O/T Can Any Other Mechanics Relate???

Ok, just gotta rant and laugh a little about this. I suppose it happens in every shop.

I work for a new car dealer. Been doing for 12 years. I do all the transmission work and heavy diesel and gas engine work. Working on a 2008 Chevy Impala with delayed engagement from a stop and leaking oil/coolant from the head gaskets.

I pull the transmission (4T65E) and repair a common issue in the trans with the input clutch housing. Replace the housing and the input and 3rd clutch packs and reseal the apply pistons and build the trans back up. (we repair only issue. we don't overhaul every tranmission completely--thats what big brother GM want us to do.) Put the trans back in and tear the cylinder heads off for the leak and replace the head gaskets.

As I'm Fillin up the trans with fluid and vacuuming the cooling system down, the service writer walks over and says..."can i call the customer and tell them to start heading this way to pick the car up?

REALLY??????????????? I just had this car in pieces? Granted I am a product of the same repairs over and over again, and they are use to seeing me rip these trans and motors apart and they are fine when i m done and well below warranty time, but really???

Thats what i hate bout the dealership, GO GO GO GO. I Take pride in my work and don't like to be hurry'd. I don't know how many times I have had a trans back in at 4:45PM and on the alignment rack (all us techs do our own alignments.)the service writer is telling me the customer is here get it. On the test drive the center wheel position is not perfect but most people won't notice. If i had more time, I would set the toe again, but don't and ship it. I m sure this happens all over in all forms of repair shops.

Maybe its time to work for an independent, somebody whos repuation is on made on the quality of work thats done and not just cause its free and under warranty. I see first hand what some HACKS i work with do and its sad.

I m sure this environment will not change anytime soon.

I`ve worked in some good shops, flat rate and not, and NEVER worked anywhere that I was not pushed. I think it is just a sad fact of life for mechanics.

I understand what you're saying, all too well.
I spent the first fifteen years of my work life at dealerships, trust me it hasn't changed at all.
But then, I went to night school and got a degree in mechanical engineering, so I could get out of the shop and into engineering.
After ten years of that, I made the leap to sales engineering.
Sales engineering gives you the opportunity to work with a customer on a project up front all the way to seeing it running.
It has been a good ride. MikeS.

I worked for a big mega dealer when I lived in Florida (sales), we were the better Lincoln Mercury service point in town but we still sucked. I worked as a mechanic at various places doing Ag/Lawn/Turfgrass equipment then travel trailers. We are back in the upper midwest now, there are a few dealers that do take pride in their service department and are trying to do the customer right, you may have to look. Our local GM dealer changed hands last year, the folks that bought it own a couple of stores, their sales are up 700% and their service department is actually a decent place to get something fixed, in fact they are so busy sometimes you have to wait longer than they'd like. The mopar point in the next county has a service department I am really impressed with, any time they have fixed our van it was right and they didn't make any excuses when we had a complaint they just took care of it the first time. Good mechanics are hard to find I'm sure there is a dealer out there who has a business model that matches your ethic, look around

I work for a farm equipment dealer and it is the samething. On a test drive you may find you have to make an adjustment with costomer waiting.

I totally understand. I spent many years in a Chrysler dealer. Now I own an independent shop with a partner. I get to do it my way. I never rush my techs. I would much rather have it done right the first time. Hang in there, a situation will come up that works for you.

I understand fully.

This is why I do all of my own work aside from warranty work, which I avoid if at all possible.

Dean

Working for yourself isn't all that much better. I work on mainly heavy equipment for a living and when times were good did alot of work on one customers rock drills. He did both the drilling and blasting on everything from pipelines to foundations. There's nothing like getting a call saying that the machine is down, it's setting on a shot, and they have to shoot before dark.....and the machine an hour and a half away and it's only 3 hours til dark......... It's times like this when you have to get REALLY CREATIVE.......... Then there are the days it dies in the morning and you have both the drilling and blasting crew, along with the pipeline crew that's being held up all standing around with nothing better do do but ask when your gonna be done troubleshooting a problem no one, including two different dealerships, has ever even seen, and/or replacing a broken part that you were just told had a two week plus lead time......... Yep, life's an adventure when your a mechanic, but I guess that's what I love about what I do. Like a sticker I saw the other day showing a cartoon character being squeezed in a screw press said...'Give it another turn you SOB, I work better under pressure'.

I'm glad to hear you want to take pride in a job well done.

But I also have said for years that flat rate = cut rate. You just have to cut corners somewhere that's just the way they set you up.There are a few places that don't do flat rate.

Also sad to hear that GM still can't keep a head sealed up after all these years ! GM has way too much trouble with oil and water leaks.

Had the same BS working on standby gensets. Office would give me a job 200 miles away. I would get about half way to the site and they would call with my next job.Told them let me get done with first one. One of our techs was given this line up. Ft Worth,Waco and then Austin. Wanted the jobs all done in one day.

Our dispatcher was very good at screwing things up. Gave me a job one time in San Angelo. Five hours away from the shop. Left early one morning and arrived to find a very mad customer. I was supposed to have been there at 1am for a transformer change out.

Best thing that company did was fire me.I have a bad habit of fixing things. Instead of selling new items. I now live in a small town where people now me and my work. Work when I want to and return there equipment on my terms. Not returned until I am happy with it.Most people in this county are happy with the arrangement.

The ones that want a rush job. I send down the road.

Bingo.

From a consumer perspective, flat rate is the worst thing that has happened to the service industry.

Fortunately, my local GM dealer changed from flat rate several years ago and now all of their service techs are paid salary.

Dean

The outfit that I worked for tried to push you to get more work done. One time the oner called me in to rip me because he thought I was taking to much time on jobs. I asked him if he wanted the job done right or wanted to go back and do the over at has expence. Then I told him if I couldn't take the time to do the job right he could just make out my paychek and I would be on my way. He never said a word to me the last 11 years I worked there.

luv2wrench,
Trans oil fill and cooling system fill is all you had left? Sounds like a reasonable question from the service guy. All you had to say was "I'll be done in xx minutes". How far away did the customer live? Maybe the writeup guy knew the guy had an appt or whatever. Doesn't sound like it warrants a "rant" unless there's more behind it, like the tone of the guy's quesiton.

In any case, there's a fine line between being rushed and doing a quality job in the right amount of time. I constantly get asked by our engineers "How much time left do I have to finish this task?" In many cases, if a guy has been given a budget of 8 hrs, he'll use that 8 hrs, regardless if he could have gotten it done in 4.

We are constantly being pushed by our customers to get jobs done in 8 wks that should take 12 or 16. Got 2 right now with 1000+ manhours EACH of work to do between now and mid-January. Just got the orders.

I know that car repair is a different animal but human nature is the same and time is money to the owner of most businesses.

That is exactly why you are the mechanic, the guy who knows what he's doing and is paid well for it and he is the service writer, the customer kiss *ss idiot that makes less than half what you do. Your proud of your work and it shows, he will be making slushees at the convenience store next year.
In a related experience I had a recall on a Ford (bad fuel pump as I recall) so I took it in and left it. Later that day the service idiot calls all happy go lucky and tells me it's ready (as if he had something to do with it being ready so fast). I arrive to pick it up and a mile or so down the road it dies. I call them to come pick it up, they tell me I will have to pay. I don't argue (at that moment) and tell them come get it. They do, next day they say it's ready again and not to worry with the wrecker fee. Hmmmmmmm, something is odd here. I ask why it died and I get some typical I don't have a clue answer from the service writer. I ask to see the shop foreman. He too beats around the bush and won't give me a straight answer. So I ask to see the mechanic that worked on it. No can do. WHAT??? I finally just walk out the door, around the building and into the back door and asked the first mechanic I saw who worked on my car and he pointed him out. I go to him and ask why my car died and he told me point blank that he needed to pressure check the tank to verify the seal was OK (they used the old gasket) but they rushed him and said get it out, the customer is on the way. When the car came back, he had to pull the tank and install a new gasket since the old one didn't seal. So they saved a little time and a few cents on day one, they paid big time on day two. Now picture in your mind what took place when I walked back into the office from the shop. My Dave2 skills were in top form. I detest people that lie to me, and that included the service writer, service manager and the shop foreman. I wrote a letter (not an email, a real letter with a stamp on the envelope) to Detroit. I got calls, return letters, gift certificates you name it trying to apologize. The mechanic kept his job (I checked now and then to be sure, didn't want them blaming him) but sadly about a year later the owner passed away and the family got into a huge argument over the estate and they finally just shut down the dealership.
Soooo, kudos to you for being a conscientious mechanic and caring about what you do. You never know, someday someone like me may walk in and ask you what you did to my car and you can tell them the truth and continue to sleep well at night.

Hey Billy, aren"t you in New York?
Do you work on Generac standby generators?
I have a "spare" 5000/8500 unit that won"t "Gen" anymore and it can"t be cured by "flashing".
I would like to find someone who could get it working again; and.....there would be no rush as it is not my primary generator.

At the end of my career as a Locomotive mechanic
with Burlington Route/Burlington Northern/
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, I was a their
"Northtown Diesel Shop", in North Minneapolis.
We specialized there in General Motors,(Electro-
Motive Division)locomotives, and the standard
engine was a 16V645, a V16, 645 cubic inch's per
cylinder, it is a 2 cycle, 4 valves per cylinder
about 3200 horsepower supercharged, or 3600 H.P.
turbocharged,(the turbo weighs 6000 pounds).
Pride of workmanship there was a priority!! The
Motto there was,"If you don't take the time to
do it right the first time--when will you have
the time to do it over". The Company furnished
us rolling 'Snap-On" tool box's, and any special
tools that we needed, and if the temperature was
over 90 degrees, we got free ice cream at break time.
One time it took me a whole 8 hour shift to
change some injectors and adjust valves, I was
never rushed. The next day I saw that locomotive
going by leading a train at 60 MPH, and it was a
joy to hear the sharp crack of the exhaust, and
know that those valves were set perfect. To me
thats what pride in employment, and giving back
pride in workmanship, was all about!
I've been retired 9 years, now. New locomotives
are 710 cubic inch's per cylinder, 4200 horse
2 cycles. Caterpiller tried putting CAT engines
in GM locomotives, but the Cat engines were a
PAIN, alwas breaking down..no reliabibility. "If
you can't beat them..join them" so Cat bought
the Electro-motive diesel division of General
Motors in 2010.

My nephew is a bodyman. Works for an upscale dealer, mostly BMWs. He has done so many that he knows every trick to get it done quickly- says he considers it a bad day when he can't get 18 hours of flat rate work done in an 8 hour day.

He's gettin' rich, customers are gettin' hosed. It has ever been thus.

What your missing here is that once everything is full then the vehicle has to be tested to make sure that everything is OK after the repairs. If it were guaranteed that everything would be right after every repair then what your saying would be fine, it's not that hard to say, "It'll be about 15 minute for me to get things topped off", or whatever. Problem is that things don't always go exactly right, repairs in one area can often lead to something going wrong in another area (read as the weakest link will always reveal itself), disturbed fittings can leak, etc, etc, etc. When this happens you now have have the time to be able fix whatever is wrong, whatever the cause.

With that in mind, there's nothing worse than having a customer, who has had to bother someone else to get a ride, spend time and money to take a bus or taxi (unless they had a loaner car), taken time off work, etc, etc standing there waiting on a vehicle they were told was ready only to find that it really isn't ready and they will have to disrupt their plans yet again when it really is ready.

There ought to be a law against anyone working as a 'service writer', parts man, or anything even remotely related to the repair field without first spending at least a year in the shop actually working on the equipment that they are dealing with. In years past this was a prevelant thing, shop mechanics moved up in the world and out of the shop into these easy positions as they got older, but nowdays it's the guys fresh out of school with this degree or that degree, that essentially mean nothing to the job at hand, pushing the mechanics to do something they only have the faintest clue about.........and then bellyaching when the mechanic can't make the impossible happen right away in order to make the unrealistic promises that were made to the customer a reality.

My point is what if i went to put trans in gear no MOVY MOVY???? Thats my point. customer standing there with a "what a mickey mouse place look on his face." seen it toooo many times. thats all

I am in Texas. Try to stay as far away from Genajunk units as I can. Company down here wants me to do work for them. But they only sell Genajunk units.Told them thanks but no thanks. Got tired of getting my butt chewed out over genajunk units.

I do know of a guy in up state New York. I can contact him.

The one that always amazed me was when I cranked up a repaired tractor and the boss jumps on and drives it out. DONE After the first few years though that changed and I did the driving to get things checked out, and he was forever calling customer ahead of job being actually out the door. After a few more years, it was , when will it be done? when I drive it out and park it in the lot.

I refused to work at flat rate in the mid 50s.Good work takes time.

Fully understand. Worked at a factory for over 39 yrs, 32 of them in a blacksmith/welding shop. The usual question-----How soon can they have it????????? My answer was, You can have it right now, but it is not done. I always had pride in my work and would not turn a job over to them that I would be ashamed to sign my name to. jim in ill

The sad part is. It is only getting worse. Friend of mine had his truck in for new tires. Kid got in a hurry broke off six wheel studs.Friend ask him why didn't you stop at the first one. Said boss was on him to hurry up and get the truck out. Have a quota to make.

i heared that for a long time " is it ready yet its got to go " .
got in trouble before " no problem . you going to call the tow truck or me "
or " my magice wand is broken , can you send me a new one " .
thats about 5 time your called to phone .
i was told if this was easy everbody would be doing this job .

It happens in all shops, no matter what they do. In our shop, our sales man will ask an engineer how long it'll take to design something. They'll say 20 hours, he'll write down 10. One of our service techs yesterday was sent to Minnesota on a call and told the service manager he needs the press for 12 hours. The SM then tells the customer our guy needs it for 8.

I don't really care how fast they think I should get something done, I take my time. Most of the time I still come out ahead. Espescially when I have enough work to run both of my machines at the same time.

Donovan from Wisconsin

COST
Quality
TIME

Pick two.

similar to Ernied -

Good
Fast
Cheap

Good and Fast -won't be cheap
Good and Cheap - won't be fast
Fast and Cheap-won't be good

Ken

My number one rant. Boss explaining to customer why it costs so much. "Do you have any idea how much We haVE TO pay this boy?" and then tell customer triple my hourly rate. Dave