Well, there are idiots everywhere, but this exemplifies just about every F*rd dealership service center I've ever known.
On the flip side, when I turbo'd my '83 back in '94, we didn't have the internet, I had never seen a turbo installation in person, and my engine, harness, and ECM were each shipped separately from 1000 miles away because I couldn't find any of it locally.
When I got everything installed, it wasn't quite right. It ran, but not well. I took it to my local friendly Pontiac dealer, and while the service writer was scared to death of the thing and made no promises, the mechanic who worked on it was well versed in the system and had the bugs out of my electrical system in less than an hour. Well worth the money to get his expertise.
-Matt
82 Skyhawk Convertible:
https://goo.gl/j7R6Cu
83 P/2K Turbo:
http://goo.gl/EVKPX6
86 Firenza Cruiser: "Jack-Wagon"
https://goo.gl/bWP2uK
87 Skyhawk Custom:
http://goo.gl/krdDeU
90 Sunbird GT: "Turbo-Turd"
93 Sunbird Convertible: "FrankenBird"
(and a pair of Cavaliers I'd rather not talk about)
I remember when my dad bought a new '99 Saturn SL1. A few months after owning it it had a slight miss. Took it to the dealer 4 times. 3 out of those 4 times they just hooked it up to their computer but the miss wasn't registering on the onboard computer enough to throw a code so their computer said nothing was wrong. On my insistence he took it back a 4th time and this time the service dept. manager/head mechanic took a look at it and heard the slight miss too and found that the #1 injector had a blockage or failed and they replaced it under warranty.
There are also some independent garages you can't trust either. We had a leak in one of the hoses going to the heater core in the Cutlass we had. I took it to this place up the road that was open on Saturdays, told them what was wrong and they replaced it. Since I got such good speedy service I referred a few people to this place only to find out the guy tried running a scam on them. He did a "free" inspection of their cars and gave them both an estimate above $1,000 in repairs that absolutely needed to be done, even told one of them that it would be dangerous if they drove the car out of there. Turns out 99% of the repairs on the estimates weren't needed. I never took another car back there and tell people to stay away from that shop.
Don't get me started on regional/national tire shops. Don't buy anything else other than tires at those places otherwise you might as well bend over.
Every place is a risk, stealership or independent.
I just found the article interesting in that the mechanics are getting less mechanical about repairing/diagnosis.
I won't even buy tires from those chains, until the fees are paid for stems/valves, disposal, etc. I can get out the door for close to the same price as my trusted mechanic; and when my trusted mechanic sees me buy tires from him instead of the chains, well he knows I'm looking out for him and he does that much better looking out for me.
I have what was my dad's final car, a 1996 Plymouth Breeze. It has had problems and I figure I'm about a year from getting my next car, so I have no intention of putting another dime into this car. I'm in debt enough, and if I'm going to go into debt further for a car, it had better be the Hawk. So I asked him to do an "off the books" inspection to let me know what I'm going to need so I could make the best decisions of what to do. I told him basically glance at the tires and brakes (rear) and let me know as it should pass otherwise.
Off the books was so it wouldn't get hooked to a state computer and I wouldn't get a fail sticker on the car. Well it won't pass and it needs too much for me to spend, so once the inspection runs out, I'll drive it until I'm caught, then pay the $105 fine with whatever I get for the car from the scrapyard that same day. I figured I'd be paying about $20 for him to do this...well he didn't charge me at all.
Yeah, guess who I take my stuff to.
I've heard lots of stories similar to that one, with dealerships of many brands.
But independant shops too can try to screw you over. When I first was buying the Skyhawk, I obviously wanted to do a mechanical inspection - needless to say I wanted the car no matter what, but I wanted to know if there was any safety issue or something that could get me in trouble legally. Since it was my first car I took it to the seller's mechanic, an independant shop in a close suburb: he's the one who had bought the Skyhawk from the original owner's estate in 2010, and he's the one who had done work on the car since. He looked at the car, diagnosed rear drum brakes that needed servicing, a fraying timing belt, and an oil leak on the head valve cover. Weirdly enough though he was unable to provide any service history for the car: "Ah you know it's the guy's second car, I just work on it on the down low, we don't really give him bills and such to avoid paying taxes". Yikes.
So I bought the car, and I went back to him to have the said defects fixed. He charged me an insane amount (close to 500 dollars), including upgraded parts and a ton of labour for what I've learnt are easy repairs, which was already one thing. I'm sure he saw that I was young, that it was my first car and that I was very excited about owning it. But then it got worse: first of all I told him that from what I could gather from driving the car and educating myself, it was clear that it needed some service (spark plugs, wiring, some fluids needed to be changed, ...) and he basically told me my car wasn't worth it, I quote "Nah don't concern yourself with that alright, just drive your car, and when it breaks down it breaks down and we'll take care of it then if there's something we can do".
Since we have to put on winter tires here by law by december 15th, I went to a Canadian Tire (it's a big chain, like Fleet Farm I guess, but they actually have a very serious auto shop dimension to their business too) near my house because they were basically the only ones with the arm long enough to find 13in winter rated tires in Montreal. I got stellar service, and they worked with me to improve the car's condition: it turned out all fluids were waaaaay past due for a change (transmission, power steering, even engine oil), the A/C had a leak, the engine fan was dead (the first mechanic had assured me the whole assembly had been worked on and fixed 'recently'), and so on.
Worst of all? The rear brakes still were acting up, and as it turned out: the first mechanic had not fixed a thing, just cleaned them cosmetically to remove rust deposits. I literally got scammed. So my new mechanic charged me for the same items to service them, only for half the price, and now everything works amazing. They're always available, they always keep me up to date, they discuss parts and price points with me beforehand, every repair has come back under the price of the quote because they work fast, they enjoy seeing my car, and they hardly ever charge me for the diagnosis of a problem.
When the car overheated due to the engine fan being dead, they had the car all day to try and find a suitable OEM fan (it took three unfortunate attempts and as many deliveries from the warehouse) before having to repair the old one. Only got charged for the repair and the new engine fan motor from GM. When the car overheated again, they had the car all day to troubleshoot before finding out the 4 dollar fusable link was half dead. Only charged me for the part and actual repair.
They're amazing.
I realize the point of the article is to scare us into action to prevent legislation that will keep us from working on our own cars - and I agree that this kind of big-brothering is completely asinine.
I am going to throw out one more story, though... WAY back to the very beginning; how I ended up with the P/2K in the first place.
A friend of mine bought the car new in 1983. With about 95k on the clock, the car had started a bad smoking habit: Bad valve stem seals. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do about it, and had kinda been eyeballing a new 1991 Lumina. Then one day he walks out to see a puddle of coolant under the car. He has his favorite local shop check it out, the shop that has done almost every stitch of work on this car since it was new. That shop tops off the coolant, and tightens the head bolts (or so they said). They told him they think its a head gasket and it will cost him $600 to fix. At the time, the car had about a $1600 book value, so he decides to sell the car to me for $1000.
What was wrong with the car? That PITA S-shaped water hose on the back side of the water pump had failed. As you might guess, it cost nowhere near $600 to fix!
I have a few good friends that run independent shops, and when I need something done that I'm not equipped to do, I'll give them a call. As a general rule though, I don't trust anyone to put air in my tires.
-Matt
82 Skyhawk Convertible:
https://goo.gl/j7R6Cu
83 P/2K Turbo:
http://goo.gl/EVKPX6
86 Firenza Cruiser: "Jack-Wagon"
https://goo.gl/bWP2uK
87 Skyhawk Custom:
http://goo.gl/krdDeU
90 Sunbird GT: "Turbo-Turd"
93 Sunbird Convertible: "FrankenBird"
(and a pair of Cavaliers I'd rather not talk about)
