Irlandes,
I love Car Talk, and still listen every weekend. Also own an auto repair shop, and have been a fixit guy,whatever is broken, my whole life.
I can appreciate your frustration. But If you don’t live it, you can’t give it.
But work changes when it’s your shop, and your $250 k you’re betting will fix it.
With a BSCE, my education emphasized cost efficiency. Don’t over or under design and build. And that is what I have done in this shop for 40 years. We have never charged a shop fee, and never will. And there are shops in your area that don’t charge that fee,either.
And if it’s your problem, fix it yourself, and don’t ask Cadquilla to do it for ya.
Well , that is strange . The show has been reruns for years and there are very few stations that even broadcast the reruns. I also wonder why you felt it was necessary to call the guy a ‘Chump’ .
Yes, I saw you used the expression twice in your post. I don’t think that he was intending to resurrect the question of DIY vs. shop owner in this thread, though, and he’s not here now to respond to your comment.
I think you should read the post again. He didn’t criticize shops. He said it’s generally pointless to bring an intermittent problem to a shop. That’s not wrong, because if the shop can’t replicate it, they won’t fix it.
That doesn’t mean the shop is doing something wrong - it just means the car can’t be guaranteed to display the problem to the shop, and if it doesn’t display the problem to the shop then you’ve wasted a trip and a diagnostic fee.
Huh, we fixed an intermittent misfire last week, with codes to go on. I fixed one today with exploratory part removal. We fix em everyday. Not all of them, but most of them. Just like Click and Clack, we are experienced and try harder. Generally pointless he wrote, well, not at our shop!
I listen to it when I can almost every weekend too. I’ve been listening to them for at least a couple decades, but not consistently. So I’ve probably only listened to less then 25% of all the shows. Most of the shows I hear now on re-runs I never heard before. Show is still entertaining and sometimes informative.
I think calling someone a chump will always get negative attention. I once called the brothers chumps, thinking about the Stump the Chump feature, and not actually considering them poorly. I got flagged on that one and haven’t repeated that sin again.
