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Some people just need to know how stuff works...some don't care as long as it works...Why a little knowledge can save you a bundle
Some people just need to know how stuff works...some don't care as long as it works...Why a little knowledge can save you a bundle
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About this episode
Exploring the balance between knowing how your vehicle works and simply enjoying its functionality, this episode shares personal anecdotes and valuable lessons from the host's 47-year automotive career. Listeners will learn about the importance of understanding basic vehicle maintenance, the impact of front-wheel drive on tire wear, and the significance of regular oil changes. The discussion also touches on the evolution of automotive technology and the future of self-driving cars, emphasizing the need for drivers to stay informed to save money and enhance safety.
Topics:
basic vehicle maintenance
front-wheel drive impact
tire rotation importance
oil change frequency
automotive technology evolution
self-driving cars
safety features
customer service at dealerships
vehicle maintenance responsibility
weight distribution in cars
Email Lennie at [email protected]
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Too Afraid to Ask
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Cadillac Escalade
"...nd the second fastest drivers are ladies in black escalades or Chevy Suburbans."
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Buick Encores
"And the slowest drivers are little old men in Buick Encore's. Okay, so I hope I haven't lost half my audience"
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Hey, folks, welcome to another edition of my car guru.
If you're anything like me, which I'm sure there are some people out there that are, and maybe
a lot of them are men, maybe some women, I'm not discriminating here.
Do you have to know how things work?
Do you need more information, or is it just acceptable to you that it does work?
I'm one of those guys that, okay, I see, it works, I like it.
How's it work?
What makes it go?
That's how I learned a lot about engines.
When I first started in this business, well, really not full-time in 1978, but before that,
when I was working during my college years in high school, if I saw a technician tearing
an engine apart, I just wanted to go in and ask them questions.
Even after I got out of college, when I always wore a shirt and tie, my dad kind of insisted
on it in those early days before things got less formal.
And I was in the shop doing just that.
I was watching one of my technicians, and he was attaching a backing plate onto a, what
was that?
I think it was a transfer case for a four-wheel drive.
And so back then, they used this material that used squeeze out of tubes.
It was like epoxy, or it's a gasket, basically, material.
It's rubberized, but it comes out liquid, then it dries.
And so you put it all around the edge of the two components that are going together,
and then you put the screws in, tighten it up.
While I was standing on the other side watching him, he's tightening down these screws
with an air wrench.
And all of a sudden, I hear a pop and feel a searing pain in my left breast.
And also happened to look down right after it happened.
And on my pink shirt and my new tie, I had red rubberized sealer all over me.
And he started laughing instantly because it was pretty funny.
I was in pain.
I literally was shot with a piece of metal from about two or three feet away.
Just imagine if that had hit me in the eye, but it didn't hit me in the chest and embarrassed
me a little bit.
But I didn't know what happened until we looked at the back of the case of the transfer
case.
And when he had tightened that down, it created so much pressure that it blew the back
of that aluminum case off.
Just one little piece where the screw had pushed down hard enough to create that pressure and
it busted loose and it shot me.
Now I'd like to have a dollar for every time that story was told at my expense after
that.
But anyway, I did learn a lesson.
I learned a lesson about where to stand when somebody is doing something like that.
You know, there are so many different ways to get hurt in a service department.
That is not an easy job.
I respect people with tremendous technical knowledge, you know, the amount of risk that
is involved.
But, you know, they've learned over time how to minimize that risk.
I had it early on when front-wheel drive vehicles came out, the first front-wheel
drive vehicle that, well, it wasn't the first.
The Olds Torin Auto was the first General Motors vehicle that was front-wheel drive.
They were building front-wheel drive vehicles back in the 30s, late 20s and early 30s, a
company called CORD, all of their vehicles were front-wheel drive.
But still, front-wheel drive was new to General Motors in the late 70s and early 80s.
Well, Chevrolet comes out with this incredible masterpiece called the Chevy Citation.
I'm joking.
I'm not joking that they came out with it.
I'm joking that it was a masterpiece.
Because it was not.
And it was something totally new because when my technicians would raise the hood, instead
of the engine being mounted longitudinally front to back, it was side to side, transverse
mounted engine.
And instead of using a typical engine and then having the transmission behind it,
the transmission sat below the engine.
And they didn't call it transmission anymore.
It was called a transaxle because the transmission and the axle were made together.
Well, you can imagine if you have the engine and the transmission, it's all mounted in
front of the firewall in front of the driver.
It's going to change the weight distribution of the vehicle.
And in essence, 60 to 65% of the weight was over the front wheels.
And another interesting phenomenon that they had really, well, I guess the engineers
considered it, but we didn't, was that when you had that much front weight over the
wheels, then, and plus the front wheels are doing the driving now, no longer is the
power being sent to the rear wheels.
It's all being done up front.
That's a lot to ask for a set of tires on the front.
I mean, they've got to do the steering.
They've got to do 70% of the braking.
And all of the power that gets to the road goes through the front end.
That's a lot.
And so we had to change our recommendations as far as, like, tire rotations are
concerned because since the front tires are going to be handling all of that and
dealing with all the extra weight, they're going to wear out sooner.
And early on, we had customers that, you know, they were used to rotating their
tires every 6,000 miles.
We had folks wearing out tires in 25,000 miles when they were used to
their tires lasting for 50 or 60,000 miles in some cases.
You know, rear-wheel-drive vehicles aren't as hard on tires as front-wheel-drive
vehicles are.
And see, most vehicles that are on the road today are front-wheel-drive.
And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to rotate your tires every
time you get your oil changed.
And I recommend the oil change at 5,000 miles and get your tires rotated
at the same time.
Maintain pressures in between the time that you get your tires rotated
and your tires will last at 40,000 to 50,000 miles.
Fail to do that, and you're buying a set of tires for a thousand to
$2,000 every 25,000 miles.
You don't want to do that.
But see, that's one of the many things that we learned.
One of my technicians learned it the hard way at the old Chevy store.
He put, first time he'd ever changed the oil on a Chevy Citation.
It was a V6 model.
And I think we had started selling them just a, I don't know,
three to six months earlier.
And he put it up on a lift.
It was an in-ground lift, but it had these two arms, or four arms,
that basically reach out from the post to lift the vehicle up.
So he had it balanced there like he thought he was supposed to.
And he went to his toolbox, which was right in front of the front bumper,
and was getting some tools.
And as he moved to his left to turn to get, to go back to the vehicle,
the vehicle started to move forward.
Again, it's eight feet in the air.
It moves forward and then in a very, just very suddenly,
completely slides off of the lift and into the toolbox
where he was standing just seconds before.
Another valuable lesson, a lesson about weight distribution.
You had to put a front-wheel drive vehicle
on the lift differently than he had ever done before.
And that could have cost him his life.
And that happened just two stalls down from where I was shot.
But knock on wood, that was the last time
that a vehicle ever fell off a lift in my 47-year career.
And that was about, about three years in to my career
when those wonderful citations came out.
But there were a lot more front-wheel drive vehicles to come,
and there were a lot of learning curves
involved in dealing with that.
And I'll be back in just a minute.
Okay, I am back.
Just as a reminder, send me a text to 423-552-2020
and I'll forward you a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook,
which will, well, it's helping people save money already.
I mean, I've had multiple folks tell me
that they've downloaded the guidebook,
they've gone shopping, and it has saved them money,
a lot of money, in many cases.
So, 423-552-2020, send me your email address
and I'll forward you a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook.
It is totally free, by the way.
But it's worth a lot more than that.
So, learning curves.
What do you really need to know
fundamentally about your vehicle?
You don't need to know exactly how the engine works.
I do, and people of my ilk need to know stuff like that.
How a transmission works.
What's the difference between a regular transmission
with gears in it versus a CVT transmission?
You know, these are things that you have to be aware of
because of the life cycle
of those particular types of components.
You know, you want something that's gonna last,
especially if you're one of those people
that are hard on car dealers,
and you buy a car, wear it completely out,
take it to the junkyard, and then go buy another car.
You know, you may buy a new vehicle every 10 to 15 years.
Bless you!
I think that's wonderful.
It's probably the most sound advice you could give
to anybody is just buy a car and wear it out.
But most people don't operate that way.
They hit 100,000 miles, they think it's time to trade.
Even though the life cycle for that vehicle
could be 300,000 miles.
They don't want a vehicle that has that many miles on it.
They want to take advantage of the latest safety advances,
which that does advance a lot.
Haven't seen a whole lot in safety
as far as advances in the last five years or so.
I mean, the latest was the automatic braking
and the cross-traffic alert
and the lane-keeping technology and the hands-free driving.
If you want to call that safe,
I'm not sure exactly whether it is or not,
but those are some of the latest safety advances.
Crashworthiness, I don't know that we're gonna
really advance the ball any further
in terms of getting hit with another vehicle,
broadside or offset frontal impact.
I think we're pretty much there
as far as the technology is concerned.
So the next level seems to be AI
and what it's gonna be able to do
as far as being installed on our vehicles
and keep us from hitting each other.
Keep intersections safe.
That could be the number one thing right there
if they would just figure out a way to cure stupidity
when it comes to intersections.
Have smart traffic lights that communicate with vehicles
that force them to stop.
You do that, you eliminate,
I would say 50% of all traffic accidents.
The rest of them, curing our recklessness,
is to, I don't know, they're taking away our freedoms,
but if there's a speed limit,
then the speed limit sign changes.
You know, my car knows when the speed limit has changed.
It says it right there on my screen.
And when the speed limit changes, my car slows down.
I don't have the power to exceed the speed limit.
How about that one?
How would you feel about that?
Do you drive over the speed limit?
I do.
Just ask my wife.
I'm probably on city streets.
I might be five to 10 miles per hour over
just because it feels right.
It's not because I'm intentionally breaking the law.
That's just how fast I'm going.
I'll see a speed limit sign, I'll look over
and then look at my speedometer and I'll say,
whoops, but do I slow down?
No, usually not.
What about interstates?
In Tennessee, I think that, well,
there's some that have 75 mile per hour speed limits.
Maybe, I'm not sure.
I can't remember because I don't pay attention to them.
I mean, I'm looking at my speedometer.
If I'm doing less than 80, I'm good on the interstate.
The sad thing is, I'm being passed left and right.
If I'm in the middle lane, I'm being passed on both sides.
Cars flying by at 90 and 95 miles an hour.
It's just the way it is on the interstate.
What if the car wouldn't go faster than the speed limit?
And then on two lane roads, twisty roads, whatever,
your car would, if it went off the road,
it would automatically correct itself.
You know, if there were lines painted on the outside edge
of the road and lines in the middle,
the car would stay between those lines.
And, you know, the only thing that I would hate to give up
is the ability to steer the car.
Because I enjoy driving.
You know, I wonder what percentage of the people
would be fine with a self-driving car.
You know, something that just picks them up at the house.
They get in, there's no steering wheel in it.
And if they're elderly,
they don't have to worry about being able to see
or being able to react quick enough.
It would just take them straight to the doctor's office,
let them out, go out in the park and lot in park.
When they come back out, the car would come fetch them.
Doors would open up, they can get in the car
and it would take them home
or take them wherever they need to go.
I can see that that is a great thing for society.
But I'll also dread it.
It's coming.
I mean, it's gonna happen, don't you think?
It's inevitable.
You know, the only people that will be on the roads
will be people driving antique cars
if they'll let us still drive on the road.
And then if we wanna do any high performance driving,
hopefully they won't outlaw that
and we'll be able to go to a track.
And that's, if you wanna drive over the speed limit,
if you wanna get an excess of 80 miles an hour,
then you gotta go to a racetrack.
And that's where we can get our frustrations out.
People would just not take their frustrations out
on others with the car.
How often do you see that happen too?
I see it a lot where somebody's behind you
and they don't think you're going fast enough.
So what do they do?
They tailgate you.
And then they do a NASCAR move
and they look like they're gonna clip
your left corner of your vehicle,
but they just barely miss it.
Zoom past you.
Some of them give you the stink eye
when they're going by
others might shake their fist.
And then they'll swoop down in front of you
just to make sure you realize
that you made them angry
and they're gonna get in front of you now.
I see a lot of that.
I see a lot of,
I see probably as much of that
as I see people swerving all over the road
because they're looking at their cell phones.
And that's usually women.
I'm sorry.
I hope I don't offend you,
but most of the people,
this is just based on my observations
that I see looking down at a cell phone
or swerving around on the road are females.
And most of the men are the ones driving too fast,
especially if they're in a RAM pickup truck.
I don't know what it is
about men who drive RAM trucks,
but they're the fastest drivers
and the second fastest drivers
are ladies in black escalades
or Chevy Suburbans.
And the slowest drivers
are little old men in Buick Encore's.
Okay, so I hope I haven't lost half my audience
with those comments.
You know, everybody's entitled to an opinion
and really your opinion
should not offend other people
because it's just your opinion.
It doesn't have to be theirs.
You don't have to,
they don't have to feel like
you're trying to change their opinion.
So that's mine and I'm sticking with it.
But when it comes to things that,
other things that you need to know about your vehicle.
I mean, come on folks,
raise the hood on your vehicle.
I mean, that's where,
there's a lot of money underneath that hood.
And if you don't know how to check certain things,
certain basic fundamental things,
then you're relying on other people
for something that's really your responsibility.
Do you know how to check your oil?
Do you know or even know where the dipstick is
or what a dipstick is?
Most people don't anymore.
Used to be such a common thing
because cars were very simple.
We did have to have our oil changed more often
because of the quality of the oil
and the way the engines were designed.
So people were more in tune with that.
And they're just not anymore.
I mean, when you open the hood on a lot of vehicles,
you don't see the engine.
You see a bunch of plastic that covers the engine.
But there's a couple of things that are still visible.
And all gone at their your responsibility.
The oil level,
even something as simple as the windshield washer solvent,
your coolant overflow tank,
your power steering fluid, brake fluid,
transmission fluid,
if it's a serviceable transmission,
which some aren't unless you get up underneath the car.
Yeah, you need to know how to check these things
and you need to do it at regular intervals.
I actually had a customer complaining
because his vehicle was using a quart of oil
over 1500 miles.
I would complain also,
even though that's still within the factory specifications
at that time, which I did not understand.
But imagine if that oil level had gotten
to two quarts low or three quarts low
because he didn't get his oil changed
at every six or 8,000 miles.
Would an oil light have come on?
Probably.
Could he tell anything by looking at his oil pressure gauge,
which is on some vehicles?
Maybe.
If he was paying attention,
didn't have pictures of his grandkids
all the way across the dashboard,
which a lot of people do.
I mean, our cars are becoming
just an extension of our house.
I guess for some unfortunate people,
the car is their house.
But as a car dealer,
I see all different types.
I see vehicles come in here that are nicer
and cleaner than any new vehicle that I have on my lot
because that's just the way the people are.
They take care of their stuff.
And I see others come in,
it looks like literally they've been living in their vehicle.
I mean, it is a dump of just all kinds of garbage
and McDonald's bags and things like that.
It's just unbelievable.
I mean, you open up the door on some people's cars
and you said, do I really have to ride in this
to see if everything's okay so that we can trade for it?
I mean, you don't wanna touch the steering wheel.
How do people live like that?
I don't know.
But I know that it costs them money.
And I know when people come in to trade cars
and they have an otherwise pretty nice car
with the right equipment, everything looks good,
except it's nasty.
And they haven't taken care of it.
You know, the message to the appraiser's brain is,
well, what else do I need to look for?
You know, has this car had the oil change?
I wonder if it's had any regular maintenance.
He starts second guessing everything.
And then he knocks off an extra 1500 or 2000 off
of what he was gonna put into that car.
Just simply because of the extra detailing
that's gonna have to be done and the unknowns.
So don't do that.
Okay, I'll be back in just one minute.
I know sometimes I get in a lecturing mode.
Can't help myself because I just,
I'm trying to improve your car life.
I'm trying to help you get maximum dollars for what you own
and also kind of head off
some type of major mechanical failure.
You know, in some of them you can't help.
If there's a big recall,
of course the manufacturer's gonna pay for that.
But if you just stick to your owner's manual
and follow the maintenance schedule,
if you have a problem and you're out of warranty
more than likely the manufacturer will step up and help,
they may not pay for everything.
I mean, if you're 25,000 miles out of warranty
and you have a major component failure
and it wasn't your fault,
you did everything you were supposed to do,
you had the vehicle maintained at the dealership
which is critically important,
not going to the fast loop place,
going back to the dealership.
You were a loyal customer.
You're either gonna get,
you might get the parts paid for,
you might get the labor paid for,
you might get a percentage,
maybe the manufacturer,
even though it's out of warranty will pay for 50% of it.
A lot of that has to do with how you approach it
when you go into the dealership.
If you're nice and cordial and you have your evidence,
then they're gonna try everything they can to help you
because they wanna keep you as a customer.
And so does the manufacturer.
If you're driving a Chevrolet,
he wants to keep you in a Chevrolet.
If you're driving a Ford, same thing.
Now, I can tell you that the import brands
are a lot more stingy
when it comes to after warranty repairs,
especially companies like Hyundai and Kia.
But some of the others are pretty bad too.
I mean, if you're out of warranty, you're done.
Now, with Nissan,
we've found that they've been very lenient
for people who are,
of course, we're a Nissan dealer,
but they are very lenient
with people who have been loyal customers
and had their vehicle serviced at the dealership,
at a Nissan dealership.
Because they recognize the fact that it's,
you know, that thing shouldn't break at that mileage.
And these people are good customers
and we wanna keep them in a Nissan.
That's the right kind of attitude to have.
So hopefully you're doing business
with that kind of a brand.
If you need any advice from me,
you know how to get me,
call my cell phone.
It's the only one I have, 423-552-2020,
or send me an email to Lenny Lawson,
2020 at gmail.com and I'll see you next time.
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