Hopefully not, this mechanic also says the alternator is fine. Doing a new battery, a new drive belt, and new rotors. Also rotating the tires. Pads are good, tires are good. He said the valve and timing covers are seeping oil but he wouldn’t replace them unless they get worse, if it were his car.
Couldn’t the corrosion around the terminals and cables cause it to sputter out like that? Like if the current wasn’t flowing well because of the corrosion? I assume that would impact the fuel injection and/or ignition systems?
Also everything is almost exactly 55% of the cost of the dealership, of course. It’s crazy how badly they price gouge.
I think they can, I’ve had something like this, autozone said the battery was fine but replacing it fixed all my problems. The mechanic I use said I had a dead cell in the battery and that autoZone uses a dumb tester that can’t detect that even though selling me a batter is basically the optimal outcome for autozone in any given interaction.
No the dealers care. Because a major source of income for the dealership is in the form of ‘dealer cash’ rebates from the manufacturer for doing things like hitting certain volume numbers (the real reason the dealership is suddenly willing to do a few break even deals at the end of the month to hit the number they need) and survey scores. Your terrible survey really could result in a six figure income swing for the dealership.
This is why the dealership will usually begin reaching out to you aggressively promising you things like a free tank of gas, car was, etc if you bring in your survey to them. It’s a whole thing. It was true for Toyota, Honda, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, and Mazda back when I was in the car business… and every time I take my Honda in to get serviced they get really anxious about the survey. Which triggers the absolute shit out of me as someone who was forced to sell his late teens early 20’s to the car dealerships.
My dewalt battery charger/tire inflater also has an alternator tester on it.
I’ve been happy with it. Only downside is it’s basically a giant cellphone battery and is not light. You have to lug it around and keep it charged to get the max ev out of it.
It also has phone chargers on it so I use it for that also.
LOL those surveys are so dumb, all 10s and one 9 is treated the same as all 0s, just lol car dealers in every possible way, pure rent seeking and the one thing Elon Musk got right.
I travel for business a lot, I haven’t rented a car since 2014 (I generally just Uber or more often use public transit when possible) but I need a car for this trip and they gave me a fucking Tahoe and omg this thing should absolutely be illegal
No response, which makes sense if they get just as much damage from a 9 as a 0. They’re better off rehabbing 9s and 8s and writing off the guy who’s furious and giving them a 0.
FWIW, if it’s a scale of 10, then usually 9 and 10 are good and everything else is the same as a zero. NPS surveys are pretty dumb and I don’t think they actually measure anything useful.
This is why National’s policy to just let you take any car on your tier of aisle is A+. Hoooooooooo boy does it feel so much better to skip the counter and pick out a car I want and then just go compared with having to interact with a person. Never want to rent from anyone else unless I have to.
One rare thing I agreed with Nate Silver on, he had a tweet several years back that since anything under 5* is bad for an Uber driver, they should just have a thumbs up or thumbs down system.
Looks like that’s possible, yes. It used to be you could pull the battery out entirely after the car was started but the internet says it doesn’t work like that anymore. /oldmanclouds
Yeah I’m an old man too cause I think a lot of those electronic “improvements” have a lot of annoying downsides. I liked being able to do a lot of the routine maintenance on my own car and save a few bucks, and I feel a bit nostalgic about it even if it would make more sense to drop it off for that work at this point in my life.
It also seems like stuff is harder to diagnose, and a lot of younger mechanics are lost if the computer doesn’t throw a code.
My wife could care less about this stuff but out of curiosity asked her boss what she would have to do to get a 5 on eval without her boss catching heat from her boss for being too nice. Her boss was like they pretty much said you need to do something to be on the front page of the corporate website lol
Combine that with new process on products I’ve never supported before and I have a bad feeling about getting enough of a bonus to get that damn Apple Googles…
