The only time anyone gets their hands on a vehicle of mine, is when the work to be done is beyond me. Standards are no longer being upheld almost anywhere.

 

I just worked on a friend's Toyota RAV4 yesterday. He had brought it to a chain shop for an oil change two weeks ago. He paid the extra for Mobil 1. The oil was black. The filter was obviously on the car for a long time. BUT, there was a smear of bright pink 'torque stripe' paint across the oil pan drain plug. After doing other maintenance, I changed the oil for him, and advised him to never bring the car back to Grease Monkey.

If you cannot do your own maintenance, make friends with someone who you can trade labor with. Perhaps you are an accountant, or good with wood working. Barter. Find a way. Too many shops are perfectly willing to rip off folks who do not know how to work on their own stuff.

 

I brought our old Lexus to a Valvoline Oil change shop because I didn't have the time to do it myself that day. I even brought the oil and filter with me, just wanted them to do the labor, which wasn't cheap. They had this whole professional looking procedure and process to make you think they are doing a good job, sure seemed like it while sitting there watching them do it.

However, what I didn't see was the moron at the bottom of the car draining and installing the drain plug. They installed a new drain plug, apparently a cheap one with a fault in the threads. In order to install this drain plug, they had to use a lot of torque to tighten it on, and the idiot installing it apparently said "screw it" as his torqued this garbage drain plug into the drain pan.

I found this out when doing my own oil change on the car months later. I needed to use a socket wrench to fully remove this drain plug, I should have been able to remove it with my fingers. I bought a new drain plug at my local shop and was able to message the threads back in to fix the drain pan threads and still get a good seal. But after this experience, I will never use a quick change place again.

These guys charged me for a faulty drain plug, installed it knowing it wasn't right and potentially could have costs me $$$ in repairs for a new drain pan. But I learned a valuable lesson.

 

I had to have new keys programmed to my car and had that done at a local place specializing in rekeying new cars. (Their main customers are banks rekeying repo cars. Who knew?) Anyway, this year my lower dash fell. While inventing new language with my 6' frame under the dash I noticed the guys who disassembled the dash for the smart key guy had broken all, but one of the plastic tabs that the dash screws screw to to hold up the lower dash. The guy did good work with the keys, but his disassemblers seem to have been ham-fisted. As I had just bought the car it may be the PO had torn into the dash and broke things, but from the look of the car (all paintwork was covered with plastic film, Mercedes brake pads) and the messed up, non-working original key, I assume the PO was careful and sold the car with the key problem.

I made a plan to hold up the lower dash, but am not proud of my work.

Also, I noticed a plastic piece dangling from the side of the clutch pedal. I assume that is the clutch pedal position sensor. Don't know how long it was broke. Might explain why my cruise control doesn't work. That said, I like working on my Crossfire!

John