Overcoming Fuel Line Failures and Dodgy Aftermarket Parts with Zeb Beard, Part 2

I ain't gonna say all these aftermarket companies, but a lot of them, I deal with this all the time. You'll call them and you'll say, hey, this turbo we got from you is given some problems, and this is the test that we've run. Well, you know, what was the original turbo doing? Well, our turbo, we don't. You know, we've never seen this problem before. And all this stuff, you know, and everybody's sick and tired of it. They don't want to stand behind their stuff.

Yeah.

And a labor claim is completely out of the damn question.

Welcome back to another exciting episode of the JD Mechanic podcast. I got an old friend here with us of the podcast. He is. How do I say? He is? A brand new grandpa, but yet he's not that. He's quite a young man himself. So welcome back, everybody. Zeb beard from Strokers Diesel. Zeb.

How are you, buddy?

I'm doing good.

Good, man. Good. So, you had your first grandson born just this week?

Yeah, yeah, he was born on Wednesday, which. Today's Sunday, I guess, you know, this will air a little bit later, but he was born on the 26th, and today's the 30th, so pretty excited about that. It's a little different deal with the grandkid.

What's his name?

His name is Dean. Dean Austin.

Is his name Dean Austin? I like that. That's pretty cool. What's any significance to the name Austin?

Well, not. I don't know where Austin came from. Maybe that's my. Maybe I'm wrong. It may be my son in law's middle name. Okay, but Dean. We thought Dean was after. My wife.

Susie's middle name is Dean. And so when my daughter said they were gonna name him Dean Austin, we just assumed that Dean was named after her. But we later found out. My daughter said, no, no, we didn't name it after. After. You said we just like that name. But me and Susie are claiming it. We're just gonna go ahead and claim it.

Say, yeah, he was named after Susie.

Exactly. I would, too. Why not? Yeah, right? Say, good. So he's. He's healthy. I saw a picture of him. He looks great.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's perfect in every way. He. He's really a good baby. He doesn't hardly cry too much. And he sleeps. He sleeps a lot.

And he sleeps really sound, like the dogs barking and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't wake him up.

That's good.

Which is the opposite of. Of my daughter, his mother, when she was a baby, she was she was horrible. She tried all the time. She had to be held all the time. The least noise would wake her up, and she would start screaming. But this baby, he's, he's great.

That's awesome. That's good. And you were saying this is kind of like with your own kids. You were kind of not like, I don't know, not distant, but it was like you didn't get all, you know, over the moon about, about them. Right. But this grandkids got you, got you different.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a little different with grandkids. Everybody told me it would be.

Yeah.

And it is. I got up to see the next day. He was born on Wednesday, and then Thursday morning, I got up, came to work, and, and, I mean, the first thing I do is texted my daughter and say, hey, how's he doing this morning? I want, I want to see a picture of him and want to know about how his night went and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I probably, in the morning, I'm probably going to do the same thing.

Mm hmm. Yeah. You're going to spoil him rotten. I can just tell.

All right. Yeah. He'll have everything.

Get a fishing and the whole thing. It'll be great.

Yeah.

Yeah. So now you had an interesting, you reached out to me about a part, and you were really frustrated, and you sent me a picture of a part, and you sent me a picture of a transaction, kind of a back and forth between the supplier of that part, the manufacturer, kind of give me what happened there and give us some context on what part it was and then what you were facing with it and your frustrations, because you said to me, you're like, we got to talk about this because these aftermarket parts are really getting to you, and you don't use a ton of aftermarket parts, do you know?

And that's why, I mean, I, at least with OEM parts, if we get a lot of bad OEM parts. But, yeah, they'll send you another one. They don't argue with you too much with these aftermarket parts, especially with performance aftermarket parts. Right column, you say, hey, you know, I think I got, I think I got a problem with your part here. You know, and we've done these tests and we've done this and we've done that, and it always goes the same way. Oh, no, it couldn't, it couldn't be our part. You know, we just, we've never seen that happen. There's no way that our part can cause this problem and all this, and then later you find out, yeah, yeah, it can.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it did. And then they're like, oh, we're sorry. Um, I guess we'll send you another one just like it, you know, and if it goes out too, well, you know, I'm sorry, you installed it wrong, but if you install it wrong again, that's. We're not going to help you anymore. You know, it's always, they always blame it on the installer. Well, you did something, when you put it on it, you know, you did something wrong.

And. What, what part was it? What was it?

Well, this particular part in question, and it wasn't a new part, it was a. I didn't buy this particular part. It was a high pressure oil pump for a 7.3 diesel. And I get it here and I start doing some testing on it and I'm like, this pump is bad. And I saw it was an aftermarket performance pump, you know, from a well known company. And I start doing my test and I'm like, something wrong with this pump? Because it was, it would, it was hard to start when it was hot and it was doing surge and it was doing this and doing that. I haven't seen a ton of 7.3 high pressure pump failures in my whole career. I've been working on them for a long time and I just haven't seen a lot of them.

So I called the manufacturer, this pump, and they laughed at me, you know, they laughed at my testing method. Of course. I air checked it like I do on 60 s, right? And, and I could hear air going through the pump. I hear air going back through the pump. I tested the injector, you know, I, I blocked off on a 7.3. They have lines on the outside so you can block it off and air check both sides separately. And there was no air leaks anywhere except you could hear it through the pump. So I call these people, and I've never had one of those pumps apart, so I didn't know the internal workings of it, how it worked.

Right.

I called them about it and the girl just laughed at me, you know, she laughed at, oh, you can't, you can't test a 7.3 like that. That is a, that's a method for 60 s. You can't test it like that. And there's no way it's our pump anyway, that the symptoms you described, that sounds like it's got air in it. Cause we had had the engine out. Somebody had worked on it before. They had put this engine in and they pinched an o ring or the seal on the pickup tube worked on a 7.3. They've got a square seal, and it's kind of tough to get it in there.

And they had pinched that, and it was causing a little bit of problem, but wasn't the main problem. After we got that fixed, the truck would run, but it wouldn't start when it was hot. And it had a real bad surgeon problem. It was loping and surging really bad. So I didn't get ugly with her. I didn't get upset or anything in my mind. I wanted to reach through the phone and choke her and say, look, I know what I'm doing. But I didn't.

I just. I just kept my cool, and I said, okay, I'm gonna go do that, and then I'm gonna prove that your pump is. Is, in fact, bad. So I did that. I took and tied the two lines together and put a pressure transducer on it. And then where you can see it on the graph and you could see this thing. I mean, it would. It would go for, like, probably 250 milliseconds with nothing.

And then you'd see us one spike and then one spike. So after I got that pump apart, it had seven pumping elements in it. Thanks for us. So I think only one of those elements was working. And so I call some of my friends in the business around. I got friends all over the country that do the same I do and talked to them about it, and they were like, man, those pumps of those pumps have a lot of problems. And we all got the same treatment. When we called this place, they all laughed at us.

And then a lot of their pumps were still under warranty. They wouldn't even talk to them. I didn't even. I didn't even bring up warranty with this gal. So after I got that, well, then I went and did the rest of my testing. I ordered up a new pump from a different place and put it on, verified that that was the problem. The truck ran. I even hooked up.

I even deadheaded the new pump and ran test just to show. And then made the video. And, of course, they got on there that. No, the phone call didn't go anything like that. And. And all this stuff, you know, the typical behavior, which they still wouldn't take. They still wouldn't take any, you know, responsibility for it. They didn't say, well, you know, maybe we could have treated you a little differently or something like that, but.

And you had other people that have had the exact same failure on the exact same pump from the exact same.

Brand, the exact same treatment that I got.

And yet they don't acknowledge that. Right. They don't go, she just wants to sit there. How many other people out there are taking a pressure transducer and putting it up as a snapshot waveform to.

Well, nobody.

It's probably the most in depth proof of a failed part that they've ever seen. And yet they're telling you, like, the idea that you can't air check an oil pump. Like, guys build transmissions every hour and air check it. What's a transmission? It's kind of an air pump. Kind of an oil pump. I don't, I don't, I don't want to get upset and just say that, you know, how. But how qualified is the person answering the phone? Obviously not qualified enough to argue back. Right.

Well, this is actually the daughter of the guy that owns the company.

You don't want to name the name of this company that. That made you this oil pump. But.

And I don't really want to just single out this company.

Right.

Because all the. A lot of. I ain't gonna say all these aftermarket companies, but a lot of them, I deal with this all the time.

Yeah.

You'll call them and you'll say, hey, this, you know, this turbos messing up. For instance, this turbo we got from you is given some problems, and. And this is the test that we've run. Well, you know, what was the original turbo doing? Well, our turbo, we don't, you know, we've never seen this problem before. And all this stuff, you know, and I'm like, look, this, you know, this is what, I've got proof right here. This is.

Yeah, you're.

You know, there's. There's a problem with your part, and you have to fight with them, and everybody's sick and tired of it. And, of course, they pitch us all the time they're trying to sell us. Hey, you need to be selling our parts because ours are better than the stock ones. We, you know, we do the. Our better performance, better quality and all this. But they won't. They don't want to stand behind their stuff.

Yeah.

And a labor claim is completely out of the damn question. Yeah.

You're not even trying to get that in this case. I didn't think with this truck. You're just trying to get another.

No, I wasn't. I didn't even want it warrantied. I didn't even know if it was warrantied or not. I just wanted some information about it to see you know, to see if they've seen this problem, if it's something else, I need to check or maybe give me some ideas. And she did give me an idea about deadheading that pump. But that was the. The big deal with her was, there is no. That was out of her mouth.

There is no way our pump can cause these issues that you're having. You know, it pissed me off. So I went back and did prove I even took the put. You saw the video. I took the pump apart and found exactly what happened to it.

Yeah.

And. And proved it. And that. And it goes that way so many times.

Yeah.

That we will get the same treatment from these companies, and they act like it's not their fault, and then we go, or not their. Their parts fault, and we. We go on and investigate it ourselves and take it apart and find out that it was.

Yeah.

You know, a failure of their part. And then. And then they come back. Well, you know, we. We. We get so many calls a day and all this. And. But what.

One of the things that I wish they would do is I do it with my customers is somebody calls me, and especially a new customer that I've never talked to before. First thing I do, I say, sir, what's your name? And I write it down.

Yeah.

And I say, sir, would you hold just a minute? And then I get my phone, and I type that name into Facebook, and I see who I'm dealing with.

Right.

You know, it'd be very easy if she would have looked and saw, hey, what's the name of your shop? Oh, strokers diesel. And then looked it up and said, well, this guy, it's like he knows what he's doing, you know? And just like. Just like, probably three weeks before that, I was asked to speak at the 7.3 summit that these people were at.

Yeah.

So if they would look, they said, oh, that's the guy that was speaking there. So he's obviously sort of knows, maybe knows what he's doing.

You know, he might have.

I do that with my own customers. I'll look out, you know, a new customer called me, look up his Facebook. And I look and say, well, like, for you, for instance, I'd look up. I'd say, well, this is Jeff Compton. He. He's got a podcast. He. He likes to.

Bass fish. He's got a little white furry dog that he loves. Yeah, that's a. That's a green flag right there. Usually somebody that likes dogs is a good somebody easy to deal with, for sure. And then. And then you got the opposite. Here's.

Here's one of my red flags. And this is probably gonna piss some people off when they see this, but if. If I got a new customer that I'm sort of screening and I open up their facebook and they got a picture. One of those damn side by sides with the 40 inch tractor tires on it. Red Flag city right there. I mean, it's good. There's a few cases where that turns out good, but usually those guys are.

We have a word.

Deal with it.

We have a word for them up here. It's. They're hard on equipment.

Yeah. Yeah. And they usually have no money.

That's right. Yeah. Because all that money went into that side by side.

Right.

So now that the haul rig for the side by side is broken and they don't want to put that kind of money into the haul rig, they want to keep the money for the side by side because.

Yeah.

Ain't even paid for yet. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I have so much trouble out of those guys, but, you know, a lot of these. These aftermarket performance parts places, they can. They can do the same thing in 5 seconds.

Yeah.

And kind of know who they're talking to and say, they can either say, well, this guy, he looks like an idiot. He probably, you know, maybe he does just have air in it. Like I say, well, this guy owns a pretty good shop, and it looks like he's diagnostics is his strong suit.

Yeah. I mean, it's not.

Probably knows what he's talking about.

You're not Jim Bob underneath a shade tree somewhere that. That is trying to get an old seven three, you know, running, and they've thrown every part at it. And now you're making the circle phone calls to everybody, blaming the parts because of a misdiagnosis. That's not you. It's not you in this situation, and that's not you ever. You know, you're. And you're not even calling them up saying, hey, you owe me money or you owe me time or you owe me. Like, you're just saying, help me out here.

Like, I think your part's defective, and I'm kind of giving you the. The skinny on what it's doing, and they're immediately telling you, no, it can't be. And they were at the summit with you three weeks before.

Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Three weeks or a month before that.

Obviously, she wasn't a. Right?

Yeah, I guess not, but. And it would be different if it was the first time, but, I mean, I talked to at least five of my friends that don't really know each other, and they all had the same story.

Yeah.

About this particular company.

Right.

And then. But I get a reputation around because I'll call these guys out all the time. I mean, if I have problem with a. With a. With a manufacturer, I'll call them out in a second.

Yeah.

And a lot of people don't do that. And. And I've kind of got a reputation around all, don't sell parts of that guy because he'll throw you under the bus. But it's not that way. If you. Look, I give praise just like I give criticism. Like fleece. Fleece performance products.

I've sold I don't know how many thousands of dollars worth of their products, and I've never had to call them about anything because their stuff just works. It always works. You don't have any problems with it. And maybe if I do have a problem with it, I probably. I don't believe I'll get that kind of treatment from them. I think they'll. They'll handle it. S and S fuel systems is the same way.

They're really good. I've got another fuel system company. Not gonna name them, but I don't know if you're familiar with the CP. Four failures on. On the Cummins. Remember in 19 and 20, they started putting them on Cummins. They have since recalled them. But back in those days when they were failing, they came out with some aftermarket CP three conversions to convert them back to the old CP three.

Well, I got this one particular CP three conversion, put it on this truck, and it ran, I guess, about six months. And the fuel lines broke on it. They just cracked. So I called the plate. I didn't get it direct from the manufacturer. I got it from another guy, and I called him, and he said, oh, yeah, those things are. They redesigned. Those lines are having problems with them.

Send you some new lines free of charge. Okay, good deal. Put those on. And I couldn't even get them to stop leaking out of the package. I mean, I put them on, and they just. Pouring fuel out. They were leaking worse than the broken fuel lines.

Right.

So I worked with them for hours trying to get them to see it. Finally got them sealed off. And, of course, they didn't last. Yeah, they didn't. Those didn't last a month, and they broke. So I called the manufacturer that time, said, hey, these. These lines are horrible. You know, when I took them out of the package, you could look at them.

The. The. You know, the mushroom looking thing on the end that it wasn't even centered the nut wouldn't. I said, what, what's the deal with these lines? I mean, these, these lines are horrible. The ones that were on it originally lasted longer than these. Well, we'll send you some more lines. They said, but you probably installing them wrong. I'm like, okay, how do you.

I mean, it's fuel lines. I don't know how many. Probably up in the hundreds of thousands of fuel lines I've put on in my life. I've been putting them on, putting fuel lines on since I was four years old.

Yeah.

So I said, what? Please tell me the installation procedure for these lines. They said, well, what you do is you put them on and you barely tighten them and then you start it up and you tight tighten them gradually until the leak goes away. That was their, that was their installation. I said, so, so start them up and it's going to leak and then you just keep tighten them till they quit leaking. Yeah, that's, that's right. I said, man, what if I strip the nut out and it still doesn't? I said, because that's the way these, this last set was. So anyway, they sent me another set and another set. And a couple of times I had to go get this truck on, on my low boy.

And because this is like a big 5500 service truck with a crane on it.

Yep.

So I can usually get twelve, $1500 for those record calls with that big truck. So I've got, I've got at least two of those in this truck. And then I had to start buying lines. Then, like the third set of lines, they said, sorry, that thing's out of warranty. So we're going, you know, we're going to have to charge you for these lines. So we bought lines. The people that own the truck bought lines and kept in the truck with them all the time. Finally, about, I don't know, about three months ago, I finally took the thing off and put an s and s kit on there and solved that problem.

And no thanks.

No more leaking fuel lines.

No more leaking fuel lines. So that thing's sitting over there in the box right now. That thing's probably cost me seven or $8,000. No, absolutely zero. They have taken absolutely zero responsibility for, because we're all in a bunch of groups together with myself and people that make that pump and the blinds and all that. I mean, they know who I am and they've heard me, bitch. But I haven't just like, come out blasting them. Yeah, but I have bitched about it enough.

They know who I am and they know what problems I had, and they've taken a zero responsibility for whatsoever.

It. We always talk about, you know, the known name in the industry.

Right.

Dorman gets lambasted. It doesn't matter what social media platform you're on, right. Somebody's running them down.

Yeah.

And I'm not. I'm not defending them. They. You know, it's. It's justifiably so. They have done it to themselves, and it sucks, but we're just trying to get, like, a replacement part for, you know, an oe application. You're dealing with, like, performance end stuff, you know, specialized stuff that's been done modified or whatever. And somebody still sells you a part, though, and says that it can do it.

What kind of R and D have they done? If. Obviously they. They can. It doesn't work. Like, the fuel lines obviously don't work, period.

I don't know. If I. If I had a customer that had that much trouble with my parts, I would be. I would never get over it. I wouldn't forget as long as I live. I would. I would do something. I would.

I would buy the kit back from it. I would do something and then recall.

It all, you know, because that's the rumor, I guess, that what Dorman has done is when you notify them that, hey, I. You know, this particular valve or whatever is. We're seeing a rash of this. This is what I guess is what happens, you know, when their suppliers say, somebody in Napa says, hey, we had, you know, five of these part number come back in the last three weeks. You know, what I'm told is that they. They want them all back. And then they pull that part number and check into the run. And all that jazz, it's sounding zeb, like in the.

In the performance side of it, they're not doing that at all. You know what I mean? It's. It sounds like junk from Timu or wish or something. You got a thousand units of it to get through. And then maybe the next.

I don't know how they. I don't really understand it. And I got to take up for Dorman. Dorman makes some of their stuff is great.

Yeah.

Like, I know you had one guy that. That he didn't like their oil coolers or six. Oh, coolers. Let me tell you something. I probably put on up in the thousands of those oil coolers, and I've never had one come back. Never. Now, the gaskets that come with them are junk. They've been junk.

You know, I don't know if you remember the green gasket debacle that came along. Yeah, this was probably back in 2010 or 2011. They had. They had some green gaskets, the main gasket that went around the bottom of the oil cooler. It would come apart, jam up the IPR and all that. But we all learned really quick, don't use that. But the oil coolers themselves were great. I never used the gaskets with them, but I still use dormant oil coolers.

And I think Ford. Now, if you buy a Ford oil cooler from Ford, it comes as. From. As a dormant. But I don't have a problem with them. I've put in thousands of them.

Yeah.

And a matter of fact, I actually like those better than the original oe Ford when I had less comebacks with the dorman than I did the Oe Ford.

Yeah, that Dorman pentastar 3.6 oil cooler.

Oh, yeah, it's excellent.

We put a bunch on and haven't had one issue. And, I mean, we use the complete kit, the. The whole, you know, the gaskets, the whole thing, use the whole thing. Never had a problem.

And they, they come up with some good ideas, like my, my three five ecoboost. They. The oil pan, they have that aluminum upper pan, and then they have a plastic one that bolts on the bottom, and it warps and leaks like hell. Well, Dorman has a whole complete aluminum pan to replace both of those.

Right.

Excellent. Works great.

Yeah.

But now Dorman, a dormant air door actuator. No. Even.

Yeah.

Well, I got to Crassler. Crass in Chrysler boxes, original Chrysler boxes that still had the tape on them had not been opened.

Yeah.

And both of them were Dorman actuators inside.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, and they did not work right out of the box because one of my techs put them in and the thing didn't work right. So we took it back. I think I took it back apart, and I saw that they were Dorman, and that's the reason we changed them, is the owner had changed them himself, and the doors didn't work right. And I looked and saw they were dormant. I said, well, hell, there's the problem. So we got new ones from Chrysler and put them in. I accused my tech of not changing them. I said, you didn't change them? He said, no, I did.

So I made him go dig the old ones out of the trash, and we proved that we had. We had a whole pile of dormant actuators. And I think we had one Chrysler, one out of the whole bunch. So he. He proved himself that he didn't. He didn't put the. You know, he put the Dorman ones on, but he took the Dorman ones back off, too.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Dorman. Dorman vent solenoids, Dorman eco, ecotech ocvs or control valves for the variable valve timing. Junk, you know, and I. Yeah. Blend or motor actuators, like you said, constantly on Chryslers. And GM's, like, there, you put it in, and sometimes it works, but then it'll be like a year later, it's clicking again. It just. Shit like that just drives me up the wall, you know, because it's like, I've said it before, and people.

But sometimes the dealer tech looks so much smarter than a guy in an aftermarket shop because the part he's putting on is just better. You know what I mean? He doesn't have to. He looks like he got the diag right the first time. Because that part they put in most of time fixes it.

Yeah.

You know? Yet we're out here in the aftermarket trying to give a better warranty or save $10 on a blender actuator, and we put it in, and it doesn't even turn right. And then you go to the tech. Okay, did you volt drop this? You know, power load that? Come on. Like, it's pretty straightforward. I mean, it. Yeah, it works or it doesn't. And now it's like, what do we use? What do we do? You know, we had a. We had a 2014 Nissan Pathfinder the other day that broke the rear rear track, bar mount.

Rotted off. Broke off. And so we called the dealership and said, you know, we need one for the driver's side. They sent the passenger side twice. Both times, wrong side. And then it's like. So we call up the junkyard, and like, have you got one of these? Because this has, like, been. This is on the hoist all day now, and we need to get it done.

It takes, like, ten minutes to change it out, and it's been holding up a hoist.

Yeah, drive.

All the junkyard drops one off if they didn't send the passenger side as well. So finally, the guy has to go back in and go over to the yard and say, like, I need the other one, you know? And just frustrating. Like, it just to no end, you know? I don't know. And I hate to say it sometimes when you're dealing with dealerships now, maybe other people can chime in and say yay or nay. We can barely get them to even answer the friggin phone.

Well, I'm hearing. I'm hearing in the groups that a lot of. A lot of the dealerships are turning the independent shop away and say, hey, we're not going to sell you parts anymore. Yeah, I'm very fortunate. My parts, GM parts, and my Ford parts and my Chrysler parts, they all come from a big hub in Tulsa.

Right?

And I get them where the dealerships around here get the parts from, right? And, man, I'm gonna tell you, my guys are great. Jeff Smith's one of them. You've probably seen him comment and shared my post and stuff. He's my part, my Ford parts guy. And then I've got two other ones. I don't know them personally. Suzy deals with them every day. She's great friends with them.

And, man, they go above and beyond for us. And I'd be lost without them. If I had to go back the old way that we did it, we had to call up the dealership. It would. It would kill us. I don't know what we would do. They deliver our parts in the middle of the night. So when we get up in the morning, our parts is here in the.

They're in the parks room waiting on us. They have a key to the gate to bring them in, put them inside. And it's. We're very fortunate with that. And. But it's crazy how many parts we have to stock now due to, you know, used to, you could call and. And the next morning your parts would be here. But it's very rare anymore to have a.

Your parts the next morning. So I think we got. I think we got $300,000 worth of parts inventory. Maybe 400, something like that. It's ridiculous the amount of parts inventory that we carry now that we used to. Didn't have to carry anything. We didn't have to keep anything.

Don't you. You keep a complete lawn block, don't you?

Yeah, that's kind of. That's kind of another one of these stories here, Jeff. I actually, I've got some Ford long blocks that I've had for some time.

Yeah.

And it's a. It's an engine supplier. He's well known around then. I'm not gonna name him, but he's. He's. When he first came on the scene, I don't know, 1213 years ago, something like that. I'm pretty good about having feelings about people. You know, I can get.

I can just, it's kind of like a premonition. When I see them, I see them on the Internet or wherever, I kind of get an idea of kind of what they're about, and it's rarely wrong.

Right?

So I kind of had this feeling about this guy, and he. He stayed in business and he kept growing and getting bigger and bigger. So back last year, I had four trucks sitting here that needed long blocks, and we couldn't get engines from Ford. And I waited and I waited and I waited. And this guy was the only one to have them in stock. He claimed to have them in stock or he could build them, you know, within 30 days, something like that.

Yeah.

That should be a red flag right there. If nobody else can get engines and you got one guy that can. Maybe I should have saw that. But I was desperate. I had these. You know, my customers were getting antsy. They knew going in that we were waiting on them, but still they were calling every day they needed their trucks because these are all big work. Mostly what I work on is big work trucks, big service trucks and things like that.

Expensive trucks that generate a lot of money that. And they cost a lot of money when they're not running.

That's right.

So one of my. One of my other friends, he's. He works for a big distribution house, aftermarket performance distribution house. He was like, man, they, you know, they got some questionable things with their cores and all this, and nobody likes him, but their quality is generally pretty good. I said, okay. So I get a hold of the guy. I'm like, look, I need four engines right now. How quick can you get them? And all this, what's the.

What's the deal on them? So he sent me a quote and he sent me the core list. And the core list had. The core list had oil pans, front covers, all this stuff on it.

Yeah.

When you get a loan block from Ford, it comes with all that. Yeah, pretty well. Just put your fuel system and turbo on it and go. So I assumed by the core list and the price that that's what I was getting. I didn't just nail him down and say, hey, what do these come with? And I should have.

Yeah.

And when I saw the core list had oil pans and all this. And when you. When you own a six, seven Ford, the oil pan, if the oil pan is on it, the covers, the front and rear covers have to be on it before you put the oil pan on it. So you would assume that if the core had to have an oil pan on it, that the front and rear covers would come on the engine. So I ordered these engines, four of them at one time, and they were supposed to be there on certain such day. And he was going to deliver them because I was getting, instead of sending them on a freight truck, he was going to deliver them because there were so many at one time. And then I was going to send the core. I don't like sending cores back until I get engines running.

But in that case, I said, hey, we'll do that and it's going to save us all a bunch of money. So I had the corps sitting there ready and the guy's late and I had to be somewhere that day. I had to leave to go somewhere, hot springs or somewhere. And so I wait and I'm waiting. I'm like, where is this guy at? And they say, well, he's gonna, he'll be there about 05:00 this evening or something. I was like, man, I can't get, I can't wait that long. So my guys were there and they were like, hey, we're working. We'll set them off the trailer and set these cores back on.

Ain't no big deal. Go do what you got to do with it. We'll take care of it because my guys are great, but I don't, I don't typically ask them to do that type of stuff. I handle that myself. I run the forklifts, I do all this stuff. But they said, we'll handle it. So I leave. Well, I get a call or a text from one of my guys at like 630 or seven.

That night, it was really late, like way past when he should have been there, say, man, and said, man, I'm just now leaving the shop. We got these engines came in and they don't, they don't have anything on them. And I had to take all those cores apart and put them on the trailer because we couldn't send out, you know, we had to have all those oil pans and covers and the bolts and all that stuff. I said, damn, man, why didn't you call me? He said, well, I didn't, you know, I didn't want to bother you. I said, okay, it'll be all right. I'll take care of it when I get back. So Monday I get back and I send a guy a text and I'm like, hey, man, what's the deal with these engines? They didn't come with anything on them. You know, they're not even close to what I was thought I was getting.

Yep.

I said, they don't match the core list. I said, my guy had to work extra hours taking the cores apart to send back, you know, your oil pans and everything, or to keep from sending back the oil pans and everything. He said, oh, yeah, that, that core list. That's just a generic core list. I said, generic? What the hell is a generic core list? He said, yeah, we send that with that. That's just a core list. We send for everything. So I, like I said, well, man, I can't.

These engines are not going to work for the, for the quotes I've already gave. Yeah, because I didn't quote. I having to swap all this stuff. And the extra, you know, the extra because we, on a Ford engine, you got to buy a new front cover when. Because the, on those six sevens, the oil pumps made into the front cover. So, you know, with it, it probably trashed the, you know, the housing inside there. So I had that extra and I had all the extra time. I mean, it was a lot of extra stuff that had to be on there.

And then I looked through his installation procedures and this, it's a book like this thick. You had to, you had to run a special break in oil for, I don't know, maybe an hour or something like that, then change it. You had to pre lube the damn thing. You had to have this pre luber, leave the valve covers off and pre lube it and see all. You had to have videos and pictures of all this stuff. I mean, it was probably to the extra time to go through this, this booklet, the installation booklet to keep your warranty valid was going to take an extra day and a half, probably. So I told him, I said, man, I can't sell these engines on this go round. I'm going to have to put them on the shelf and then work them in some kind of.

Somebody that wants your engines, because I'll never be able to sell these damn thing. You know, like, you buy a Ford engine, I mean, fill that bitch up with Rotella and away she goes. So luckily at that, while I was waiting on his engines to come in, all my. I had like four or five Ford engines ordered. They all came in. So I put those in that round of trucks and got them gone. And so I had these engines sitting on the shelf and I told him, I said, I can't sell these engines on this go round of trucks. Is there, you know, I don't know about your warranty policy, but is there a way I can, you know, we can start the warranty when I install these engines instead of.

Yeah, right now.

Instead of right now. Because most, most do that. All the. I know the Ford engines that we keep in stock there, that way they don't. The warranty doesn't start until the invoice is written right. And they've always been good about that. And he goes, yeah. He said, but just make sure.

Make sure that they stay wrapped up good so they don't get rust on them. Flash rust. So I'm like, that's weird that he said that all of a sudden. But, yeah, I understand that. So for some reason, I go over there and I start looking at these engines. And I did. I took a picture of them because my guy just set them on the floor. He didn't wrap them up or anything because he was ready to get the hell out of there on that Friday.

So they're sitting on the, on the bare concrete floor. But my shop stays pretty clean. I mean, we've all seen pictures of my shop. It's not a, it's not a complete shithole. So they're sitting on the floor. And when he said that, that kind of made me think. I go over and start looking, man, these, the crankshafts in these things look like they've been pulled out of a scrap pile out back. The gears are rusted.

I take pictures of all this rust. And in his installation procedures, it says, no three M disc. A big page in there, but no three M disc, you know, it'll void the warranty if you use them. These engines, every gasket surface on them was cleaned with three m disk. And, I mean, they, like, ground into the aluminum. And, I mean, they look horrible. These engines are. They are not the best quality.

Yeah.

So I sent him pictures. I say, hey, y'all, voiding the warranty on these engines before they ever left the factory. And so he text me back that, that's not. That rust wasn't on there. They have I don't know how many thousands of pictures of these engines while they were building them. And all this jazz. And I'm like, look, man, I'm not, I'm not trying to pull no shit on you. These engines didn't rust in one day like this, sitting on the floor of my shop.

I said that, and we got into it pretty good. I mean, I didn't hold back. I told him, I hope he. I hope his shot burns down with him in it. I mean, I really hate this guy. I told him, I said, I said, you. I said, well, I gave him a choice. I said, tell you what, buddy? Here's what we'll do.

You bring my cores back and you take these engines back. I said, better yet, I'll bring the engines back to you. You've already made a trip. I'll bring them back to you. I'll bring your engines back, you give my cores back, you give my check back, and we're. Because that's what he kept telling me. He said, man, I put you in front of the line and I got orders everywhere. And these engines, you know, I just, I just tried to help you out.

I said, well, if you can sell these engines, let me just bring them back to you. Yeah, and we'll call it good. I said, or I said, you got the other choice. You got, you can do nothing, which I'm pretty sure that's what you're going to do. Because I've heard from others in the. It's kind of like the other deal I had. I've never heard anybody that's a shop owner that doesn't have a story about this guy, the same story. So I said, you, you can, you can do us, you can do this here.

You can take them back, give my cores back and we'll be square and I'll never bring your name up again. I said, or you can do what I think you're going to do and we'll be enemies the rest, the rest of our lives.

Yep.

And he said, well, I'll take them back, but I'm taking 30%, which 30% on that was. I don't remember. It was. Seemed like it was 20 something thousand dollars. I'm not giving you. I'm not giving you 20 something thousand dollars. I'm not doing it.

Yeah.

I said, if these engines are in as high demand is what you say, I figure you'd take them back. But yeah, anyway, I got, I got, still got. I think I got three of them left. Two or three, I don't remember. I sold one a few weeks ago. It. I've sold two. Yeah, I guess I have two left because I sold two of them.

They turned out they ran pretty good. I'm carrying the warranty, obviously. They have no warrant. Fucking no warranty on them. I mean, he's not going to warranty these damn things, this guy.

He's not a social content creator, is he? Like, I don't want you. I don't want to get out him. But I mean. And we'll talk it maybe after the microphones are turned off later, but there you kind of. So we had a conversation a little while ago, some guys out there making content for content's sake. You know what I mean by that?

Like, yeah, he's not, he's not that big as far as content goes, okay.

Because there's another well known guy, and I'm not going to name the names, but he, you know, a couple people have called him out in, in the, in the social circles because like, he, he's famous for the one. He, he had a charger sitting there, Dodge Charger, and he pointed at the air intake, air temp sensor and he called it the mass airflow. And he called about how the k and n filter that was in front of it was over oiled and that's what was causing the P 0101.

And a charger that doesn't even have a mass air flight sensor, right.

So and so. And he's an engine builder, you know, and now he's gonna have his own tv show and everything else. And I don't follow enough, like, of that side of the performance side of the world anymore. That was so long ago for me. I just don't have any love for it, you know, it's not my deal, but I'm not trying to derail the conversation. But I mean, I'm finding that as we're getting to more and more where people are that make parts or in this industry are trying to, you know, advertise their parts and advertise what they do, there's, they're getting blown up. When people, when you make a snafu like that and you put your foot in your mouth like your whole credibility shot. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, you would think. But then these two guys. What, what was the, a few weeks back, the, the dave's guy made the big. Yeah thing and then the other guy. Yeah, the other guy refuted him and then they went back and forth and it ended up being this big thing. And then you think, you think back, you like, did these simple bitches do this, have this all planned to start with?

Yeah, because it was so, it was an input seal and a transmission. Yeah, the front pump seal. And they're saying you can't get it, can't get it. Got to buy the whole pump. And then of course, like somebody, you know, he says that and then somebody else says, no, this is the part you need. Well, the part that that guy looked up was for a completely different transmission. So he was wrong. Until finally it's somebody that's very well known in transmissions.

Brandon Sloan says, no, I actually talked to somebody that you know, does a lot of rebuilds for. Because it's. They're talking about Nissan Titan. Right? And this is the, this is the part number. So it turns out that by just the positive that came about is everybody worked together and said, okay, we found a part that would fit and it worked and it was good. And so he didn't have to buy a front pump for this transmission. Right. He only need change the seal because you do tranny rebuilds.

You'd know how frustrating that would be if all you needed to change was an input seal. Then you have to buy a whole pump to get the seal. That's a little stupid, but it was a. One guy starts out by trying to make a video just to show what's the reality in this industry, that there's a shortage of parts.

Well, then I believe anything about a Nissan. I mean, that, that's very believable, especially with a Nissan Titan diesel.

Yeah.

I mean, if you ever work on a lot of junk I work on, I'll tackle almost anything. But those things. I had two of them at one time in here. And after, when I got those things away from here, I said, I will never again. I don't even want somebody driving up on my lot with one because I'm afraid it's going to break down and I might have to work on it.

Nissan is one of the biggest problems when we're trying to get parts.

Yeah. And they were that way before all this Covid foolishness.

Yeah, it's. It's. I don't know what it is about it, whether. Well, I know what it is. Their. Their service information sucks. Their parts information doesn't link up very good with their service information at all. Not even close.

But then it's like, it's. I don't know whether they intentionally go out to try and find the least qualified people to work in the parts department or not, but, I mean, you're talking about guys that, like, wouldn't even know. Well, I worked with one, and I needed, I needed an evap for a dat under a dash and a. In one of their Nissan whatever their friggin minivans was called. I can't remember. Excuse me. Well, this, this guy, he ordered the condenser.

Oh, my God.

And I'm looking at, like. And I'm looking at him going, you've worked here for, like, three years. You've been a parts guy longer than that. But you've worked here three years. How do you f. That up? Like, I don't even know of anybody in the aftermarket section, that if I said, I need an evap, they send me a condenser. Like, I don't even think in the service information. It's on the same page.

No, in that. But, like, he just. So. Yeah, but so going back to that, he was legit showing a problem that we're facing in the industry, which is parts and parts availability and parts quality. And it just. Because he didn't have everything accurate, his information is, you know, all his boxes checked off. It just blew up into something completely different. And I was just shaking my head going back at that, because that guy wondering.

I'm wondering if it was all a bit. I mean, because that Dave guy, he's got, it looks like he has a pretty big operation.

He does have a huge facility. Yeah.

Machine shops and everything. I know in here, if I ran into something like that, I just took that pump over there, I'd have found a seal that fit that converter pump over there, machined it out, and put a different seal in it. I would have done something like that, and I would think Dave would have had the. He would have had the wherewithal to do the same thing.

You'd think, right.

I think it. I think it was a bit between all three of them to create content, is what I think. But I'm a conspiracy theorist. So how.

How screwed are we in this industry then, though, if that's the time of people that are in the background, right, that are. That are content creators for our industry actually go to that just to get to drive likes? Because you see me. See, like, where we've kind of had that conversation that's popped up. It scares me when some guys are, like, now completely funding their business from their social media content and not actually, like, repairing the cars or repairing the trucks. Like, it's subletting it so much or supplementing. Excuse me, that it's like you're looking at the quality of what they're putting out there, and it's like, this is not helping anybody. Like, I see that on TikTok a lot. And, I mean, it's tick tock, so it has its own detractors.

And, you know, it's not. But even sometimes I look at, like, some of the stuff that's on YouTube, and, you know, I'm just shaking my head going, okay, you're bringing in some really crappy customers and some really crappy cars. Like, people are towing it. Well, Ivan at Pine Hollow had a car towed from North Carolina, a Volvo X 90. Like a. I don't know, ten or twelve year old Volvo X 90, like, for it came all the way from North Carolina for a fuel pump issue. Now, he, of course, Ivan B. And Ivan got to the root cause of what was going on, and somebody had put some sand in the tank, and that's why the guy had repeat failures of fuel pumps and whatnot.

But, like, you're looking at this going, there's no flipping way that it can be cost effective to tow something from North Carolina to upstate New York unless the rates that he's charging. And I'm not calling him out. If he's listening, I doubt he is, but if he is listening, please don't take it. I was calling you out, but you know what I mean? Like, I want to think that some of these guys that are putting out content, they're like, I don't really care if I make money on the job because it's going to get me x amount of downloads. What do you think about that? Do you think it's, like, going in the completely wrong direction?

Yeah, I do. It kind of takes away. It can go both ways, I guess. I mean, it takes away from us guys that's been in the trenches and learned all this stuff, but the hard way came up through the ranks and had had to sit in here for hours.

Yeah.

On. You don't want a car beating your head against the wall and you finally figure it out. And then these guys come out on TikTok and YouTube and. And they show it and they make it look so easy that, you know, they just go through it and it's, you know, and they find it in ten minutes. And all this with all those guys that started all this stuff. Yeah, and I ain't gonna say we started it. I mean, lab scope started before I was born, but. But we did all this without YouTube and without.

Without social media and all this stuff wasn't out there where anybody could find it.

Yeah.

And we all had to self teach and. And go to class and do all this. And now you can. You can learn what it took me 15 years to learn. You can learn it in an hour.

Yeah.

Just by watching YouTube. And that's good and bad. I don't really. I don't really know what to make of it, but I don't like. I don't like the idea that summer are fixing cars just to create content. I don't like that.

No, I don't. I don't. I. I'm on the same page as that. And it's got to be tough for you. Being in the performance side of it. You know, Lucas touched on this before because then everybody that comes in. Right.

And is looking for you to do it already thinks they're an expert, you know?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they think they're excited about their vehicle. They're excited that it's going to, you know, have better performance and all this. And they think that you should be excited about it, too. And, you know, as the, as the shop owner or the technician or whatever. And we're not, we don't care. I don't even race anymore. Any, any kind of motor sports at all.

I've been in this so long that I've got sick of it.

Yeah.

I don't, it doesn't do anything for me. I used to love dirt track. Now I could. It does nothing for me. I'd rather take a nap than I would go watch a dirt track race. I don't care about, you know, I mean, I like to go fast, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to go out here and work every night in my shop on a, on a race car. I'm not going to do that.

Yeah.

I'm going to go fishing or I'm going to go ride my party bars and drink and I'm going to go.

Yeah.

I'm going to go the keys and go fishing. I'm going to do that kind of stuff. It's kind of like what you described. I mean, we've been in this so long that we don't care about performance anymore.

Yeah.

And those, these people that come in, they expect you to be just as excited about it as they are, and then they expect you to, you know, to cut your profits just to. Just to put on some performance parts and make something fast because they're excited about it. They want you to be, too.

Yeah.

And, and it's not that way.

And it's routine for you. Right. Like, you, when you, you guys go and hop up a diesel for a guy, that guy thinks that that's the most incredible truck that's going to be in his state. And the reality is like, you've done that mod, that buildup multiple times, hundreds of times.

Right.

It's like, I'm sure it's like in a machine shop when a guy screws together another 400 hp small block Chevy and this guy is gonna go on about, it's the greatest thing in the world, and he's like, how many 400 hp small block Chevy's has he put together? 500,000? You know what I mean, it's. He's pushing. Like what would get him going would be a thousand horsepower small block Chevy, not a 400 horse. Like you can. I can remember Edelbrock had a kit, cylinder heads, intake, carburetor, camshaft. Right. Bolted onto a eight and a half to one small block compression. And it would make, you know, whatever, 400 hp.

Right. Like they sold to the kit. Now, how many people bought that kit and that didn't turn? 420. Well, a lot.

Yeah.

That was, you know, problems with ignition, problems with tuning it. Right. They probably. The small block that they put it on, lots of compression losses, stuff like that. But they made billions of dollars doing it, you know, but that, that guy, that's. I'm sure lots of machine shops around have had to go in there and fix that stuff. Or imagine being the guy that's got to tell them there's nothing wrong with the Edelbrock parts. Like your, your engine's, you know, making 50 psi compression.

It doesn't matter what cam we put in there or what, you know, the piston bores like oblong ceiling. Like, I'm sorry, it's pumping, losses are shot.

Yeah. That. That performance stuff, it's a. It's a dead end road as far as profits go. I mean, you know, I'll tell you what makes me, I'll tell you what really makes me moist as a shop owner. It gets me excited, tech, because it gets me excited. You bring me a. You bring me a, like a Dodge 5500 in here that's got a rod hanging out the side of the block.

And I'm talking about a nasty work truck, four wheel drive that's been in the mud.

Yeah.

That goes to work every day. That as stock as can be. And has got crane on the back. And bring me that with a rod hanging out the side of it. That's what gets me going because I'm gonna pull it in here and I'm gonna put a loan block in it and it's gonna crank up. It's gonna run just the way I expected it to run.

Yep.

We're not gonna have any problems. And then we're gonna turn that truck out of here and we're gonna make a good profit on it. That's what gets me excited.

Yeah.

You bring me a 2500 on forties with a twelve inch lift and all this. And we're gonna put a big turbo on it and compound turbos and all this stuff. I don't even want that. I don't even look at it. It does nothing for me?

No. So you.

It's going to be nothing but problems. It's not going to run the way he expected it to. By the time we get through to that thing, it's going to cost us more than it would have if we never even looked at it.

Yeah. Now, and that segues into kind of where I wanted to go with this conversation is you. You reached out to me and you talked about a customer. You kind of shared a little bit on Facebook about how you're going to go back to a new, a new old way of doing business and can you kind of touch on that?

And then, well, that was, that was a little bit of satire. I never made anybody sign that.

Yeah.

Disclaimer thing that I put up. I had posted it several years back. It kind of made its rounds on Facebook, and I took and shared it and told everybody that I was going to make them start signing it, you know, piece of shit. Anyway. Yeah, piece of shit. Disclaimer. And. And we don't get too many of those anymore.

We used to get them a lot when we were one of the, I call them the bottom feeder shops. We. I wouldn't say we were ever a bottom feeder shop. We were like a hero shop.

Yeah.

We would take anything and work on anything because we won't be the hero because we could fix it.

Yeah.

You know, it's be damn make money or not, we're gonna fix this, this car, truck, whatever it was. So we got in a lot of traps back in those days, and I learned to stay out of them for the most part. But I know me and you talked about it.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter how salty a shop owner you are, how long you've been in business. You'll see them in the groups. They talk about how, you know, how great a shop owner they are. You're gonna get in those traps. You're gonna get in two or three a year. I'm in a pretty good one right now. It's it truck was a mess when I got it, and it kind of snowballed. I should have never worked on it.

But, yeah, it, uh, I'm in it now, so I got to get out of it. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet. Me and the owner had a pretty heated discussion about a week ago, a little over a week ago. And I told him, I said, look, man, I'm. I'm too mad and you're too mad. We need to just cool it for a week.

Mm hmm.

Cool off a little bit. And then decide what to do.

Yeah. Cuz he told it into you not running, right?

Yeah, I went and picked it up in his driveway.

Yeah.

And, uh, it. He says it was running when I picked it up. Now he says there was nothing wrong with it. It was just getting diesel in the coolant.

Yeah.

And he says it's still getting diesel in the coolant. That remains to be seen. I hadn't went and got it again. He came and picked it up. And I told him before he came and picked it up, I said, look, do not drive this truck home. This truck will not make it home.

Yeah.

Because the front end was fall. I said, I can't even drive this truck. Front end was falling out of the back door. One of the back doors wouldn't even close. I mean, this thing, it's a mess. It's probably gonna cost me a lot of money in the end.

Yeah.

But at least now I can afford it. I'm gonna. I'm gonna fix the truck. I'm gonna make everything that he says that I didn't do. I'm gonna make it right. I'm probably gonna end up putting head gaskets on this truck for free. Yeah, I'm gonna probably do a lot of things for free. But he's gonna apologize for the way he acted.

Yeah. Cuz he put a video out. Right on.

Yeah. Well, he didn't, he didn't post it. He got mad because I posted a piece of shit disclaimer thing because he knew it was about him. I didn't call him out. I didn't post his name or anything. Yeah, but he saw it and he got really upset about it. And then he, he filmed a video.

And sent it to you.

He filmed a video of the grill falling out of the truck. We never had. We didn't even touch the grill. He, he, he was mad. He. Something about the foot, the throttle pedal in the truck. Well, the reason I had to replace the throttle pedal because the one in the truck was bad.

Yeah.

And I did that for free. There's a lot of things I did. Probably $5,000 worth of free work to the truck before it even left here that time. Mm hmm. And it still wasn't enough. He, he busted a radiator hose on the way home, but he won't know why I didn't put radiator hoses on it. But he told me he was broke. That was all the money that he had.

And he had spent a lot of money on it. He really did. He spent way more than what he should have. Truck need to be still sitting in the weeds. All right, that's Zebbeard on this week's episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. Put a pin in this episode with the new grandfather, Mister Zeb and Jeff. Their conversation. Wrap it up next week right here on Jaded mechanic.

Thanks for listening.

Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the changing the industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.

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