Yeah, db4690, it was jacks & jack stands. It was before I started there so I don’t know the whys & wherefores regarding the lack of equipment. When I started they had lifts & within a year they had stuccoed the building’s exterior, painted the inside of the shop real nice, put epoxy covering on the floor, remodeled the customer area & put in a bunch of ceiling lights so I gotta give credit where it’s due.
At 190k no.
The only advantage I have had using a dealer for maintenance with an in warranty car is 15k past warranty they covered a transmission problem as they built a case with auto maker and got it covered free.
The only other advantage of using a dealer is they typically have 1yr/12,000 warranty on parts AND labor if something fails. Not all independents cover labor too but some do.
That all being said past warranty I did not use the dealer for anything except recalls and the transmission issue since they changed the fluid twice supposedly before.
The dealer I referred to earlier had racks in the main building. That was for Pontiac and GMC. We import guys worked in a secondary building with no lifts and not only was it dark in there; everything was done with floor jacks and jackstands. Not exactly conducive to good morale, speed of the repairs, or spinal column health.
It was about 175 feet from our door to the door of the main building. This was a real hoot during heavy rain and lightning when parts were needed or while lugging a pair of brake rotors so as to access the brake lathe in the main building.
Equally fun was that Subaru manual transmission work requires a bunch of specialty tools to service gears and shafts because everything is a very tight press fit. This meant jogging back and forth from one building to another because the press was in the main building. Same goes for the thunderstorm factor or freezing rain and sleet.
Of course once the trip back to the import building was made then there was the issue of going back to work on the car while soaking wet or covered in sleet… 