's. My detractors will say that. I'm not like, I don't have really any sympathy at all. And I just have always been very good with separating, like, the business side from the empathy. It is what it is. It's just business.
And like, you know, I never, My heart doesn't break for somebody if they are struggling to try and fix their car. Because I don't see cars as rights. I see them as privileges. And, you know, that's kind of the way I've always looked at it. But I see a lot of shop owners that have a very hero complex. And, you know, they do it at the financial loss of themselves. So I think that that's what we're starting to see more of them is just like, man, you know, I Ended up, you've heard the term probably buying yourself a job, right? Where they bought themselves a job and they worked 60 hours a week, and, you know, at the end of the year, they. They put the same or a little bit less money in their pocket than if they just stayed at the employer that they had.
Now, some of that freedom that you get and the responsibility and all that kind of stuff is for them is worth it. But that's not really. I think when we sign up to take on a business as our own is we are willing to just accept that, you know, it's not like the end goal. And I think that's too many realizes they don't keep on their numbers and realize, you know, I was here too many days and worked too hard, too much liability, and I didn't make, you know, six figures last year. You know what I mean? Just round numbers, right? Throwing. Throwing numbers out.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. There's. There's always that. And as a shop owner, you do tend to have a little bit of empathy for people, because I see the prices of parts, and it's. It's been astronomical. Like, I had a caravan, my neighbor's caravan. We always pick it up and deliver it because they're right across the road.
And, like, a hundred and eleven dollars for a rotor. I'm like, this is crazy. But, like, thank you, Covid, for half of that. And now whatever else is going on. But it's like, I feel bad for people having to fix their cars. I know my daughter had made a comment a little while ago. She's like, if dad wasn't the mechanic, we'd all have to buy new cars because we couldn't afford to repair ours. I'm like, it's.
It's honestly true.
Like, and the new stuff, ridiculous. Like, we just priced. I think it was probably a 2019 cash guy. Radiator fan, cooling fan. It's over 500 just for the part to buy from the dealer. Like, that to me is just like, I can remember, like, buying caravan cooling motors, fan motors, for, like, a hundred bucks. You know what I mean? Like, the OE ones, I can remember pricing them down on the estimate for, like, $180 in 2003. Like, so now when I see it, $100 or a tiny little thing, and I'm just like, this is.
And then the labor is even more like, it's gone. It's gonna be a $900 repair by the time we're done. And this is a. I work at a used car lot. Now, and this is a car that we just sold the customer six months ago. The other day she actually called. She was like three blocks away, and she says it overheated. A bunch of green stuff came out.
And we're like, oh, green stuff. That could have been the CVT fluid. Like, this is not going to be good. It's a stick shift, so it's not CV2 fluid. It's the bluish green kind of Nissan Antifreeze. But everybody's like, well, why does. You know, why did she not have any kind of warning? And I'm like, well, she had the warning on the heat gauge, but those fans, unless they go open circuit, they almost never turn on the check engine light. So you pretty much have to unplug them before that does.
So unbeknownst to her hot day like this, we don't know how long the fan hasn't been working, but she's now. So we gave her an estimate, ordered the part part's going to take a week before it even gets here. Like, oh, really? Oh, yeah. It's. The part supply is just. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's awful, you know, and we don't want to try an aftermarket one, so we're going with the oe, which is, you know, we could get an aftermarket one faster, but we've had some issues with aftermarket cooling fans before.
Yeah, once you get a bad taste for some of that aftermarket stuff, then you just try to avoid it with all costs.
So when you were talking, we were talking about safeties and whatnot. You kind of talked about how, like you said, your former employer, now he brings you all his, but you've been always steadfast on what was. Like, it either passes or it doesn't. And you and I kind of had a conversation where, like, the, this, the safety standards, the regs, as we call them here, is very laid out on what passes and what doesn't in terms of minimum brake thickness, minimum tread depth, all that kind of stuff. You and I are kind of on the same page that the minimums are, like, too low. And even though the regs say you can pass it, you're the same way I think that I am. I'm not passing it with, like, almost bald tires and almost shot brakes. Right.
Like, I'm not doing.
Not even close.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I, I was looking at regulations to say for motorbikes, the, the tread depth, 1.5 millimeters. Okay. If you have any, that's the thickness of your. Of your Fingernail almost like that. That's ridiculous. Like, I ride a motorbike and I know that I don't want to ride a bike with a tire that bald or, or the pads at 1 millimeter or 1.5 millimeter thickness. Like, and when you try to explain it to a customer and they're like, most of them don't understand. And I always tell them, I said, if you don't know why I'm telling you that this fails, go look this up, go on Google and, and look up the, the PDF, the light duty safety standards.
Look it up and it'll tell you. And it's right there. But my biggest issue with the regulations is that everyone interprets them differently. Right.
Yeah.
Like you, you look at. I had one guy ask me, he says, oh, I hear that any, any rust hole in the car fails. Like if you have a hole in your fender and, and any rust fails. And I'm like, that's not what it says. That's not what the regulations say. It doesn't say that any rust hole fails if a Russell is in a particular spot or if it, it beams the car structurally unsound. Yeah. That's when it starts to fail.
Right. But people just get this idea that now like anything that's rusty will just fail. And it just, or, or, or, or we had, we just did one stop making noise. We just did one where the customer had said, oh, I don't think those tires are going to pass. It was a used car lot and had negotiated new tires for, in the sale. And so they brought it to us for safety with, brought the new tires for us to put on. And I'm like, like, what's with these tires? And then Margarita called them up and she's like, oh yeah, they negotiate a deal. Well, they ended up with probably shittier tires than the original because it had Pirelli's on it.
Now they ended up with sailing tires. And I'm like, I don't think that they know what they just did. They just gave away some really good tires that were at 50%.
Yeah.
Or shitty tires that are going to wear out faster.
Yeah.
So some people just get an idea that has to be a certain way. But yeah, if, if it gets close to the minimum regulations, forget it. It's, it's not worth it.
And you know, it's, it's the same as like, because we were talking in the story I had years ago, I had a tie rod that had some play in it and I signed a safety on it for when I was working at the dealership because it was within the allowable specific. And my sales manager at the time was like, if it passes, it passes, ship it out. Well, of course that customer that bought that and it didn't, it didn't clunk, it didn't wander, it wasn't wearing the tire yet. It just had some play. That customer, out of the 100 cars that ever buys, right people buy, she actually took a term mechanic after she bought it and had it checked over and he found play in the tie rod. So of course comes the whole thing they call the mto and you know, the MTO officers show up at my shop and sit down with me and go over the paperwork and go over the inspection and you know, we put the car on the hoist and measure it and yes, it's what within allowable spec. And, and I keep saying, and I talked about this in TikTok and it was life changing for me because the, the, the officer sitting right there with the copy of the regs opened up says, well you can pass that and you're within your rights, but you can fail it and we'll back you as well for failing it. And I went looked at him right in the face and said, so what do I do? And he says that's for up to you to decide.
And it's always been that way. Yes.
And that's when I decided that like any play is a fail because it could be one possible, you know, within 36 days. Right. Frank, is what we used to be said all the time is after 36 days it could pretty much the wheel could fly off and everybody thought they were safe because it was within 36 days of when we inspected it. That's not the case anymore. Right.
Well, it. And you know, even then it was never the case. There's a story years ago of a guy who safety checked a taxi and it was a boat. I don't know, 45 days after the safety check, that taxi was in a massive accident. Like, like forget if someone died in it, but it was like a serious accident. Well, that tech ended up in jail and it was, I think it was in London here is where it happened. That tech went to jail because they proved or claimed that they proved that he was negligent in what he did on the safety. And it was way past the 36 days.
Right.
So that was one of the stories that always stuck with me. Says, you know what? Basically if you safety this, you're married to it for life. Yeah, for the life of whatever that Part the life of the car. It's, it's, it's not really. There's, there's no really time limit. If they can go back and say. And prove that you were negligent or you let something go, even if it's two years ago, you're gonna get hooked on it. It doesn't matter.
Yeah.
And so I always pride myself if I see a car that I safety 10 years ago, still driving. Oh, lost you there for a second.
You're back. You're back. Yes.
Yeah. So if I see a car that's been like 10 years ago that I safety still driving on the road, I'm like, I guess I did it right. But I mean, obviously it's been maintained since then. But I always tell everyone, I said like once we safety it, our name is on that in indefinite time. Like there really is no time limit as to how far they could go back as long as they can prove that when you, when you did it, you were negligent. Right?
Yeah. And, and that's the whole thing. And when you go in front of the court, the guy from. The gentleman from mto, he told me, and it sunk in my brain, if you should be called into court, the judge will take the regs and throw the. That book right out the window. And it'll come down to ask you who is the expert in this? You or the motorist? Well, I am. So you think it was safe at the time? Well, I kind of, you know, that's when you're done right there. Because like they, they, you know, your job is to advocate for the people that don't know.
Right. That's what we as professionals are supposed to be doing is to say I'm. The car is safe. Well, you know, there's not a gray area in that a lot of the time for me anymore. It's. It. Do I feel that it's safe now? Yes. Do I feel like it's going to be safe a year from now? Yes.
Now somebody could go drive 80,000 kilometers on the darn thing. Right. But what we're looking at a lot lately now is like structural stuff. You know the, the article I shared from the CBS news. I don't know if you got a chance to see it, Frank. The 2008 Tucson that the lady bought paid $5,000. 2008 Tucson, that's a red flag right there. And then she has like a week, two weeks or something.
And the engine, so she takes it into her mechanic, the guy that sells her the car for $5,000. I think he was a curbsider, which, you know, we know what they can be like and that's a whole different game. What, what, what we refer to as a curbsider up here is people are essentially like that are buying and flipping cars without the license that you're supposed to have to be a registered dealer. In a nutshell. Like it's. It's a whole other deeper than that. But he's a curbsider, so he agrees to cover the cost of replacing the engine. He probably supplies a used engine.
And she takes it to her ME mechanic that she knows. Which again, she should have taken the car to the mechanic before buying the car. But I digress. They put the car on the rack for the control arm. Bolts up to the subframe, tore right off. Subframe is completely rotten in this 2008 Tucson, which is not surprising. It's almost a 20 year old Tucson. It's gonna be rusted.
So then they go digging. Obviously MTO gets called in and they look the car had been safety just within a month before. Obviously she.
Right, yeah.
Well now it was safety that a Canadian Tire. And Canadian tire is a goodwill gesture to the young lady. Gave her $5,000. But they also lost their ability to do inspections till the end of August.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah. Which is. Is a slap on the wrist, I guess. Like, you know, like, I mean, I don't, I don't think, Frank, if they came into your shop and that went down that you'd only be losing two months is what I guess what I'm trying to say.
Well, I'm surprised that like the tech. Whoever signed it should have been. Should have been shot. Like. Like his license should have been revoked.
Yeah.
Anyone that signed something like that. Right. I've actually there's. I see them all the time on, on Marketplace, people advertising safety checks for sale. So I've been messaging with this one guy like, hey, I've got this Chevy Cruise that won't pass because the rocker panels are rotted out of it. I said it's got new tires and brakes on it, but I don't have the fifteen hundred dollars. And so I'm. I'm leading the guy on and he's like, oh yeah, guaranteed pass, no problem.
And I'm like, so how in the heck like, like who, who regulates this stuff? Like if, if anyone can just like you and I, you and I could just sign a safety on something like that and just whatever. Right? But if there's no regulate, like no one regulating it and no one Reviewing the stuff that. Why. Why are we even doing it? Like, yeah, I know, I know it's nice to have the car safe on the road, but at the end of the day, we get shady guys like that do it all the time. What's the point of. Of us being so stupid strict and. And making customers fix all this stuff other than for our own conscience and for the sake of the safety of our customers?
Yeah. And, you know, and the rocker panel thing is, Is. Is. I. I find so many people have a. Like, they want to argue that contentious point. And I don't like, to me, it's such a stupid point to argue because it, like, it's a structural member, and if it's not rotten, it's probably allowing some fumes to go in the car. So it fails twice.
Two different factors for me. Right. That's the way I look at it. But people are like, well, I drove cars for years. And, you know, like, the car can essentially be safe. And we don't condemn cars every day when the rocker panels are starting to go. Well, maybe they don't. But I know lots of times if a customer comes into my shops that I've worked at in the past, and they're buying $1,000 worth of tires and $1,000 where the brakes and the rocker panels are gone before I'm tabling that estimate to that customer, I'm having a real good conversation with them about, is this really what you want to spend your money on? Because this car is Swiss cheese.
But my own brother had a. What year was it? 2011. Ford Ranger. And we just retired the car and sent it to the scrapyard because when you open the door and lift the driver's floor mat, you could see through there was no floor left on the driver's side.
Really bad for that.
And so it kind of was. Like, I felt bad because he's now without a car, yet he hasn't replaced it, but at the same time, he was going to put four tires and it needed front and rear brakes. It was over a thousand dollars for my cost to buy the parts. And then, you know, I'm not going to charge them labor, but it's still. And I'm sitting here saying to him, like, is this. Do you really want to do this? Because it's not. I don't feel good about you driving it. And it's not good investment at this point.
And he agreed. So it went to the junkyard. But when we. When we're not advocating for our customers the right way and we Just, Yep. Put tires and put brakes on it. It doesn't matter if it's holy or I don't think that's the right thing to do in this industry. You know, even if we're not signing a safety, I think it's just poor business.
Well, I had just a caravan on the hoist just earlier this week. Was. Came in for an oil change and I pulled her in the shop and I said, come look at this. Like, I just want to show you where your van is at. Like this, this thing is really rotten. I said if you have a major repair, like if something goes and if it's going to cost you five, six, seven hundred bucks, you know, probably shouldn't put any more money into it.
Right.
So if you're just doing oil changes, no problem. But anything major you might want to consider. So he's like, oh yeah, I guess I should go look for a van. And I'm like, well, yeah, I think it's time that you consider the fact that we're not going to be able to lift this. And that's what I always tell people, like. So if it gets to the point where I can't lift it on the hoist.
That's right.
You need to do something about this. You need to, you need to like either repair it or replace it. And that's just the name of the game. Like, we live in this rust belt and cars are going to rot away no matter what you do.
Yeah.
And so you eventually just going to have to get rid of them because they're too rotten.
I, it really breaks my heart though, Frank, when I see somebody and we have that kind of conversation though, and they say, well, I just bought this thing two years ago. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's the hard pill for me to, to still be that person. Right. It's because they, you know, you know what it's like two years ago, they're probably still paying for it, you know, or they just it off. Right.
And the reality of it is you could buy a car and, and if you do not oil it or spray it at all and it's just a little bit rusty and two years later it can have significant holes in it. I've seen it.
Oh yeah.
100 can happen. Like the amount of rust that we have around here. Two years is. Two years is doing good for cars that just never touched.
Yeah. Equinoxes and Kias, all Kias and Equinoxes for some reason. And like you said, Caravans, man, they rust Fast up here. It's ridiculous. Like, you know, we get looking at 3.6 is like Pentastar engine issues, and we start looking at the engine issues. Well, sometimes the best way to make that engine job go away is just look at the rest of the caravan. Because it probably is not worth putting camshafts and. Not that you can buy a cam for a 3.6 right now.
They're back ordered. No, for units. Right. Like, you're not. You're not really.
Yeah, I haven't had to put a cam in a while. I just did lifters and rockers, but not cam in a while.
So you got lucky on that one. I. I drive a 50 Wrangler, and I'm very lucky. It's not ticking yet, but I mean, it knows that when it starts to tick, it's going to get traded.
So.
Like, it's. You know, I can get the parts for pretty cheap still. I have friends at the dealer, and I have a guy that would, you know, would. Has done thousands of them. So he'd. He'd come down and give me a hand doing it. But I mean, like, if you can't get the parts for it, what am I gonna do? You know, I'm not. I'm not even gonna entertain the notion.
What, What's. How do you handle it when the customer comes in and they say, well, I don't think it's. You know, I think it should pass. What do you do? How do you have that.
You know, what is a good one we had just a couple of weeks ago, a customer come in with a motorbike that I failed. And it's the exact same bike that I ride. A 92 Honda Shadow 1100.
Okay.
And I failed. I failed it on. I've tried to remember. One of the things I failed it on is that the stupid thing wouldn't idle.
Okay?
And. And you had to have the choke on, like, halfway before it would even. Even idle. And. And stay running. And so we told him that, and he's like, oh, it's just a carburetor. That's how carburetors work. And then Margarita is like, well, my bike doesn't do that.
Yeah, I started up, and 45 seconds later, it's running, and he's like, oh, no, it's just that way. And like, no, I don't care. There was something else. I think it was a tire or something on it, but he was arguing me, and he's like, no, it's fine. Like, I'm. I don't Want to spend a lot of money into it. I'm just gonna ride it for the summer. And I said, I don't care, I don't care.
Like, I know. And again, because I personally ride the same bike, I know how this bike should feel. Oh, that was the other thing, the clutch. Clutch didn't feel right.
Okay.
I said to them, I said, it's not right. I don't know what's wrong with it because I don't work on motorbikes. Something isn't right. All I know is it doesn't feel right because I have the same bike. And so he argued me and like you said, I don't want to spend a lot of money into it. I said, okay, then go buy a bike that's all done and ready to go if you don't want to spend money to this one. But these are the things that you're going to have to do. And I just have over the years, I guess, like, I do have empathy for people, but in this case here, like in this kind of situations, I just, I don't care.
Like, this is what it takes to pass the safety. Yeah, I got one that's at the shop right now. The customer just wants it so they can go take his family and go work in the field. So they're just going to drive from home to the fields to work and back.
Yeah.
And right now we're waiting on a tire because it's a journey and no one has a used tire for a journey. So we're waiting on a, on a new tire for it. But he's like, it actually came from a used car lot and they, and they use. The salesman called, he says, you know what, it's just, it's just going to the field like it. I said, so I don't care, needs a tire. Like, let's get a tire on it.
Yeah.
And I just, yeah, I don't give in. I, I don't, I don't care. I don't give in. I, I've never, I made a video, maybe it was about a year ago, something like that, where, you know, really, really rotten truck came in. And so I put all the money into the holes of the truck and I'm like, oh, that passes. Oh, that passes.
Yeah.
And I made the video and posted it just before we went on holidays. And here I am in Mexico laying on the beach and I'm watching my tick tock videos and people are like, oh, this guy passes car. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to make A follow up video on this. Like, I don't actually take bribes. I never have. So. I know. I just, I don't, I don't.
I've never have. People have tried to offer me bribes in the past and I just like, sorry, I don't care.
That's so crazy to me. Right. Because it's like you think sometimes what people are willing to spend to bribe you to do it.
Yeah. When to get a fake safety.
Yeah. When the proper repair probably doesn't even cost a whole lot more. Now I understand if it's a rot box like nobody's gonna put like my brother's Ranger. Could you weld floor pans in that? Sure you could. My dad was a bodyman. I can do it. I've done. I welded floor pans in a couple of Cherokees I've owned, you know, rockers, the whole things.
Am I gonna do it? Not anymore. Not. Not. And stand behind it the way. Because A, I'm not a bodyman and B, body shops cost a lot of money now. So if you take a car to them, like a Chevy cruise or a Caravan or something go, I want this thing fixed up properly. They're gonna look at you like you're crazy because you're gonna a lot of money on getting it done properly. That's the keyword, properly.
Because we've seen some rocker panel jobs that like not proper. All for what? Just to keep a Chevy Cruz on the, on the, on the road. Like it's a Chevy cruise. Like it's, it's.
Yes.
We never thought yeah make a Cavalier worse. But we did, you know.
Yeah. Really. Actually I liked it. I like the Chevy cruises. My, my son and my daughter boyfriend, they both drive one and really I think they're a nice car. But it's, it's, it's. It is a cheap car and it's, it's cheap on fuel. So that's, that's the only benefit that it has.
Yeah.
Speaking of the rocker panels, I had a Ford. I don't know, whatever it was a Ford car anyway and it had a hole in the rocker panel. So of course I failed it. Well, the guy who was safetying it, his. His father in law is a body man and so he's, he's gonna, you know, he did a job and he welded new rocker panels in it and brought it to me. And so I like just lift it up on where the rocker panels normally would be, where the lift points would be and it's folded in a bit and I'm like, yeah, what the heck? So I talked to him later about it. Like, he's, he's a friend of mine. And I said, hey, like, when I lifted this car, it folded in.
He's like, oh, no, no. When you, when you fix rocker panels like that, that's. You don't ever lift it on them again. I'm like, that goes against all the grains that I have. Because if I ever repair a rocker panel, it's usually stronger than oe. Like, if I can't lift it on that from when I've welded it before and after, then I didn't do the job right.
Yeah.
And so I was like, ah, this kind of sucks because.
And you know why that happens? Because there wasn't enough metal on the backside of that to weld on. To get a good weld.
There's always at least three layers of metal, especially where the pinch weld is where the lift point is. And if you don't replace all three metals, it's not going to be strong enough.
Yeah, you. Yeah, I, I watched my dad do some pretty. Not creative isn't the right word. But he spent a lot of time, you know, having to put metal back just so that he could get his inner quarter and his outer rocker to come together and make, you know, and we're talking cars that still had frames, but, you know, which is where you're supposed to be lifting them now. So, I mean, I understand the concept. So when I see some rocker jobs and it's like you can look down the side of the car at your front, you know, mud flap and you can look and see the back tire. That's not done right. Like, yes.
Rocker panel on it now, but that's. It has to be sealed off and the whole thing and. Yeah, yeah, that's just. I, I remember stuff like, you know, having one new strut in and on one side and one old strut on the other and same with calipers and stuff like, and, And I know I probably should pass that, but I don't, you know what I mean? I just, I don't, I don't do it. And I know that I can. I just, you know, I'm of the, I was trained a long time ago that, you know, if you do a caliper on one side, you do it on the other. If you do a strut on one side, you do it on the other. Like, that's just the way I am.
See, I agree with the struts to the sake of it. It's going to create A different suspension jounce. When you're braking, whether you have a new strut or an old strut, the calipers is one thing that I was a little bit. I don't know. I'm so sure about that because I always say that. At what point do you draw the line there? So if you say, okay, you do one caliper, you're going to do the other caliper. Are you going to do both brake hoses at the same time? Then I say, well, okay. Somebody said, well, you know, if one's bad, the other one's going to be bad soon.
So, yeah, you could look at that. But where do you draw the line? At what point do you stop? So if your left headlight bulb burns out, do you replace the right one as well?
Exactly right. So.
So I've always looked at it this way. I'm like, okay, you know, you're doing a brake job and your left caliper, you got one piston seized. If it's a dual piston than the other on the other side, the caliper goes in nice and free and everything is fine. Yeah, good idea to replace both. Is it financially feasible for most people nowadays? Probably not, but you give them the risk. You say, look, we could replace it now while we have it all apart. Saves you this amount of labor. Or, you know, what if something does happen later on down the road? Well, you're going to need caliper pads and probably a rotor.
And sometimes the customers say, go ahead and do it. Most of the time they'll say, you know what? Only going to do one. As far as from a safety point of view. I don't know. I. I look at it this way. The brakes work properly and everything is nice and free and lubed up and sliding the way that it should be. I'll pass one caliper on one side and.
And an old caliper on the other side. Because I know that the brakes are functioning the way that they should.
Right? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that's good. Points. I. I'm always worried because it's like the same thing. Like, how do we warranty that then, right? Because, you know, you see it where you called up the parts store, you probably had it up to you, and you call them up and they go, I need a pair of rotors. And they go, I got one rotor.
Like, we know how that happened, right? Like, no uneven amounts of numbers for rotors, but we know that something is locked up on one side and they put one on, right? That's always How I think about, how am I going to warranty that in the future? Because like say the car is seven years old and it's like a caravan and I put one rear caliper on the left hand side and the right side winds back in. But you know, we know how problematic they are.
Yeah.
And in, in six months time it comes in and that caliper smoking and the pads are worn right down and something like, do I warranty the pads and make my vendor eat it even though they really shouldn't because it's not a defect, it's, it's a workmanship thing or you know, and, and they warranty the rotor for me. Like I'm then beating up, I guess what I'm trying to say on my vendor really, you know what I mean? Which I is, you know, a different conversation too.
But no, I understand. And I've been in that situation before and again as a shop owner, it makes it even harder because now you're like, you made this recommendation to them and sold them that job and now what do you do? But yeah, most customers are pretty good to understand be like, okay, well that caliper, everything was good on it. And I mean caliper seize up. That just happens in this, in this area.
Yeah.
And I'll never make my vendor eat the pads. If anything, if I feel like maybe I should have been it, I'll eat the pads. Right. But what you were saying before about one rotor on one side, if, unless I'm machining the rotors and I'm still one of the few shops around that still got a brake lay to machine rotors.
Right.
So unless I'm machining the rotors, if, if it's a new rotor on one side, it's a new rotor on the other side. Because I've had situations in the past, especially front rotors. If you put one new one on one side, one used one on it, man, this car pulled so bad. Like, like. And I couldn't understand why. And this is when I was first in the, in the business, first in the career, like I didn't understand. I just, and it wasn't, I hadn't done the job, it came from another shop, came to us. And I'm like, every time they break it just.
And, and I'm like, what the heck is going on? So I'm replacing the, the hose because I thought maybe it was the hoses.
Yeah.
Replace the caliper. And eventually I was talking to a senior tech that I had used to work with a few years back and he's like, is, what about the rotors? And they said, well, it looks like it's got a new one on one side and use one on the other side. He said, that would be a problem right there. Well, we replace the rotors, problem solved. And I'm like, ever since then, and, and, and I think I heard you say that a few times. Ever since then, Right. Like since we've had a situation, something that we've learned over the years, these are the rules that we made in our own minds, in our own lives. And we're like, this is, this is just how I'm going to do it from now on.
Because I know that if I don't, this is the outcome and I don't like that outcome.
Yeah, it's tough, isn't it? Like sometimes. I mean, and that's what I love about this industry because I'm, man, I'm learning something every day still, you know, doing this a long time too. Like I'm, you know. How old are you?
45.
Yeah, so I'm, I'm a, I'm older than you. So I mean, I still learn something every day and then it's the same thing. But sometimes like when I think about those, you know, things that taught me a lesson, part of me goes back to us. Well, was it just a one off though, Frank, or was it really something that was supposed to be teaching me a lesson? Right. Like, am I getting to be too gun shy because of a one off is I guess is what I'm trying to say. But I think at the end of the day I just have to, you know, stick to what I think is the right thing to do and advocate for my, my customer's vehicle and advocate for my customer and, and go forward. And I sleep like we were talking last week there, you have no problem sleeping at night, I have no problem sleeping at night or what? Signed for safety. It's just no.
And you know, and I'll always be like that and I just always make a self. If I am unsure about something, it's not going to happen. Right. And as long as I can feel good about it, hey, then let's go. Yeah, but yeah, what you're saying about whether it's a one off and that's, you know, how we live our life after that. I guess in a way you could look at it that way or you could let it say, well, I learned from that one off situation and it never happens again because I made this choice and I do it this way right so yeah. So I don't know if it was a one off because it never happened again or, or is it because I do this that it never happens again and it could have been like happened every time.
So.
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's interesting to think whether it's, it's an actual learning experience or if it's just, it's just a fluke that you do it this way now or something like that.
Right now you, when you talked about your wife, you're going to enter into the apprenticeship program. I kind of always like because of who I network with so many people in, you know, the great United States and up here. Right. We don't. We have a completely different thing going on, you know, this apprenticeship program than is. So it's such a foreign concept to them is what I guess what I'm trying to say. What I. I'm gonna assume that you're probably like an advocate, you're a proponent for the apprenticeship system.
But what do you think it needs to be like, where can it be improved on?
Oh, wow. See, the thing is I haven't been an apprentice for a lot of years, but I've run a lot of apprentices through and man, how many have I had over the years? I've had a lot and I, I've only had one that's. Or two now they've been since I've been a shop owner. But when I was that manager at the other shop, we ran through a lot of apprentices and we actually went through. We signed up with the Oya program. Have you heard of that one?
Yeah.
And, and so, so that I think is a phenomenal program and it gets, it really starts to fast track people into the industry. But the problem is that they're going to fast track people that maybe aren't ready. But the ones that I did and I can think two right now that went through that program and one, one went into an arm to the army to be an army tech and is doing really well. And the other guy, he was working. He just left a job at, at a Chrysler dealership and he went to, to a different place that I can't speak of. But he's. Yeah. And, and he's doing really well.
Like this is. I was like I'm really proud of him because this is an apprentice that I trained and.
Right.
And to see where he's gone in his life, it just, it just makes me proud to see that, that there's young people that are actually still want to go and, and do better in life and learn more. And I keep hearing people like financial and business advisors that say the best thing you can do is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. And I've always thought of the idea. I would love to have an apprentice who by the time that their license they're as good as me or smarter. And no stuff that I don't know because I mean I can't know at all. But I can teach them what I know. And, and I'm very strict as to what I teach them. We, we do a lot of co op students from the local high school and a lot of people, when they get a co op student out of the automotive program, they use them as, I don't know, a gopher.
Like. Yeah, yeah. Free labor, right?
Yeah.
Well, every co op student that I have, the very first thing I teach them is how to put a car in a hoist.
Yep.
And then I teach them how to do an oil change and then I teach them how to take off tires and brakes.
Yep.
And then I teach them how to do brakes. And, and the, the teachers are come to me and one time teacher come to me and said like you're really, you're really making them work hard. And I said and like I want them to be here and learn. Yeah, I don't, I don't need somebody to sweep the floor. Yeah, we need to sweep the floor but they're not going to sweep the floor all day. Said if, if I can't have them come here and, and be able to tell them to go get me a 3,8 ratchet with a 13 mil socket deep on it, then I don't want them like they need to know these kinds of things and they need to know what tools are and they need to, how to, how to do brakes and how to do that kind of stuff because when they leave here, I want them to have learned something. Not how to sweep the floor, not how to do just yeah, pop up oil or whatever. I want them to know and I think that, I think that the.
I.
Don'T know, I think that there, there is always obviously room for improvement in the apprenticeship program. But I think that the biggest thing is that they don't, they don't really allow best training in the industry. Like, like work training. I went, when I was at, when I was at Fanshawe, I went to school with one guy who was a third year apprentice working at a Toyota dealership and had never done anything but oil changes and tires.
Yeah. And that, and I'm like, how's this.
Kid gonna learn anything?
And I, I've heard it from more than one source. That's why they went and re changed. They made some changes to the, the apprenticeship program with the contera college trades and all kind of stuff because they're having too many that were going through their third year and they were either failing the exam or when they got their exam done and when they hit the shop floor, they still weren't ready for the shop floor. So I'm like you. I think when I've had some of the young hires come on or co op students in the past, like I get them right in there and okay, this is how a break job. Because if I find that a. They just don't have the work ethic, like they're staring at their phone instead of doing the job. That's, that's a one red flag.
If I find that they, they get their hands a little bit dirty and they realize that they don't like it, I want them to wash out when they're in a co op placement or early in their trade and get out of it. I want them to see the reality of what this industry is and then know that this is not for me and I'm going a different direction in life. Instead of having them go through three years, get a bunch of toolbox, you know, debt, tool debt, and then be thrown to the flat rate, you know, wolves or whatever, shop culture problems and realize, and go, oh, this is definitely not for me, you know, and like they start over again. Doing what? Going to a different skilled trade. You got to start at the bottom again, right? Another apprenticeship, all that kind of stuff. So I'm, I'm not hard on mine, but I, I look at little things just like you said. Can they use the tools efficiently? Like does. Do they understand the point that like, if, if I can't break that loose, I need to increase my leverage.
How do I do that? Like basic physical principles. If they can't grasp it right. I've got to back up a little bit now and work just on those fundamentals right Before I get them to where, you know, they, the young people in these days have this glorified ideal of like, you know, I'm going to be looking at fuel maps and tuning, you know, race cars and, and that's not it. You're going to be dirty and you're going to be doing, you know, tires, all kinds of tires. You're going to be doing struts. You're going to be doing work. Yeah, yeah. You Know you're going to be doing breaks, you're going to be doing a lot of breaks.
Like you're going to get a lot of oil dumped on you like so it sucks when I guess this is my biggest thing is that we too many times the book gets signed off for the kid and they never really did spend enough time at the Master tax elbow. Being actually in that mentor, you know, apprentice role, they say, oh they can competently do it. He did it one time. Do they really understand the fundamentals of what's going on here? Like you said, like if you know, how do I look at a brake rotor and know if I should change it or you know, machine. How do I look at pads and can determine if they're, you know, cars pulling or not by looking at what the brakes are doing. Right. Like that's all the stuff that they need to learn. Not just put some brakes on one day sign off on the book.
That's my beef with it. There's not enough.
And that all falls into the actual techs that are doing the training. Because when you go to the school, I remember when I was in class, you're like, you didn't learn any of that kind of stuff because it was all just this is. Yeah, I guess what I thought, what I gathered from school is everything was just theory and principle like this, this is how it should operate when you get into the real world. And this is how it does operate. That, that's if I have the biggest beef with it. That's my beef with it. The schooling is all just theory and, and most of them that like I say, when they go through the schooling and they're done it like I, I went to, I had some kids that came through, they did the pre apprenticeship program at Fanshawe offers and it was like a three year course. Not signed up as an apprentice.
Just did the program.
Yeah.
And they come out of, they don't know, they don't know squat. Like, like at least not squat as far as what the industry needs them to know. Because I look at it and most of the time, majority of what kids need to know nowadays is, is how to diagnose your basic misfire. How to like you say, check to see suspension and brakes and, and in reality, what is a safety, what is safety? Check rate. Like I've been thinking about it. Fancher should offer a course on how to safety a car. Because most people come out of the trades nowadays. They got their license or they come out of the school, I mean they got their license and they don't know the first thing about how to safety a car or, or how to keep a car maintained to be on the highway.
Right?
Yeah. And this is what scared me too is when we went through this, this warrant, this safety change, what really worried me was a lot of shops because you know how it was going to be if they were going to keep the price low, they're going to go to an even lower skilled technician that does the inspection. Right. Maybe he pulls the wheels and you know, then the master comes over and check all. But they're going around taking the tablet because, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, I know, but there's nothing stopping somebody from you putting your number into the tablet and logging in and saying you're doing the safety and then you hand the tablet off and somebody else goes around and inspects the car. There's no way to stop that from happening, right? It does. I'm sure it does.
Oh yeah.
You know, I don't want the low skilled, low paid people doing the inspections because here's the other thing that drives me nuts is guys that pull a car in for safety and they didn't even road test the car. Now, and I mean road test, like you drove around the block, did you drive it at highway speeds? No.
Yeah.
Okay.
The regulation says you only have to go to 40 kilometers an hour. So. Right. Like what's that all about? Well, it's, it's, they put that in there for people who are too cheap to go get a yellow service plate so they can take a customer's car on the highway and actually road test it.
That's right.
You can't, you can't tell everything on 40 kilometers an hour. I don't care who you are and.
I don't want, I don't want the customer to come back to me and say, well, when I'm on the 401, that's our big highway here, people, for Americans. And I hit the brakes at a, you know, 110, 65 miles an hour for my American friends, it shakes. I'm not, I'm not happy just telling them, well, I'm sorry, it passes safety because I only drove it up to 40 kilometers, you know. Yeah, 25 miles an hour. Like, I'm not good with telling people that. Like to me, if I can hammer the brakes at 120k and they don't shake, they're good, they're, they're working now. That doesn't mean they're thick enough. But they're not you know, it's breaking the way it should, it's not darting, it's not shaking.
So I've had countless cars in the last week with newer rotors on that. When I take them out on the highway and drive them, 120 hit the brakes, they're pulsating like a mother. And then it's like, what am I doing? Well, I'm going back and starting at square one. So these, the idea that we're putting young people in to get these. I saw a video on Tick Tock and somebody was a young, young, I assume he's a licensed technician but he's got the tablet in his hand. But he wouldn't have been 30. So he's going around, tablet in his hand, take his pictures. Somebody made a comment, somebody said somebody just got their license.
And I'm thinking hopefully yes, but what if he's not and he's just learning how to good on him that he's learning but like we need, there's so much more to this that has to be done the right way. You know from teaching, I can remember going on lots of test drives with, with a master tech years ago, early in my career and him teaching me things just as he's driving the car. This is what feel for, this is what to listen for. This is. Watch how it does this. Sometimes we're looking at scan data, sometimes we're just trying to duplicate a pop or a creek or a noise. You know, we're not getting that enough in the industry anymore I don't think because we just either we don't have time or we're not charging for it or there's no process laid out now that says I don't know.
But it, I think, I think that Flat rate killed a lot of that because I never work flat rate, never got the chance. And I'm kind of glad I didn't. But I understand how Flat rate would have killed that because if you're working flat rate, you're going to get this job. The last thing you need is some greenhorn to be tagging along and slowing you down.
Yeah.
And yeah, a lot of people are always like you said years ago, you, your, your job was like, like, like you were heart, couldn't find a job, no problem. But now nowadays it's trying to find a technician. Right. So, so if you're kids, kids, kids get in the way, you're just like, I don't have time for this. And then you just, sorry, my phone's making noise here. And yeah, people don't want to take the time to train these little kids anymore.
Yeah.
That's what I find is a huge problem with that.
And see, the Ontario College of Trades was supposed to, you know, fix all of this kind of stuff. And I know. I don't even know where they are now. I met one young lady from. She came around one time, did an inspection at our shop. You know, kind of warned them about what they were doing in terms of who they were, how they were dispatching some of the work in the shop to who they were dispatching it to. And, you know, it's the same thing. The.
The M2 officer. The same thing. They always reiterate, well, I'm a licensed technician too. Okay. Yep, I get it. You are cool. But, you know, sometimes it's like we see the conversations once in a while and people go, well, you know, these cops that get out of the car and they put on a pair of coveralls and they go look under this lifted truck or something, and they start writing up, you know, infractions. Like, the.
The MTO guys that I know that I've dealt with are always very senior, to put it politely. Right. Like, they've always been a bit older. And when I worked at the bus garage, they used to love using our bus garage as a training for the younger people that they were training up the inspectors, because we had. We had four post lifts for buses so they. They could come into the shop and they didn't have to go down to the pit. We didn't put them on a creeper. They could lift the bus up and they could go through the whole thing and show the guys, you know, this is what had to be done, and this is this and that and the whole.
And again, because it was a bus fleet, they're safety every six months. Right. For, like, you know, which is a whole other thing in itself. But it made me laugh because their van that they always came in, their service van, sat in the parking lot and ran all the whole eight hours that they were there. Never shut off. Yep. Either to keep the AC cold or the. The heat on.
Yeah.
That was good for the E test. E test laws.
Right. So I, you know, it's. It's one of them things where you just kind of like, well, I'm a tech too. I know you are, but, you know, I'm in the world of it, and you guys are, you know, well, sometimes.
I mean, are they really attack. I had. I got a friend who is a retired police officer, and when the MTO Used to do the blitz here in town. He was the one that was, I guess, their. Their mediator in between the local town police and the. And the MTO when they come through. And he said to me one time, like, I remember him coming to me one time and said, hey, they were in the parking lot next door to us. And he said, could you come look at this? Tell me what.
What is this park that we're. That's loose and we're failing. And it was a track bar on a Dodge truck.
Okay.
So I walk over and I show them so that. Well, that's a track bar. Oh, okay, thank you very much. And so then he write up that they wrote up that was a track bar. Well, that situation there. He told me later. He said, I was so embarrassed by that that I decided that I was going to go and get my 310t just so that when this happened again, I could at least know what I'm talking about.
Right.
So he did. He went through the schooling. He got his 310T. I mean, not that he ever practiced being a technician, but at least he had some sort of knowledge as to what the heck he was talking about when he was doing, helping with the inspections. So, I mean, some of them do have their license, but have they ever practice? That's like my. My instructor at Fanshawe, when I was getting my licensing, he was the electrical instructor. Had gone through, become an electrician or electrical. He was a mechanic.
He got his license. He worked for three months in the trade. Got a call, said, hey, we got a teaching job. Are you. Are you interested? He said, yep. So he was a teacher since three months after he got his license.
Wow.
That guy didn't know about what in the real world was as far as a broken wire or corroded connectors or anything like that. Like, it was all theory with this guy and everyone. The one. I remember the one test that we took, everybody failed. And he's like, how the f. Don't you guys get this stuff? It's just electrical stuff. And I was like, because it doesn't apply to what we're doing in the real world. Yeah, like, in reality, what do I need to know about a transistor? Like, okay, yeah, you need to know a little bit about a transistor, but how do I need to know the 100 theory of operation of a transistor? The computer is working.
It's not working. Throw it away. Get another one. Yeah, like, yeah, it's kind of. And he had no idea of the Real world. And that's, I think a lot of times it happens with the instructors and stuff like that. They have no idea what the real world really does. We're out there every day going through it.
We see this stuff and we learn this stuff and we know what's going on. And here somebody from higher up comes and tells us, well, this is how you got to do it. Why? Why do I have to do it this way? Well, because I said so. Okay, cool.
Yeah, I said so is never really, you know, and that's the thing. I, I talked to so many shop owners and they struggle sometimes with new hires and they come in, they say they have bad habits or they have bad processes. We have to remember sometimes the processes that they were using was completely fine and worked awesome where they were. I talk about all the time, like how a dealer technician approaches a diag versus necessarily like a straight time, you know, small shop guy, that flat rate guy at the dealer, he's probably eliminated so much more in an hour than, than, you know, a lot of people. Why? Because half of it, if he's never even seen it before, it's already eliminated in their mind. Right. It's just too new. That never happens.
It's not necessarily good, but they do it. The, the, and then the other half of it is like, you know, they're very good at looking at service bulletins, very good at reading service information, very good at finding, you know, what a known good looks like. Known good feels like, you know, known good part might be in the bay right next to you. I joke all the time, like, we always had a caravan in the bay right next to you. So if you need any jar valve that you weren't sure about, it was right there, take it off. You know, 12 minutes was on the car. You went around the problem.
Good EGR fixed, easiest diagnosis that way.
Yeah, but so when I talk to people and they say, oh, this, this person has terrible processes. It's, it's a lot of it has to do with how they were taught, right. Who mentored them, if they were mentored at all. That's a whole other thing. Sometimes lays the groundwork for what kind of technician they become. And that's why it's very critical to me that it's like, you know, I want them to understand what I'm trying to tell them. I'm trying to teach you how this works so that you can apply it. I'm not going to teach you the whole engineering level of it because it isn't really that important.
It really is not going back to the transistor thing. Is it NPN or pnp? Like, who cares? You know, can the. Can the wire flow current to the. From what it has to come from to where it's going? Good. Okay, good. We're there. We're 50 at that point. When I see kids, it's like they can't.
They can tell me how that transistor works, but they can't prove the wire out to me. I just pull my head because, like, most of the time it's. It's wire. You know, it's not the component. Like, so it's wire. When they struggle that. It just drives me crazy. And like you said, the misfire thing, that's something that we need to really start to delve into because these, you know, they get.
They get all wrapped up into, you know, what's it going to do to the oxygen sensor when it misfires? And it's like. Well, that's. That theory is still out to. Still under debate. What does it feel like? And that's the thing. I wish we could get more seat time when we're training our young people at the apprenticeship level as to what stuff feels like, smells like, you know, that kind of stuff. Because that tells me way more. Way more.
I trust it more than I trust sometimes even the data. Right. We've all had data that's wrong.
Oh, yeah, yeah. What you're talking about, what it feels like. The misfire. I don't know if you remember back in the day when you used to drive and you'd have this little hiccup, hiccup. And it felt just like an ignition misfire. And it was a stupid EGR valve on this. The old Fords that were really bad for that.
Yeah.
And it was like. And unless you knew what you were doing, you'd be chasing that thing for hours, putting new plugs and wires on and still doing it. Still doing it. And it was just this little hiccup. And once you know how to feel for it, like now all the. Every four that you have out here nowadays, when the ignition coil goes bad.
Yes.
You can feel what it feels like. And you scan it and it says, misfire detected in the first thousand revolutions. It's an ignition coil. Every single time. Like, you don't need to get a scope out and. And do this and that. The next thing, just throw a coil on and off you go.
Yeah.
That's stuff that doesn't happen.
What's the bulk?
What's.
What do you really like to do at the shop. Like, what kind of jobs do you really enjoy coming in that you get to do when you're not doing safeties? I guess what I should say, I.
I really do enjoy electrical diagnosis. Okay. When I, when I can take time and, and really dive into it, I really love it. I, I, I don't get deep into a, into computers and, and like, our friend Chuck, stuff that he gets into. Holy crap. No, thank you. Yeah, but, you know, when an electrical circuit doesn't work, I love diving into it and then finding out why it doesn't. And I love, I love showing how the circuits work to, to all.
To Margarita and to my apprentice. Dude, they're like, like, here, go and test this. My apprentice had his Honda Accord. The AC wasn't working.
Okay?
So he's, so he's. I'm like, okay, well, look up the wiring diagram. The first thing you do, look up the wiring diagram for this AC circuit. He already checked the pressures. Everything was good. I said, let's look it up. And so he looks it up, and then he's, he's standing out. And then we go through it all the time.
And he's, I'm like, okay, what's the first thing you're gonna do? And I said, he's like, well, I guess I'm gonna unplug the compressor and see if there's power and ground out that connector. And I said, okay, there you go. So he gets a test light out. And he said, well, there's no power there. And I said, okay, so what if you feed power to the, to the coil of the compressor so all then it runs okay, so we know the compressor is good. Let's forget about that. We're down there. So he's looking at the diagram.
He said, okay, well, there's a fuse in the system. Goes and checks the fuse. Okay, well, the fuse is good. Let's see. So what's next? So while he goes, it goes through the relay. So now what part of the relay? And I said, so he's like, but you have those tests, really? So he went, got the little tester with the switch in it. He pulls it out, plugs everything back in, switches on compressor runs. He's like, whoa, it works.
I said, okay, now what's the problem? He said, well, it's a dead relay. And I said, possibly a dead relay. He's like, oh, yeah, I guess so. He's like, well, I'm gonna try one anyway. So he flips it a relay. It works. He's like, all Right, we're done. Let's go.
Yeah, but just the process that he did, and that's how I've taught him, like, you just, you, you go through the process, you just start at one side of it. Especially when you look at a wiring diagram. People look at a wiring diagram and you're just like, ah, I look at a wiring diagram, I'm like, oh, this is just a road map. Let's just follow the map. Let's start at point A and go to point B and, and see what's in between. And if you follow those steps 90 of the time, you're going to find out what's going on with that.
I find it's all the other lines on the page that have nothing to do with what you're looking at that really mess up a lot of kids, right? Young people, I think it just overwhelms their sensory. And so like, I'm always, like, when I'm showing them, sometimes I'll take pieces of paper and put it across the top of it and the bottom of it and say, just focus on these four wires coming out of here. Right? Well, don't, don't look at the stuff, just, or redraw, Redrawing it is so much better. Right? Redraw me the circuit. And then it's, you know, get the colored markers out and do it, the whole thing. Because that, that was key for me. Like, I, I, I like, I really like electrical and drivability, but I was not good at in college, everybody. Like you weren't good at.
I'm like, no. Like, I didn't figure it out until the night before the final exam when I actually sat down and threw the book away and went, what's a short? What's an open? You know, that kind of thing. And then it, and then it clicked for me because I took away the whole Ohm's law thing of, you know, serious parallel and series and all that jazz. It's important stuff. But like, what's an open look? Like, what does a, you know, what's a short look like? That kind of stuff. Then I got it and then it was like, okay, now I just, same thing, I go to the component, I check for my power and ground to the component. If I have it, I need a component. If I don't, I work backwards, you know, and check your obvious stuff first, right? But we overwhelm these kids with the, with the so many wires on the page.
We overwhelm them sometimes with the whole engineering level of how to understand this stuff. And it's important. But man, like, you know, I, I've had license tax that can't diagnose, you know, brake light circuits.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I've seen that.
You know why? Power windows is another one that trips up some, even some of the best of us still like power windows. Power windows on a Euro car. Like, oh man. Just, you know, made it any more stupider, right? Like. No, yeah, yeah.
That anything in eurocar is stupid to begin with.
You don't like them?
Oh, no, I try to stay away from them. I, I, People come in with a Volvo or Volkswagen or, or something like that and it's just like little, little Minis. They're the worst. I hate those things. Yeah.
I don't know. And they're not, they're not well built like Minis.
The last shop makes a brown wire, a ground wire. Like, come on, it's black. It's always been black. Unless you're working on a trailer, then it's white for some stupid reason. It's just. Yeah. Where's the common sense here?
Well, it's, yeah. European is not. I found, I found Nissan still to be the worst. I keep saying that from the, from the, like, I would almost now work on a Euro for an electrical problem before I'd work on a Nissan. Just I find Nissan has got such little service information. We were looking at 23 Murano last week for service, you bet.
Yep.
For all memory functions. Right. So no power mirror, no power seat or. Sorry, power seat works, but not the memory function. And no power tilt. Do you think I can find anywhere where they're actually telling me what is coming out of the module when you command it? No, they're not saying just, you know, is it, what is it? Is it power or not?
Like it's just a block with, with wires coming out of it. No description, no nothing. Yeah.
And I'm just like, I've seen that.
Yeah.
You know, and I even, I reached out to a friend that works at a dealer and I'm like, I got this code and, and this symptom and he, he comes back and he goes, I punched it into their version of tech line. He says they found one case and he says they changed both modules and that fixed the car.
Oh, great.
Like your, your case study doesn't tell you any more than that? Nope, nope. Just that they changed, they changed the module under the seat and they changed the, essentially the BCM and it.
Fix the car and you can tell your customer it's going to be $2,000 and. And we hope that it's going to fix it because we really don't know.
Yeah, yeah, I don't. And it is because it's a used car and it's sitting there. So I think it'll end up getting flogged because it already needs being. It's a 23 Nissan. It needs struts because the mounts are shot.
Oh, wow.
Oh, yeah. And it needs brakes all the way around. It needs tires all the way around. So they might just end up putting it back to the auction because it was that plus the electrical portion of it.
Might as well. Yeah.
You know, the AC works, which is pretty good for it.
Yeah. For a Nissan. Yeah.
So if you like doing the drivability electrical stuff and you hate the European cars, what's like, what's the job that you don't like to do other than a European car?
I hate. I hate cooling system diagnosing for some stupid reason for like, like overheating issues and stuff like that. Okay, let me see. My most hated job is, is overheating issues. CV axle, boots. I hate that. And what was the other one?
How are you for pulling a dash?
You know what the trick on pulling a dash now, I'm pretty old and my. My back is kind of wore out and I've. I've had a hip replacement.
Oh, okay.
Laying underneath a dash sucks. But the one one, one day I realized, I said, you know what you're watching? Watching videos of how a vehicle is assembled.
Yeah.
And I think if you take a dash out the way that they put it in at the factory, all of a sudden it's like you don't have to take the whole thing apart. It's like you've got four bolts across the top, four here and a couple here. And you take the center console up, the whole thing comes up.
Yeah.
And since I started using that method, it's like, this is not so worse anymore. Right? Yeah. But luckily I haven't had to pull a dash in a while.
So try to teach the.
Teach young guys how to do that.
I can say this. I found that a lot of guys are saying with the new refrigerant, the 1234, they're a lot harder on evaps. So that's. I know.
Yeah. We got a Ford Fusion or something, Focus or something like that that needs an evaporated core with the 1234. And that job was supposed to be done last week, but the customer cancels and I just can't afford that kind of money, so. Well, we know where the leak is now, so we're not going to fill it again until you fix it. So. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah. I hate AC work too. I'm not really a fan of it. I just do it.
I love AC work.
It's a money mace.
But I was the second shop in my area to be able to do the 1234.
Okay.
Yeah. When it came around, I.
You see lots of guys complaining about the machine though, right? The Robin Air machine. And, and it's slow, clunky. And then like. I know we had a. We got a machine from Snap on one of my old shops I worked at and like within three months it needed the oxygen sensor in the machine replaced, which. The oxygen sensor is only there to sense if it's got a different refrigerant in it. A refrigerant in it other than 1234. But it, it cycles every time.
And after so many cycles the machine says, hey, replace me. And like, lucky we found a part number, we're able to get it and we got a spare. But like, I can remember talking in some of the groups and they were like. When all of a sudden those oxygen sensors went backward. They had machines that were like only 6 months old. Machines down, can't use it because it needs an oxygen sensor. Like, it was just, you know, it's. And there was nothing wrong with, you know, 134 refrigerant anyway.
There was nothing wrong with it. 1234 is not. No.
And they keep saying, they keep saying they're going to phase it out, but I think it was just an excuse to make it more expensive so that it would. Because it's. It's gone up in price significantly compared to.
For sure.
And it's coming down. But I don't know. They think they're going to phase it out, but they're not gonna. And if they do, it's going to take another 10 or 15 years before they finally phase it out and then it's gone.
They're not going to go back to 134. So they'll have to come out with a different refrigerant. Right. Which will be, you know, whatever. Decades of, of getting everybody on board and making it a protocol and a mandate and all that horseshit and, you know, legislation. Yeah, well. And that's the thing. Like, we don't want to.
We don't propane back into. It.
Works in Mexico, man, I'll tell you. Cuba, Mexico, it's mostly.
Oh, that's all they use. Yep.
Yeah.
So it gets cold Too, let me tell you.
So what's the next. You talk about retirement. You know, you were saying at the beginning of this, like, I won't have enough to retire on. If you're 45 or you got. You got 15 more years left in you.
That's kind of what I figure. But I. I'm working towards building up and getting employees to work for me so that I get to the point where I can pretty much manage it and not be what. What my dream would be is to have. Have three or four guys that work and. And know how to do the job right. And. And I'm still on the floor, but I just bounce between them.
Yeah.
I don't. I don't deal with customers. I just. I just deal with the work that's going on here. I've got my customer service set up. He's doing a great job. I don't have to deal with that. I just make sure that everyone here is doing their job.
If you got a problem, I go and help you out, do some diagnosing. That. That's. That's kind of what I would like to go for.
Right. Right.
I don't know. The place that we're at, we. We're leasing the property. I don't know if there's a chance to buy it. I don't know if I ever would because I'm at the point right now where I'd like. I'd rather take any money that I have and invest it instead of buying a property at this point in my career. I don't know.
Yeah.
Because if I invest it, then I may be way further ahead than buying a property and trying to pay it off and then sell it, all that crap. So I don't know. We're not quite sure what it holds, but that's. We're working towards it anyway. We're hoping to expand. We're actually looking to see if we can put another bay onto our building that we have. And on Tuesday, I'm going to go buy an exhaust. An exhaust bender, because that's back to my roots, where I started at a muffler shop.
And. And there's quite a. There's quite a need in my area for custom exhaust for hot rods and stuff like that. There's. There's very few people in the area that do that.
Right.
So I'm like, I know how to do it and I enjoy doing it. It's good, easy money, so I might do that. So anyway, I bought a machine, and we'll see how that works. Out.
And if you've seen something and some of the stuff that you buy from Walker now is absolute trash. Right. Like, the pipes don't last. I mean, so that's the thing. Like, we were at a point where we were doing a lot of exhaust repair at one of my old shops, and it was like he, he actually considered doing that because, like, the pipes you buy from Walker, they don't even last two years in our climate. And then they're broke, leaking again. Right.
And it's like it's all that aluminized garbage. Yeah. I always say I've done it for years. And I said, luminize will last. I always told the customer, this will last you about a year and a half. And that's been like that since I started in the industry. A year and a half. That's probably what you're going to get out of this muffler.
And it's. Okay. So you got Walker. Walker's got lifetime warranty. Who cares? You're still going to have to replace it in a year and a half. So, yeah, mufflers and put that on.
They warranty the muffler, but the pipe that gets damaged when you, you know, you're servicing the muffler. Like, what are you doing then? Or it breaks, you know, the muffler breaks off and, you know, and then it bangs the. Out of the, the hanger bearing up the thing and rips the flange off the back of the cat. And before you know it, where are you. You're doing a whole system, you know, for something that was. I just, I hate it. Like, I just. It drives me nuts for being so many years at the dealer.
Like, we didn't have to do a ton of it. So it was like. And if we were putting the OE stuff back on. So guess what? It lasted another 10 years. Right. Like it was.
That's. That's the way it should be.
Yeah, no, I've.
I do a lot of. I do a lot of exhaust repairs. Like, like say a flange. The gasket flange rots out or whatever. And now you're stuck. You replace both sides of this exhaust. Well, no, I just cut it out. Well, the pipe in between and be done with it.
Yeah.
And one of my earlier videos, I, I did that for. On a Honda Fit for a customer. And, and man, I got, I got roasted on, on the comments about that. Like, like, oh, that's such a sketchy repair. You're such a hack job. Like, what? Okay, first of all, I said this is not a hack job. This is a very proper repair.
Yeah.
And I said, second of all, this lady is a widow. If I had to replace this exhaust because the front, it's the catalytic converter assembly right off the manifold up to here. And then from here it's one piece exhaust, back muffler and everything. I said all of this exhaust would have probably cost her like $1,800.
Yeah.
It's it. And then it wouldn't even be a stainless steel pipe. And it lasts a year and a half. This exhaust repair that I'm doing right here, it's going to last the life of whatever else is here.
Yeah.
And, and people, I don't know, people just didn't understand it. Like the people in the comment section were stupid. I'm like, come on, this is. How do you not understand this? How are you just going to go and replace all these parts not knowing that this is a stainless steel. Like I was talking before about the tires, the Pirelli tires. This is the Pirelli tires of exhaust. And you're putting on Salem like it makes no sense. Like, why would you even do this to your customer? Why would you tell your customer says, oh yeah, this is good parts, but you're gonna have to come back in a year and a half and do it again.
But, but see, the shops love it because it's a three year warranty. You know what I mean? It's the same as why am I putting. Why am I putting an ignition coil in that costs $10 less than what I can buy from the dealer and it's made by standard instead of being made by Denso? Because I get a three year warranty on it. Why don't I just call up the dealer and get one that's in stock that they know will work and put.
It in the car.
We'll only get a year Warranty. It lasted 10 years. I think it'll be good. I don't think warrant to be a problem.
No.
Now I understand. I've gotten bad coils from Ford right out of the box. Right. I mean, I can't guarantee anymore that the dealer part is always better. But like, if I have to put on, you know, another. Toyotas are really bad. If I have to put on another standard instead of a Denso or a Blue Streak instead of a Denso and then watch it go from like, you know, misfiring a ton to misfiring occasionally, I'm gonna pull my hair out because I'll go through my same process and I'll take the old 10 year old coil out of the other cylinder and I'll put it in that cylinder and stop misfiring. I go, my diag's done.
Well, it needs a coil. We just put a coil in it. Yeah, I know. You need a better coil, like, exactly. I was to the point where I wanted to just call it the junkyard and go, send me, you know, go lift the hood on one, find one that's seven years old with the OE coils and send me the four of them. I'll give you 20 bucks. One of them is gonna work, right? It just.
Yeah, exactly. Way better than that. Yeah.
Pissed me off. Your question about the people online, why do they roast you like that? Why they say that? You've seen me lately. Yeah, are, yeah, they're, they're just, they're. I. Why do people follow professional technicians online when they're not technicians themselves? And they're only following to spread hate and sling mud? I cannot understand it. Chuck and I talked about it and he's just like, you can't let it bother you. And I'm like, you don't understand, man. It really bothers me.
I don't. It doesn't make sense to me why you follow if they don't like you and they don't like Chuck.
Right as just move on.
Why are you following? And I know why they do because they're learning. But then they're saying, we, you know, Frank, you charge too much. Your shop's ripping people off. Like you. The one comment you had, the guy said, oh yeah, you're. Well, you're talking about the coil spring. Oh, you're just padding the work or.
Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, exactly. That's all I'm doing.
I can't.
Their safety at all.
The people, yeah, the people that are chirping online all the time or really make it hard for me to stay online some days. Like it really makes it tough.
So, yeah, I, and I, I always, I always looked at it, my online presence. I've always used it to try and educate why we do what we do. I, I never, I've tried to never do. Well, one thing I never do is I never badmouth my customers online. Like some of them that I see. And it's like I never, never say who the customer is or nothing like that. And like, I'll never do that. But the other thing I want to do is, is educate the general public.
Like, this is why. And again, in that situation with the coil spring, this is why we give you These options we see this kind of stuff we have, like you don't know it. Like actually she did say there was a noise. Right. But a lot of times they don't know it. They don't know what the underneath of their car looks like. They don't know like the condition of what's there. And unless we as technicians point it out to them, they'll never know.
And they then, then people in the comments would be like, well, if I don't know, what's the problem? Like, why is it an issue? Well, because you could have a tie rod severely loose.
Yeah.
And never notice it because you know, you're, you just, you're not educated enough to know what this feeling is or what this noise is. And until I say, hey, look at this. Oh, is that a bad thing? Yeah, it actually is a bad thing. Like you're going to wear out your tires, it's going to fall apart, you're going to lose your wheel, you're going to hit somebody. So let's fix this. And that's what I always use, that's what I use my channel for. It's just I want to educate people into why do we do it. Sometimes I have some comedy in there and some barbecue videos or whatever like that.
Yeah, I really, I really enjoy it. It's, you're, I'll say that you're one of the more level headed professional, the way you conduct yourself on there. And I wanted to thank you for that and I wanted to thank you for coming on here tonight. I was looking forward to this because, you know, I didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with the whole thing. But I mean, it's like you said, you and I are on the exact same page on it. And that's good to know. You know, I'm, I'm, I. People that aren't doing it in Ontario the right way, I wish you'd stop and I wish you would just sit together and, and start doing it the right way because you're, you're cutting your nose off in spite of your face.
Like you're not playing the long game anymore. You're just, you know, and you will get caught. And you know, I don't know how you sleep at night, but you know, I don't know how a lot of people sleep at night. But we as an industry are. Our number one responsibility is people's safety and that's why it's important. And when people are making a mockery out of this new system that's out There, man, you know, I'm not going to be as professional as some people if I catch you doing it or I know that a shop around me is starting to, you can bet, you know, I'll put you on blast for sure. So I think it's, it's not right and it's, you know, I want to conduct myself professionally, but at the same time, like, I don't want to see the industry continue to be drugged down because of misinformation and misunderstanding because a couple of sour, you know, players are ruining it for the people that are trying to do it right. So, yeah, thanks for coming on.
Always doing it.
You're welcome.
So, yeah, anything want to say before closing?
Ah, this was a blast. I really appreciate you having me on here. I fan of your channel and, and really appreciate you giving me this opportunity to be on here and.
Yeah, yeah, it sounds good. It's. It's.
We're.
I'm sure. And that's the thing, like we're always going to see some weird stuff. And I mean, I keep watching your channel to see. Because you, you put up a lot of good stuff and you know, sometimes I'll have to try and start filming a little more of what I see in the shop too because it's, it's good content and it helps a long way for educating the people.
So sometimes it's so hard to even film and I'm so stinking busy, I don't have time to film. But, but every once in a while I find something cool. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna put this out there and just make a quick video. My wife keeps saying, you're on Tick Tock way too much. And I'm like, listen, it's for good reason.
Yeah. So people, if you, if you want to see more of Frankie's 3D auto on. On tick tock, and that's 3D auto.
Underscore Elmer, because apparently somebody else is another 3D auto somewhere. Okay.
And great channel, lots of good information and, you know, you know where you can find me. So everybody, thank you very much. You all have a great night and we'll talk to you later. Frank, thanks for being here, buddy.
Thank you very much.
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 AESAW group and to the change in the industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
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