Pricing Challenges and Efficiency in the Auto Repair Industry with Christopher Johnson, Part 1

Because I've had to put two body harnesses in one car in the span of one week because of squirrels. And it happened a third time, but his insurance company was gonna drop him.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jada Mechanic podcast. I'm speaking with a fellow canadian former guest. Mister Christopher Johnson is back. Kind of reached out to me last week. He said, I wanted to. It's been almost a year since I was on. Did my first episode with you. Kind of wanted to fill you in on things that have developed.

So you said you had a lady come in with a 2018 Mazda three with a little bit of gear whine.

Yeah, I think she's complained of it before, so just had to drive it out. And, yeah, you got the typical gear whining. First gear, you throttle the gas. You can hear it come and go, come and go. I was like, oh, yes. So she needs a transmission. So we'll have to quote that out on Tuesday when all the recognitions are open and, yeah, give her some options.

And you think she'll be fine if she gets to use one?

She probably will be fine. Fine. Yeah, never had a problem. We've had some of these cars with, you know, half a million kilometers or more and yeah, they're fine. This is either a one off or she might have done. I don't know how she drives it.

You don't know. You can't say anymore. Right? Like, it used to be like a young kid comes in with a stick shift and it's like, oh, yeah, I know what's exactly. It's smoke clutch and, you know, but that's the thing. Sometimes when the clutch is still good, but it's got gear, wine, you wonder. Yeah, it's probably like you were saying she might have been just neglected. The fluid has probably never been done. So.

No, I don't think it has. And it didn't feel like, you know, reminding her of the last 18 times that we've told her she needed a training fluid change.

But, yeah, 230,000 km on it, you said. So, I mean, that's. Yeah, it's over the interval a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. And then you said you had your one advisor in zero two civic had to fix his brake line.

Yeah, he was off yesterday, then came in off the highway, said, you know, she got a little soft by the end of the off ramp there, brought her in and just misting it on one of the lines. I mean, it's no two civic and it's astounding that it still exists, but just barely. It just barely exists.

Yeah. Emotional attachment to life. Yeah, we get a lot of them lately. We've had a few of them in the last little bit. Not that, just that civic, but customers with emotional attachments to cars, man. It's like, I don't, you know, it's one thing when you can kind of tell, it's like, okay, they're unlimited funds. That's right. They're limping this thing along.

But then other people, it's just like we put in, well, we put a transmission on an zero four trailblazer two weeks ago, and it was high mileage. It's rotten. And it was like, why let it go? Like, it's not his only truck. Like, he's got another vehicle. It's older couple. It's just to kind of use it as their pick around junker leak. You know, junk jobs, lend it to people, that kind of thing. And it's like, just flog it, get rid of it.

Like, you know, so, I mean, we put a used tranny and we surpass the value of the vehicle for sure, but by tenfold. Yeah, right. So, and it's same thing. Put the used tranny in it. You put the, pull the pan off. It's right full of metal. And it's just like, document everything. Give the guy the option.

Like, what do you want to do here? Like, oh, for a little bit, I'll use it. Might as well put it in. It's like, all because this one that been, the transmission lines have been leaking and we recommended them like nine months ago, and he, him, ton, decided he wasn't going to, so he went home and parked it and I guess I forgot that they were leaking or something. He started using it again, and then he comes in, is like, oh, I got nothing after third gear. It's like, yeah. So I kind of did a temporary patch on the line and then, like, filled it and drove it. And it was same thing. As soon as it would get warm, it would not shift past third.

And it's like, well, she's, she's done, so, you know, but it's been, she said, it's kind of been a good year since we talked.

It has been since we talked last. You gave me a lot to think of. Like, stuff. I've a couple things I've never pondered before, especially, like, you know, my, my end game or. Yeah, say end game, but what I'll do. Yeah, exit strategy, that's, that's the phrase there. Yeah, but I started to think about that and, like. And that she got hard and hard, like, you know what? You know, being a foreman and parent, I'm teaching constantly.

I think that's probably a role I'd probably transition to once I can't turn a wrench anymore, or I can't. And of course, nowadays I've got some, uh, you know, arthritis is starting to reap in. Yeah, a little slowly. Especially, I noticed, in my hands, trying to get in back gun or open up the childproof doors at the house.

Yeah. You, um, do you find yourself dropping stuff a lot?

Uh, not that often, no. I just. My knees have been getting pretty crunchy, too. So I've transitioned to the. The knee pads, which I probably should have done. Yeah. A long time ago. If you haven't done it before, for a love of Christ, get some good knee pads.

Either volleyball or.

Yeah.

Or wrestling knee pads. The ones that slip on under your. Anyone listening, just do it.

And it's funny, I remember being, I don't know, 21, and an old, old shop owner at the time that I worked for him, he used to put them on for the little bit. They come out in the shop to. He, like, he'd do a tire repair once in a while, if he was backed up, we'd do an oil change and he'd put them on, and it was always, like, over top of his pants. Right. Then everybody'd laugh and make little jokes and all that kind of stuff. My knees have been gotten really bad in the last four months. Last six months, really. And I got a set of orthotics, and that's, I thought would help, but it doesn't.

So I took the orthotics out. Cause it's like, you know, I work the Monday, the Thursday thing, and then Friday, my knees are killing me. And then as I take. So those. Take those three days off, Saturday they start to feel a little bit better. Sunday they feel good, you know, better. And then Monday morning when I first go to work, they don't feel too bad. And then by Monday night, you know, your feet are.

Yeah, you get the plantar fasciitis thing happening again. And, you know, so I get it. When I sleep, leg pain's really bad. And then once I sit down, like when we were talking, I went and had lunches yesterday, sat down for like an hour, had lunch, go to stand up and walk out. It's like people are looking at me like I'm hobbling, you know? You know, yeah, I've got gray in my beard, but, I mean, I'm not 50 yet. Like, I'm still got two years to go to get to 50. So it's, it's a tough one. It's a toll on you, for sure.

You know, the drop in thing is, is really frequent lately. I noticed that I'll go to pick something up that's like you said, you get, you know, your fingers don't want to work. And look, I dropped a can of coke. Dropped, uh, you know, dropped the ratchet again. Drop the screwdriver, drop the socket. Like, it's just. And it's. I know where it is.

It's all impingement in my shoulders, and it's causing, you know, issues with my fingers. I've been able to feel sometimes. So the strength is still there. Like, I can still, you know, but it's just the weirdest thing.

So they got the pain mostly in the knuckles. They're like, kind of freeze up and get, like a stinging pain right through them.

Yeah. What really helped for me is I went to a lower powered impact gun. Instead of using the big half inch drive deWalt, the maximum one they have, I stepped down to that medium duty one. And, you know. Cause, and it's remarkable. You can do a lot with that little gun. Like, you take all your tires off. You know, you can.

Most of your suspension bolts will come out with it because that big DeWalt, just so heavy, right? It hammers. And then the young kid that we have, he went and bought one of those snap on the half inch air that everybody loves. I can't remember the number, the number on it.

I don't know.

But it's powerful, right? Loves it loud. I can remember I have two of them, but I'm just laughing at them because I'm like, yeah, you're not listening now, right? But you will. And ten years of using that thing because you're going to have that pain again. So. And I find me the worst thing is a hammer. If I have to pound a wheel bearing out or something like that, anything that I'm striking metal on metal in my hand, the next day, my arms. Hands are shot. They're junk.

So I bought one of those fancy wheel bearing pullers I've got, and then I've got the hub shocker as well. So just to try and for the little bit, I do it. Anything that I can help will save it, because, you know, I want to fish when I'm not working, I don't want to sit. And you need to use quite a bit of your elbow and your shoulder and your hands to fish. Yeah, but so what's. You kind of were talking. You're thinking teaching maybe?

I think that's a role I could transition to. Like ideally, probably at the trade school level, but that would be. They do enjoy teaching and instructing our other techs and the apprentices and, you know, guiding them through, and that would be the next step at that portion of my life.

You'd be good at it, too. You've got the right kind of attitude and the right personality. You're not to, you know, me, I would. I could teach them, but it's like my, sometimes my candor doesn't come across properly. You know, I can get a little short on fuse on some of them with frustration. So where's your. Much more laid back. But it's funny you mentioned that we had, there's an upcoming guest we're trying to deal still schedule it.

And he's a tech that taught the, did some of the apprenticeship training down here at Loyalist college in Belleville. And then I don't know what the whole story is yet. He's more, he's a friend of my brother than better acquaintance with my brother. And now he's gone back to wrenching, but I think he's gone back to wrenching for, like, heavy truck instead of automotive, so. But which, I mean, you know, is funny. Normally I would go the other way. I want to get off the heavy stuff when I was getting older, but I think he was fed up with the flat rate thing, too.

Oh, yeah, that can be. Can be a problematic. Yeah.

He's bounced around, I guess, from quite a bit of dealerships and, you know, and that's the thing in Belleville, there's a lots of opportunities to work, same as where I am. It's just that the culture thing is the hard thing to find, you know?

Yeah. Sometimes the opportunity is there because it's got the revolving door syndrome there.

Yeah. Like, indeed, in my area, every place, you know, it's. Some of the ads have been up there like four months still trying to fill a spot, and then that's just an indeed. You talk to any one of our tool truck drivers around. We've got three of them come to our shop and probably the same where you are. Any one of them, they could tell you could go to any shop that they go to and hit them with a resume and they'd hire somebody. Like they need people that bad.

Yeah, some of the shops around here like that, but they, at least our tool truck guys will tell you there's a reason they're hiring. You don't want to go there. You don't want to have to deal with that in the business coming from there either, sometimes.

Yeah. It's funny. Like, they don't get enough credit. The tool truck drivers. I was like the one post that came up last week where somebody in the changing industry said, well, our tool trucks part of the problem, and they're not wrong in some ways in the way they had to do business, but they're a very valuable asset for getting an inside perspective on what some shops are like. Right? Because all three of mine, they're great, and I work for a great owner, but they all know exactly, like, how that little bit, when you come out and you interact with them for ten minutes on a tool truck, they kind of get a real good vibe about what the place is like to work. That post was funny. Our tool trucks part of the problem.

The tooling cost is the problem. It doesn't matter. Going back to, like you and I were saying, those same wrench sets that we bought when we were starting out for 1999, they're now 79.9989. You know, it's. It's gone up remark. Now we're talking 1997 for me, was buying them versus, you know, 2024. So, of course these have gone up.

But, yeah, I don't. I don't think they're the problem. I mean, they offer a nice, you know, to your door solution, but do you blame canadian tire for the fact that you have, know, 18 fishing rods and, you know, 478 of the same jig whatnot? No, they just provide it there. It's nice. Oh, it's on sale. Then you get it. I mean, it's your own self control in that matter.

I counted up last week fishing rods. And it's funny because you said 18, and it's. It's closer to double that number. It's kind of a stupid sickness. Um, I sent a picture, actually, to Zeb beard. I sent him a picture just out in the garage of the stuff laying there. And he's just like, you have a problem. I do.

Because it, you know, and that's fun for me. Right. And tools now have gotten to be where, like, I go out to the truck, and it's like, they try to sell you something. It's like, I already have that. I already have that. Like, I'm. I'm here to pay for my scan tool. I'm here to pay for my subscription this month.

Yeah.

And that's it. I don't really need to buy sockets. I don't really need to buy hammers. I don't really need to buy screwdrivers, pry bars, like, but it's, you've chilled up enough.

And, you know, I've got the same point now. My new thing is all the diag tools and whatnot, which I probably buy more than I. I buy them in anticipation of needing them. Then I'll never need it for nine months then. And I start building my own because, yeah, I get. Yeah, and can't afford all the other stuff, so it just start reverse engineering and building some of my own.

And it's funny because, same thing, I see these little diagnostic stuff and tools that would really speed it up. But I mean, once you refine your process, your process becomes so fast that you might just do it still with a DvOm or test light and you still get to the result. The, the scan tool thing is the thing that I'm trying to pay off. And that's, you know, because I bought it when I, before I came to this shop because the shop that I was at wouldn't buy one. And it's not, it's not a terrible investment. You know, people would be like, there's no reason a technician should have to pay. I'm not, I'm not disagreeing. But sometimes we wind up in places where you work for an owner that just, like, has expectations, but doesn't understand that he needs to buy it, or she or they.

And, you know, for me, it just wasn't worth having the argument all the time about, here, fix this 2022 transit for a sly and door problem because it's in the fleet and it's like, what do you want me to look at exactly? Because, like, it's all got switches and sensors and this old solace has been updated since 2016. Doesn't even recognize the car. So what do you want to do? Right? And it's like, they don't want to. You can only fight with them so many times until it's like, it's either, okay, well, I'm gonna fight myself right out of this job, or I'm just gonna make the commitment. I make the commitment. And then, yeah, it served me well. It's, it's, it is handy even now at the shop because they have their own zeus and they have an autel. It's very convenient for me to just grab it right out of my cart, walk out to the car and start, you know, I don't have to.

Is it plugged in? Who had it last? Where is it?

Like, is it under a car? Up on the hoist or something like that? And, yeah, being used. So. So I've done that with a few tools, like, uh, of course, us living in the rust belt. I just went and bought a. The mini doctor venom.

Oh, cool.

That is, I bought that a couple of years ago. And that has, you know, saved my bacon way more times and saved me so much time than getting out the torches, cutting them over. But with our shop with scan tools, I made the shop buy a scan tool because we had so many used cars that are off brand. It's like, no, we need a scan tool, or we're shipping all this stuff out and losing money on it.

So my biggest tool expense now is lights, probably, like. And we were joking about that. That's the worst thing they ever did with a light, was put a magnet on it, right? Cause you stick it on the card and you forget it and it leaves. And, you know, who hasn't probably lifted a hood at some point, found somebody else's work light under the hood, stuck to something long dead. But it's like, ooh, free light day. I stopped buying the expensive ones. I buy them when they go on sale for 2020, $5 Princess auto. And, you know, buy four of them at a time.

And if they drop one and you break it, you throw in the trash, take it back and get a warranty claim. Like, they're great that way. And because for me, I always have a headlight on. And then our shops, not real well lit, so I'm always still working with a work light as well. And I have the big dewalt underhood light that I put on. So because I'm big on light, like, I'm not as young as I was, my eyesight has been corrected laserly, but it's still. It's a dark shop. There's a lot of shadows.

And that's been the biggest thing I tell everybody from a diagnostic standpoint or a quality work standpoint, is make sure you can see what you're doing, you know? And it's. It's helped me immensely throughout my whole career, is actually having. I'm. I'm a stickler for that. If prentice tries to show me something on a car and I walk over and he's working in the dark, I come on glued.

Like, where's your flashlight?

Where's your flashlight? Come on. Like, I.

Where is it? Where.

Where's.

Where's the problem here? I don't see that.

And then they get that look on the face like, I don't remember where I left it. So then I go back to my cart and I grab one of my seven or eight, and I come back over and it's like, here, let's see what we're working with.

I've always got the pocket flashlight and I wear a necklace. Then the necklace always put on my head so I can see everything. And I've got another set of necklace, and they're always on constant recircumcharge.

Yeah, it makes a big difference, though. It really does. Like, the better you can see it, the faster you can do something, is what I believe in. So. And the shops going good, you said that it is.

We've been refining our processes on stuff. We've come to a lot of good understandings, and at the start of this year, did, started a new paper, new pay plan for myself, which is up a couple bucks an hour, plus getting some bonuses on shop production rates on the shop production and all the other employee productions.

So nice.

Kind of more incentive for me to get them trained up, but also start shifting a lot of the. Get a lot of customer work out of them and getting our apprentices to call more work and complete that work as well, which I've always been a big fan of. I've seen some shops where the apprentices call a bunch of work, then it's just handed over to a tech. Well, what's in it for the apprentice to keep calling the work and to keep in the industry? There's no job satisfaction in that or sense of pride in their work.

How do they learn it if they don't get to do it? And then the attitude is going to be, why am I finding this work if I don't even get the opportunity to learn? You know, I mean, we talk all the time about a DVI and proper inspection, how vital it is. No, no doubt, no one, no argument there. But if you, if you've got your young people, you know, finding this work, and then they don't get to be involved in it at all, you know, you don't necessarily have to have them do the whole job, but I mean, it's least, you know, like, we had one, our young person called the CV axle boot was leaking on an older General Motors front wheel drive. It, the car came back, we didn't have the boot and stock, just, you know, and so, but they got to be involved in seeing how it was actually done because they'd never done a cv boot before, you know, and it was the situation of like, it was, um, I don't know, Malibu or something like that. Passenger side, one of the ones that are bolts in the engine, like on the side of the engine block. Like you're familiar with the monsters. So I mean, to buy the whole axles, a little bit of money and there was nothing. No clicking, no whatever.

Just somebody had done a previous repair and stuck a hose clamp around the axle cv and that's leaking grease. So, you know, it was one of those ones where it's like we can probably get by with just doing the boot. So we did it. So it's been a long time since I just done a boot. And so it was kind of fun to share that with our co op student on, hey, you know, this is how we do these. And yeah, good repair for the customer. You know, it was, it worked well. Those ones that they bowled on the side of the engine like that, that big long, they're expensive.

And I've fought some of them on Mazdas, I fought them on Nissan's, I fought them on Kia's high end days. They suck sometimes to get them out of the bracket. Thank God. Now finally the aftermarket, some of them, they come with the bracket and the bearing and the whole thing.

Yeah.

Then, you know, because, yeah, they can.

Be like six, seven, $800 almost sometimes. Especially if you get in the factory. And I love doing boots.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you can kind of, you can, you can kind of push the time up a little bit and go, hey, like, you know, even if we take 2 hours to do this boot, you're still going to save a substantial amount of money versus buying a $1000 axle, you know, and you're still into the labor to swap the damn thing out.

So yeah, it's just, just been started leaking. I mean unless it's been torn wide open in Australia, then you throw an axle in it, you don't know the condition, but used to do those on our, have to do those on our ice racers up in, you know minded when it's -40 yeah, we got some clicking through new axle in it.

You had something interesting come in your shop this week, didn't you? It was like a race car.

Oh yeah, that was uh, as an 88 Mustang, a dirt track car from our local track here at Brighton. He had just put the engine and harness in. It's an 88 Mustang body, right? Body chassis.

Yeah.

But he had a, it was a ranger drivetrain in it. Before then that engine didn't make enough rpm so we found a Mazda three.

Okay.

Engine, engine and harness. And he put that in. But he. I found out he snipped too many wires. It wouldn't start. He had the security light flashing, which means he ends half shut off. Yeah. Not communicating.

And it wouldn't crank. So he had several issues.

So I think he.

I think he called around and people were kind of laughing at him. They didn't want to touch it. And we're like, well, it's a Mazda three. That won't start. That's all I care about. Don't give a shit what it's attached to.

It's so you could plug in. Right. With the factory scan tool. And it would talk and everything. Or not, like, it would talk once it was restored. Right? Is that how I understood it was?

Yeah, it was. Yeah. So that was pretty. Well, the only issue with it, because he kept the entire harness, like, engine harness, everything. Even the door lock and actuators were stuck inside, plugged up and zip tied up. Like, literally just pulled everything out. It's like, dude, I don't care that it's a stock car or a whatever. It's.

It's an zero nine Mazda three. Bring it in.

Right on. Cool.

So that's kind of.

Yeah, it's kind of a fun change for what you're used to.

Oh, a little bit. It gives you, oh, I was happy as a. Happy as a clan once I got to work done on that. It's like, oh, I got to use my brain for once. Not just, you know, slinging brakes and control arms or stab links or oil changes and whatnot.

Did you get to rule, test it?

No, we pushed it out because you hadn't bled the clutch out. Didn't know if the tranny had any fluid. He had just literally stuck it in there. Then it wouldn't start. Then he works from, like, 04:00 in the afternoon to 130 in the morning. So he didn't have time for that.

That's not bad. At least it's something that, you know, they didn't come to you, I don't think, with, like, oh, we want it done for an hour. You know what I mean?

Like, now, that was the two days before that cx nine, I think you. That post up the picture of, you know, the cable ends that were twisted together with the side post one, like, pretty well twisted on there. Like a Marette.

Yeah. Yeah.

That guy came to us with a. I don't want anything else looked at except this. I got a guy for everything. Well, here I got another guy for the other stuff. I don't trust the dealerships. You've been yet? You know. You know, the spiel.

Oh, yeah.

Except. Except his other guy, he gladly paid to cobble that shit in. So that was joyous. Fix those and, you know, find the blown fuse for the cluster. It's like ever since I put this battery in it. Oh, it was a security issue. But the cluster fuse was blown and the. And there was an engine fuse for the PCM that was missing completely, like, left the vehicle.

So someone took it out at some point or sabotaged it or. Yeah, I don't know. Anyhow, that's. That was a fun week.

Yeah, I. I saw that. Saw that post. Now I know everyone you're thinking about. I made that comment. Oh, yeah. I used to because I think people think I was joking, but I used to keep, like, you know, a photo album of, like a photo of my phone. Not a photo album.

Like, know, grandma had of stuff that you take pictures of. Like the other. My guy. You know, my guy shop would send. It would wind up in the dealership. And I could still remember them. Some of them. One got immediately popped in my head was that there was a caravan that had harness issues.

I know it's a caravan. And the rad fan wouldn't. Wouldn't work. And they. They broke down somewhere up in Quebec, northern Quebec somewhere. And the guy took an extension cord, cut the middle out of it, took two ends, wired the one end to the battery, the other end to the two power wires for the fan. And he left it. He thought he was smart tabernacle.

He left it hanging through the bumper. So when he would just go out to it in the morning and he would plug it in, the fan would run all the time. And then when you parked it, you just unplugged the extension cord because Tavernack, it would run your battery down.

Yeah.

And can still remember. I could picture my head, the people coming around to my bay when we drove in and everybody looking at it going, what the hell? And then all you have to just kind of say is like, yeah, northern Quebec. You know, good on them. They. They broke down and they got them back on the road. Right. That's kind of the attitude I take. But I was like, there was a lot of wiring damage that had to be fixed.

And those. Those caravans had a lot of harness issues right near where they would rub on the solenoid pack and rot out and stuff. And so they were always a problem there. But I remember that van had a multitude of other problems after we fixed that and got the. You know, it came back with more and more codes and it was like.

Roadside repair, but a temporary repair.

Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, they were always like. I think back to so many of them and how many. I fixed that harness in different spots and it, you know, you say the same thing like guys take a razor knife and go down to harness and like, I don't, I don't do that. I learned very early on because you would get that harness back and you'd open it up and it was little spot of green, little spot of green, little spot of green. Like everywhere that, that razor blade nicked that harness. That's not self healing probe. You know, it's junk.

And more of those vans. I probably should have just chucked harnesses in way back when to do it right, you know, but there was limited funds back then. You know, the warranty. Nobody wanted to hard to get harness parts like it was. You know, Chrysler was great about being able to get connectors. Their, their system was fantastic for connectors and the blow up. But trying to get a whole harness, like, I never saw one come in faster than, you know, six weeks. Like crazy.

Now go ahead. Sorry.

That's a good thing it seems about or whatever. Countered with the domestics. At least you can get a connector. Whereas with our cars you can't get a connector. Get a whole flipping harness. Because I've had to put two to two body harnesses in one car in the span of one week because of squirrels. Oh, and it happened a third time. But his insurance company was gonna drop them if he had to make a third.

You know, there's a 6000 or almost probably a $6,000 claim each time.

Yeah.

They were gonna drop them for that. Because of squirrels.

Yeah. Oh, they're chewing right through the end.

Of the connector, not even leaving six inches. Nothing. Not that you can put anything in between. You gotta.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's frustrating, isn't it? Like it just. And I can remember so many times I just needed one or two and it was like, this is not in the dealership days, but after, since. And you call up the, the record yard and they don't want to sell you the whole. They don't want to sell you the connector. And I'm thinking, you guys can't possibly tell me that these connectors are moneymakers because every time like you'd get a transmission or something from them, they normally don't even unplug it. They cut it off. So go out there and I'll pay you.

Hell, I'll give you $70 $80 for one connector. Just take it as if you cut it off and, you know, but no, they didn't want to do it. Didn't want to do it. And I, like, nobody, I think goes a junkyard, tries to buy a hole harness. And, you know, and their guys, now I can remember kicking around the yards when I was a kid. And you can walk out and it's like, oh, I need a, you know, speed sensor for a kei car. You can walk out there and like, cut it off and, you know, give the guy $5 and see you later. Like now.

No, they don't even want you back there. And everything is. I just look at it and it's like, dude, you're missing so much more money. Like, I watch Eric Owen. He's lucky. Just did a video I saw and walked out and was like, he can go right to his local yard two minutes down the road from him. Goes in the back, takes a toolkit, pulls it in, take off. He's pulling like injectors from some kind of equinox customer used car special.

Yeah, that was the three four Wilbur's.

And, you know, so they've got six eBay injectors in it running. Terrible ebay mass airflow. And he's like, oh, the injectors are shot. It goes. Pulls them at Wilbur's for, you know, probably $50. Right. And it's just like, I mean, I. There isn't a yard around here anymore, my local area, that will let you go back and cut off what you needed.

Right.

So, yeah, I don't think you got them much right there. No more pick and poles. I mean, if you go to the city, you can go into some of the bigger pick and poles and I think Peterborough has some. But, you know, we used to do that all the time. That's how we got our old shipbox Hondas.

Run.

Go there and. Yeah, grab a pocket full of sensors and away you go.

And I remember seeing, after I move over from Ottawa, the 1 yd that was really big got bought out by somebody else and they advertised like one Saturday a month. They were doing that thing, you know, you could, whatever you could haul out there for a, you know, guys throw an engine on a hood and drag it out, that kind of thing. And I got thinking like, God, I moved home at the wrong time, you know, because there's probably some sweet jeep parts back then you could have got. So.

But it's grabbing. You cut, you go in, cut a seatbelt out of a car, you wrap it around an axle and you throw it over your shoulders and.

Yeah.

Yeah, walk out like a Sherpa and away you go.

Get a hernia and save yourself $300. Yeah. Um, I miss those days. I really do. When this industry was like, I don't. I guess when I was younger, it was. That was just part of the fun, you know? Um, so when I saw that thing with the race car, I was thinking, that'd be cool, you know, just to have something different, you know, I mean, and not pressure. Like, that's the whole thing that always killed it for me, is the pressure, you know, the pressure of having to fix it in a certain amount of time for a certain amount of money.

Yeah.

That's what I love about this job is that, you know, he doesn't really get that way at all. Like, we're tracking our time, we're tracking our production, our efficiency. But, I mean, it's like he doesn't, you know, if. If he bills a customer an hour and in 90 minutes, you come to them with the answer, you're not punished because it took 90 minutes. You know what I mean? Like, if anything, it's. They should have, probably need to be upping their initial inspection rates, you know? But it's a, we're walking a fine line because our door rates higher than, like, the four other shops that are around us, we're higher than they are. So it's a situation of, you know, people are looking at going, wow, you guys cost a lot of money. So then some of our labor and our inspection times, we're backing down on the time to keep the prices more comparable, which, you know how that works.

It doesn't work.

Yeah, not really. People are going to come to you. They're going to keep coming to you because of the quality and the service and.

Yeah. So what do you got, what do you got waiting for you when you go back on Tuesday?

Well, we'll see if we can price out the transmission for that one lady. And I looked at a bunch of safeties at the end of this week because I've somehow managed to get caught up and work. Usually I've got a, you know, a stack of work orders that I'm, you know, I'm six deep on that. I'm. When you get time, let's get this said then, you know, customer work goes pear shaped or they can't help but, yeah, sell literally everything. So. So then we're getting behind. So, yeah, it's not been, it's not been too, too bad lately because we're pretty well at the end of tire season, because we started, we started March nice and early.

Get the early birds in and try and stretch out because we learned several years ago to stretch it out. As far as Foscos, we were getting, you know, three cars deep parked out back or stacked.

Yeah.

And you can't sell any work and you're having to get them back. Well, yeah, if we limit our appointments down, we can actually get the work done or if need be, get some internal work done and get some safeties and pdis through.

That was, that was our fall tire season was very much like that. We, like, we. It seemed to be a timing thing. We just got slammed, so we barely had enough time to inspect the cars, barely enough time to prep the estimates for the other work. And at the end of the day, you're like, holy crap. Like, we're just existing to do tires. Right. And that's tough on everybody's mental game because it's just like, first of all, for what they pay a licensed tech on some jobs, like a tire job, there's not a whole lot of fat left there.

Like, it doesn't make much sense. And then, you know. But it's been better this time because what, a lot of what we recommended in the fall, a lot of our customer base now when they come back to get their tires taken off, we're getting those jobs now, which is good.

Yeah.

And it's spreading it out a little more, which is nice because get the.

Future cells in there like, you don't. You don't need this now, but we'll need this by then. And quote them you can price. And they know at least what to expect. They can save their pennies and, yeah.

They can budget for three months later. Right. That's better than sometimes showing them something. And it's like it needs, like, it really shouldn't drive out of here. That's a tough call. Right. Like, it's so hard to. And then you got the new safety regs that are coming out here.

You've done anything about that? Are you seeing that the new yet?

No, we only just got the old books back in stock that we've been out of for six months. Yeah.

And that's it. And then. So we. We were. We. We ran out of books. Right. So people are listening down in the states, there's a safety book that you have to fill out that documents your inspections up here for when you do a used car safety that also be documented by the government, tracked in the whole thing.

And the government surprised supplies you with the books. Well, they stopped printing them probably last year, or stop printing maybe during COVID and inventory ran, who knows? And then they're rolling out a new program that they're talking about up here, which is going to be hooked up the way drive clean used to be done. Where I think you're just going to, like, shoot the VIN number with a camera and then you kind of have to actually have the camera as you do the inspection on the car. Right?

Yeah, I think so. I thought it was. They were working that into more of the heavy duty stuff for starting the drive on system, I think it's called. But I think the problem with our old style books and whatnot is they started the idea of this new system and moved everyone that worked at the old one to the new one.

Yeah.

And didn't have anyone to take care of the old one that they still needed to take care of.

Yeah.

But it's government, so I mean, that was to be expected.

Yeah. The Ontario government's not a stellar record for, you know, smooth transitions. Um, that's the rumor that I've heard coming down the pipe, is that it's going to be very much like drive cleaning. You're going to have, like, a camera on you and as you're inspecting the vehicle, the cameras running the whole time. Right. Just like, drive clean used to be where it's like they're watching the vehicle on the dyno to make sure that it is the one that you say it is. Um, and then, you know, because this is the same thing, like now with free license plate renewals, everybody in Ontario is like, yeah, I don't have to pay for that, but let's be real. They're gonna go and get the money somewhere else.

You know, that's just a given. They're gonna. They gotta generate that tac dollar somewhere. So it'll be the new inspections, which I'm excited. If it means that we get some of this junk off the road, you know, if we finally come to a, like, every other year, mandatory safety inspection, if it starts to get some of this crap off the road that they told us that drive clean would do, then I'm all for it.

You know, that'd be handy because meta cars, even, they see you've been telling them, telling the person for a year and a half, you need brakes, you need, you know, your front ends falling apart, or the. You get three wheels that are almost bluetooth. Like, I. I don't care where you get it fixed. Yeah, I'm telling you to do this, for love of Christ. Get it fixed somewhere before you kill me. Coming the other direction with my kids in the car.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm being selfish in this. Don't kill me.

That's right. Yeah. I had a. An zero three Sierra Silverado Sierra come in, and right out in front of where I live is called Amherst island, which is in Lake Ontario and Amherst islands. Not a little island, it's pretty big islands, several kilometers, I don't know how many, what's the population on the island, but. So no paved roads. And this guy brings in his zero four Silverado for, you know, an inspection, oil change and whatnot. And I've got pictures of my phone.

The mud that was caked on the bottom of this thing was like over a foot thick on anywhere. Like it looked like it had been in a. In a. In a mine shaft somewhere with the kind of that clay mud that stuck all over everything. And he was like, so he's big on. He was getting new tires or getting his tires changed over. Excuse me. And he's like, could you check the spare? I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's flat.

The rim of it is so rotten that there's. And then of course, you can see it's the original 2004 circa tire. So cracked, there's no air. And it's like, yeah, you need a rim and tire for your spare, and you probably need a carrier because there's no way. There's no way that'll wind down.

Yeah.

And so sure enough, we. It's like, well, let's try it anyway. So they. We sprayed a bunch of penetrate fluid on there, and he came back a week later, it wouldn't wind down. We cut it with a torch. Then we give him an estimate for the new tire carrier. He's like, I'll just throw it in the back. I just use this thing to go.

Go to the dump. And it's like, yeah, yeah. So it had. At least he put brakes on it because they were shot. There was a wheel bearing falling out of it. Like it was typical 2004 Chevy truck. Rough. But some of the dirt, the mud, I think, is keeping the rust from coming through.

So, you know, it's like goster Paris. It's like a butt pack.

It literally looked like that. Like spray foam insulation or something. And I mean, fuel pump still works because, I mean, that thing, when it comes to where it's going to need a fuel pump, I hope they retire that truck because it's going to be rotten, you know, probably so sealed in.

There right now no air can get to it, so you can't rot.

Yeah. Yeah. What are you seeing for? Are you seeing different trends in repairs this year versus last year? Or.

How do you mean? Or just like certain items we're seeing more of this year?

What's, what's some of the high movers at the Mazda dealer right now, like, really moving a lot.

Uh, typical. Like we've been doing the last few years with a lot of rear springs, a lot of rear shock mounts because the shock mounts are aluminum, so they just rot right out or crumble.

Yeah.

At least, uh, there are some steel aftermarket ones we can use, which are good rather than replacing the entire shock because. Yeah, normally, yeah, if you're replacing the whole shock, a lot of times you can't air hammer the bottom off the pit it sits in because it's just right rotten on there. So you're, you know, spending half an hour with the cutoff wheel sawing through it.

Yeah.

And a lot of fuel. Fuel pump bodies because, like, the Chevy's like the, the top ring.

Yep.

I think I posted a video that you, you might have seen some of my facebook of me hammering that one out.

Yes. Yeah.

Usually people will find that when they fill up the tank and it starts spilling out down the side, or they get an evaporator, an 0442 evap, small leak because the top, the fuel pump body just starts cracking because the ring gets rusty, presses down on it and cracks it.

So mine. Yeah, I did a Chevy truck about, probably an oh eight, I think, couple about a month ago. And same thing, that ring was seized. Like, I had cut it with a cutoff wheel and then pry it out in pieces to get the fuel pump out of the top of the tank. Like, it was just, I'd never seen something like that in my life. And people like, oh, you just hit it with an air hammer. No. Tried that.

And I went to the boss, I said, we might have to buy a tank for this one. He's like, God, I hope not. A tank's like a $1,000. I'm like, I'll do what I can do. Just, you know, keep a fire extinguisher handy.

Yeah.

And I'm going to get over there with a whiz wheel and cut it into pieces and take it out. But, yeah, we had a fire scare. Um, actually, it was funny. Um, we, I was doing. So we had a 1984 g 30 motorhome come in. Uh, there's a backstory this. The, another shop had that was actually going out of business had done an inspection for her and said, it needs x, y and Z had a wheel seal leak. And so it's a big dual wheels floating rear axle and hub seal bearing seals leaking.

So I go and do the hub seal, you know, do it, spray it all down. And I'm waiting. I've got it all apart. I'm waiting for the seal to come in. And the other tech, they put me on a different job. And the other tech, he's going to do the exhaust. So there's a bucket sitting under the hub that caught some oil and some of the brake clean. And I don't think he clued into what it was, what happened, but he, of course, lights up with the torch and goes to cut the exhaust off.

And I can see it right from watching in the other bay, the torch land in the. You know, and I told him, be careful. Like we. Yeah, yeah. And the torch landed in the oil bucket and. Right, the brake flu. So I run over and grab the thing and throw it out the bay door. And as it's going out the bay door, I'm grabbing the.

You know, because it's. I don't want to catch that car on fire. I don't want to catch our hunter alignment or tire balancer on fire. So it's like I'm kicking it out the bay door, and he's running behind me with a fire extinguisher to spray it. So, yeah, it was funny. So, yeah, I mean, that might have been the best thing to happen for that 1984 motorhome if it caught on fire. But, you know, I'd rather always. Cars catch on fire in the parking lot, not inside the shop.

Yeah, yeah, I've gotten the. Do a lot more of those people. I got good at getting those out because it's got, you know, eight j's screws on there that we were at one point when we first started this, putting tanks in because we couldn't get those screws out. But then I went to training and was talking with another tech at lunch.

And he's like, just.

Just try this. And gave you some tips on how to get that. Where I was like, oh, then the first one came straight out, so, you know, so now it's a $600 repair, not a $1600 repair.

Nice. Good. I know. I remember I used to do the fuel tank levels on senders and whatnot, on top of the old, like, the diesel trucks on, like, an international or whatever, where they're right by the front steps, right on either side, those saddle tanks and. Yeah, those stupid machine screws that hold them in. There's a lot of them that we, like. I, you know, hit him with the top of the air hammer, right? And, like, peen them off, free them up. There's a lot of them, though, that was just like, you know, we ended up having to put the tank in because you could not get the screws out.

Right. Like, it was just, you know, shitty design. Terrible. But, yeah, Russ is. Russ is a fantastic thing we're doing. Um, somebody posted about in another group, I don't know if you saw it, and it was the big, oh, we had a caravan in, and we did all these parts on the estimate. Somebody said they had a quote for injectors and a quote for this. Not all.

Well. And the one person said, well, I've never changed an injector in a Chrysler in years. Right? And I used to say that, and then I've been watching, and a lot of the pentastars are coming in, and they need injectors. And I had a customer with one, and it didn't have misfires. It had a fuel trim and balance fault for one bank, and it was very intermittent, wouldn't happen all the time. And I went through, and I finally road test it for, like, 45 minutes. And I just graphed the. The injector on time of that bank, those three on that bank, and you could see that one was consistently always using more fuel, adding more fuel than another.

And I'm not. I'm talking, like, less than 10%, but, like, six to 8% more injector on time, on one injector versus the other, but never a corresponding misfire. Never had a misfire fault. Nothing. And talked to different people, like, yeah, doing injectors and those. And again, you talk to the other guys that work at, oh, I fixed one of them with a cam once, and I'm like, no, that's. Maybe you did, but it. You must have missed her.

I don't have misfires, so, like, I'm not going down that road. I did it pass an RC test, like relative refresh and everything. So we put the back three in. We gave the option of doing six. She did the back three on that bank because that's the only was coded for. And it fixed it. It's been good since. And, you know, so it made me laugh when he said, yeah, because.

Same thing. All my years at the dealer Chrysler, I put in less than five injectors.

Yeah.

The whole time I was there on the old stuff, but those pennistars, they're the injectors are pretty big mover. They're doing a lot of them, so it's a good job. Pays great. 3.6. I love. That's such an awesome engine to work on. It tastes so good. Oil coolers, now you do them with your eyes shut.

We've done so many, right?

Yeah.

My own jeep needs one, and I'm holding off on doing it because it's like, I want to buy the dorman aluminum body one and put it in, but it's like $600, right? By the time I buy it and do it, and I'm like, it's only, it's only, I know it's there because I can smell it. It's not wet, but it's on a long drive when it gets hot, you know, it's opening up a little bit, and I can smell the coolant coming out of it, so. But, yeah. So what else are you into?

Oh, well, it's Miata season now. That's spring. The tire season is done. All the Miatas have sprung out. So we'll be getting them in ready for their, you know, thousand kilometers over the next a few months and then go back into storage.

What are their. What are those customers like?

They're not actually too bad. Some of them are a little on the fussier side, especially with the newer ones.

Yeah.

But all in all, not too bad. Especially the ones that have the older miatas, like 88. Yeah, the 89s up until like an zero, two, or oh four, whatever that body style is. The end. And bees. Yeah, the ones that. Ones that still have the timing belt.

Yeah, yeah.

Remaining. Those love working on those things, but they get.

Yeah.

Now some of them are getting so many oil leaks. We've been doing a few engine removal, like the oil pans leak and the top ends leak, and we're like, we'll just pull the engine out. All new gaskets.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, all. All the bolte on the stuff, all those new gaskets. Slap it back in so you have a nice, you know, clean driveway, no dripping oil everywhere.

And that's Christopher Johnson on this week's episode of the jaded Mechanic podcast with Jeff Compton. Put a pin in their conversation today. Next week, though, we'll wrap it up.

Be sure to listen then.

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 ASaW 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 ten. Mm. And we'll see you all again next time.

Pricing Challenges and Efficiency in the Auto Repair Industry with Christopher Johnson, Part 1

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Ford Mustang

Ford Ranger

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