Can you trust your mechanic?

musicprnt
Mon, 22 Feb 2016 20:11:57 +0000

Generally you do better with a local shop that people locally use, the best way to find a good mechanic is to talk to other people in your area. That doesn’t mean all local shops are great, there is gas station close to my house I wouldn’t take in to get a slow leak in a tire fixed.

Dealerships when out of warranty may not make sense, unless you happen to like them. For one thing, they are going to use only factory authorized parts, and they are going to charge you for them, for my honda van the factory spark plugs are 25 bucks a piece, you can get a set of top notch bosch plugs for 25 bugs for all 6 cylinders. If it is something more specialized, a dealer may be better, when it comes to the engine control systems, they may know better.

A sign of a good mechanic is when they make clear what needs to be done right away and what can wait. I had the dealership tell me i needed to change the brake fluid, to the tune of 200 bucks, the local guy said you only need to do that when you do brake changes (it is true that brake fluid is hydrophillic and that can cause brake lines and such to corrode, but that only happens if the system is compromised, and the fluid gets a cloudy color to it). Someone else was correct, dealers make a lot of money on service and parts, and they have an incentive to sell you things you don’t need…and people often believe them because they are a dealer. One way to prevent this kind of thing is to look at the recommended service interval, for example, if they tell you at 50k miles you need a new cam belt, and the owners manual says 100k, tell them to stick it. Likewise a good mechanic will not charge for things that are there fault, or for example, when they find that a problem was caused by a wire being off, don’t charge for it (standard test consumer products agencies used to use with mechanics were things like taking out the fuse for the fuel pump, or when alternators had external voltage regulators, pulling the field wire off, and seeing what the mechanic tried to sell them). Another good sign is if the mechanic has been in business for a while at that location (I mean the ownership), that usually means they have earned a lot of trust.

The worst are generally the chain auto places, Sears and the like are the worst, stay away from them, even though they have gotten hit with lawsuits, they are rip offs. The one exception to that is STS, I don’t know if it is my local place, or if it is true as a whole, but they have been really good, they haven’t tried any bs on me when I get things fixed, but the rest are dubious.