Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
rscott
Dec 10, 2009

Astroman posted:

Well it's not like SHE ever opens that hood! Who would open their own hood, anyway? :jerkbag:

I had to show a (male) friend of mine how to open the hood on his corolla, which is his winter beater. His DD is a E46 M3. :negative:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Shin-chan
Aug 1, 2008

To be a man you must have honor...
...honor and a penis!

InterceptorV8 posted:

I hate DRLs.

Because there are people so loving stupid that they never turn on their headlights now. You don't know how many people I see driving in the darkest parts of Nevada in the middle of the night with just their DRL on.

I blame the fact that so many dash boards are always illuminated (not that people aren't stupid). In the past, you couldn't see your gauges in the dark if you're lights weren't on. It seems like most cars I pass with DRLs only on are these types of dashboards.

Viggen
Sep 10, 2010

by XyloJW

Solar Coaster posted:

Today for example, I was driving in the tail end of a major thunderstorm we had last night, so it was still raining quite heavily. Sure enough, saw 3 cars without any lights on, in the dark, in the heavy rain.

Replace "rain" with "freak snowstorm from hell", and you have Denver in a nutshell.

Raluek
Nov 3, 2006

WUT.

Solar Coaster posted:

This. I commute to work at 6:20am and it's still fairly dark out. My commute (lucky me) is only 7.5mi long. Forget driving around with DRLs on, I see at least 2 or 3 cars a day driving around without any lights on. Most of these cars are silver or some kind of dark color so it makes it extra hard to see them in time on the road. It never ceases to amaze me that people think this is OK and continue to drive like that.

Today for example, I was driving in the tail end of a major thunderstorm we had last night, so it was still raining quite heavily. Sure enough, saw 3 cars without any lights on, in the dark, in the heavy rain.

One night I was driving home through the hills near Napa, and I came across a black foxbody mustang with no lights on at all. This is a rural area, so there are no street lights either, and it was probably around 10PM. The only way I knew he was there was because the person behind him would get close enough to him that he would fall into their headlights, then that person would back off. I don't get how a person can drive on a country road in the dark of night in a black car with no lights at all.

DrPain
Apr 29, 2004

Purrfectly priceless
items here.
Lady came in with warm a/c in an older Cadillac. It was out of refrigerant so we charged it, added oil & dye for leak detection, found none for today, assumed a pinhole leak, billed it out and sent her on her way.

Three weeks later her heater core took a poo poo and dumped some antifreeze in the passenger foot well. She roars up and squeals to a stop in the garage, slams the door as she gets out, and just starts royally motherfucking anybody in sight.

I tried to explain to her the difference between coolant and refrigerant for 30 minutes, about how refrigerant is a colorless, odorless gas at room temperature, and seeing as it was clearly gold antifreeze in her carpet and 110F outside that day, there is no possible way in any of the multiverses that us charging her A/C led to that heater core failure.

She took me to small claims court. I won. She hasn't been back.

I've also been known to 'fire' rear end in a top hat customers.

INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
[quote="InterceptorV8" post="how:183518"]
I bet they just drove around with their headlights on all the time, and when they turn their key off, they shut off like Jeeps and Subaru do.
[/quote]

It was an early '90s Wrangler :haw:

Saga
Aug 17, 2009

rscott posted:

I had to show a (male) friend of mine how to open the hood on his corolla, which is his winter beater. His DD is a E46 M3. :negative:

Another proud member of e46fanatics.com :negative:

InitialDave posted:

Yes, but if you lose a circuit, it still has an alarming effect on the braking. More of an issue is that the E30 uses a mini-drum inside the centre of the disc for the handbrake, and it's less than wonderful in terms of power. Though saying that, any car I've owned with a cable operating a disc caliper as a handbrake has seized once it starts getting on in years...

The brakes were the Achilles heel of my E30. Even with fresh everything and bled, if you actually had to emergency stop, it just wanted to keep going straight like a ZX-7R. Maybe it was just my car but judging by all the people doing 4-pot conversions I suspect not.

davebo
Nov 15, 2006

Parallel lines do meet, but they do it incognito
College Slice

rscott posted:

I had to show a (male) friend of mine how to open the hood on his corolla, which is his winter beater. His DD is a E46 M3. :negative:

If this thread is supposed to be tales from people who fix cars for a living, should we really poo-poo the people who don't know anything about servicing their own cars and just have more money than mechanical smarts? Are those people not heroes who provide a living for mechanics, sending their kids to college with their lack of car ability.

Bugdrvr
Mar 7, 2003

One of the craziest customers I had to deal with was a guy who had to be at least 85 years old complaining about how his R8 rolls back on hills. The manual R8 does have hill hold but it only stays on for about 2 seconds after you release the brake. If you take longer than that to go from braking to releasing the clutch it releases the brakes and you'll roll backward.

I test drove the car three times and couldn't find any issue with it so I told him to come in and we'd go for a ride together. It was then I found out that he took a good 5-8 seconds to gather himself up enough to get going on a hill. I switched with him and showed him how if you did it (relatively) quickly the car wouldn't roll back. He said he'd practice later.
He also liked to leave the car in first or second gear and drive around at 6k+ rpm while trying to carry on a conversation about beer. It was a frightening (and noisy) test drive.

I also got a brand new A4 that came in because it smelled like gas in the car. Brought the car in sure enough it really smelled like gas.
I lifted it up to see if any of the vent lines were loose and found the the floor pan on the passengers side was caved in and gouged from the front all the way to the trunk. I lowered it and removed the back seat and found that the fuel pump was broken off of it's threaded ring and only held in the tank by the back seat. The seat pan was filled with fuel.

We contacted the customer and she told us that her boyfriend had taken it off road because it was a Quattro but got it stuck on a rock and someone with a pickup dragged them out. Apparently the rock pushed up on the plastic fuel tank hard enough to smash the pump from it's mooring. Shouldn't that be covered under warranty?!? Uh, no. Think it came to somewhere around 15k to repair.

EDIT: We also had an R8 customer who brought his car in several times for wheel repair because he kept gouging them on curbs when he tried to park. The next time it came in it had curb feelers.

Bugdrvr fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 6, 2013

INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

davebo posted:

If this thread is supposed to be tales from people who fix cars for a living, should we really poo-poo the people who don't know anything about servicing their own cars and just have more money than mechanical smarts? Are those people not heroes who provide a living for mechanics, sending their kids to college with their lack of car ability.

I'm totally okay with it just being a general idiocy thread, because at some point in time someone has entrusted these people to perform such complicated tasks as 'waking up' and 'breathing.'. And they are around you. All the time. Everywhere. Not knowing how to open a hood is prettyfuckingdumb yo, not even like asking someone to even do their own oil change.

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
My coworker didn't know how to change a tire and asked me to do it for him so he could go home.

When we popped his trunk there were bilingual, laminated, full-colour pictorial and text explanations on how to do it included with the jack. Thanks, Ford!

I've told this story before, but a few winters ago I was heading home on an 80kph road and came up behind a CR-V that was going slowly in the left lane. I started to pull up alongside it and then noticed that the right front tire was sticking out at about, oh, 30-45 (oscillating) degrees of camber. I decided to stay way, way back and drive cautiously waiting for the wheel to separate and the car to roll over.

The next day I was heading home on a different road, traffic was massively backed up. When I got to the front, there was a CR-V of the same colour and year missing its entire front right hub assembly, impaled on a Jersey barrier in the left lane.

I also saw a CR-V of the current generation a few months ago missing its entire left front hub assembly (wheel and tire included), lower control arm, strut/springs, left front axle and fender liner sitting stuck in the middle of the road when I was driving to work. The tow truck guys (yup, 2 trucks) were just showing up when I left.

A former neighbor had the ball joint fall out on his 929 and ended up stuck in the entrance to the gravel alley behind his place with the car looking like a Back to the Future hover car. He put a note on the windshield: "DO NOT TOW CAR IS SICK :(" with frowny face included. The police station is just up the road, so they towed it pretty quickly. I believe he got soaked for over five hundred bucks by Canadian Tire. He replaced it with a brand new shortbox Silverado which, after a few years, he started with starting fluid in the middle of the winter instead of replacing the battery.

Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 6, 2013

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

rscott posted:

I had to show a (male) friend of mine how to open the hood on his corolla, which is his winter beater. His DD is a E46 M3. :negative:

Hi, not-a-car-guy here, just visiting the thread. What the hell does this mean?

Saga
Aug 17, 2009
"Daily driver"

BlackMK4
Aug 23, 2006

wat.
Megamarm

Lotish posted:

Hi, not-a-car-guy here, just visiting the thread. What the hell does this mean?

DD = Daily Driver
E46 M3 = 2001-2006 BMW M3

Saga
Aug 17, 2009

BlackMK4 posted:

DD = Daily Driver
E46 M3 = 2001-2006 BMW M3


Who dropped the fully grown African bull elephant on that poor car?

Also, that's not an M3, it's a 318i auto with stick-on M3 vents from Bimmian and a 2 for 1 e-bay seller mirror + angel eyes kit.

INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
It's got the hood and front valence too, I'd have assumed M3 unless you have seen the car before.

Human Grand Prix
Jan 24, 2013

by FactsAreUseless

InterceptorV8 posted:

I hate DRLs.

Because there are people so loving stupid that they never turn on their headlights now. You don't know how many people I see driving in the darkest parts of Nevada in the middle of the night with just their DRL on.

I disabled mine. Although it is easy to tell if my lights are on or not because mine are retractable.

Project M.A.M.I.L.
Apr 30, 2007

Older, balder, fatter...

Elephanthead posted:

I didn't know parking brakes ever worked until I got a job that paid enough to not buy 10 year old cars that had seized parking brakes or removed parking brakes here in the rust belt. Don't park on a hill unless you are at the bottom.

One of the good things about the whole parking brake 'controversy' is all the hilarious youtube videos of cars rolling away from people.

Mooseykins
Aug 9, 2013

Triangle tits and an annoying sex voice?

Fuuuuck youuuuu sluuuut!

14 INCH DETECTIVE posted:

It's got the hood and front valence too, I'd have assumed M3 unless you have seen the car before.

Flared wheelarches look right too.

General_Failure
Apr 17, 2005

some texas redneck posted:


You must have some crazy steep hills and/or people who park in a higher gear
Recent ones I've seen, no and maybe. Flat as a pancake here. Just the runoff grade for the road.


Bang Me Please posted:

Customer states vehicle pulls to the right after alignment. Recheck alignment for 0.0 FRH

Verified customer complaint: vehicle has 2 used tires in wrong size on passenger side. Tires were put on after alignment. Recommend 2 new tires + rotation.

Depends on the place. Last place I got the Fairlane aligned he told me to bring it back in a couple of weeks so he could check the tyres wear patterns and recheck it on the alignment machine to make sure it's still true. Before that they already had a repeat customer.

On headlights I'm always worried about loving up with the Niva. I've already done a mod that moves the main switch to the instrument cluster instead of next to the heater fan, but the park / low / high three state lever is parallel with the indicators right behind it, so a bit of clumsy fingerwork while turning can either turn off / put the headlights in high. Terrible design.

I'm enjoying these tales of woe. Besides not being a real mechanic I just don't hear these kinds of stories that often this side of the pond, although I'm convinced with the new generation of people that only know how to operate their iThings stories are bound to be abundant.

Applebees Appetizer
Jan 23, 2006

I worked for a indy shop owner that would "fire" his customers when they tried to get something for nothing and were generally never happy and complained about everything. It was awesome. The looks on their faces when he told them he didn't want their business was priceless.

Astroman
Apr 8, 2001


DrPain posted:

Lady came in with warm a/c in an older Cadillac. It was out of refrigerant so we charged it, added oil & dye for leak detection, found none for today, assumed a pinhole leak, billed it out and sent her on her way.

Three weeks later her heater core took a poo poo and dumped some antifreeze in the passenger foot well. She roars up and squeals to a stop in the garage, slams the door as she gets out, and just starts royally motherfucking anybody in sight.

I tried to explain to her the difference between coolant and refrigerant for 30 minutes, about how refrigerant is a colorless, odorless gas at room temperature, and seeing as it was clearly gold antifreeze in her carpet and 110F outside that day, there is no possible way in any of the multiverses that us charging her A/C led to that heater core failure.

She took me to small claims court. I won. She hasn't been back.

I've also been known to 'fire' rear end in a top hat customers.

You would think at some point before actually walking in the courtroom she would ask somebody, anybody, else to verify her theory. :rolleyes:


General_Failure posted:

I'm enjoying these tales of woe. Besides not being a real mechanic I just don't hear these kinds of stories that often this side of the pond, although I'm convinced with the new generation of people that only know how to operate their iThings stories are bound to be abundant.

This will indeed become more prevalent sadly. Apparently the new generation doesn't give a poo poo about car ownership. There's study after study, article after article, and poll after poll saying Gen Y doesn't like cars, doesn't care about them, and many have no desire to ever own a car. :(

Combine that with new cars and their plastic sealed "no user serviceable parts" engine bays and you're gonna find less and less people knowing anything even basic about their cars. 30 years from now a lot of drivers will just think they run on fairydust and moonbeams.

Viggen
Sep 10, 2010

by XyloJW

Astroman posted:

30 years from now a lot of drivers will just think they run on fairydust and moonbeams.

Oh yeah, well my dads' prius can beat up your dads' prius. He put extraVOLT batteries innit! <:mad:>

BlackMK4
Aug 23, 2006

wat.
Megamarm

14 INCH DETECTIVE posted:

It's got the hood and front valence too, I'd have assumed M3 unless you have seen the car before.

That's because it is an M3. I assume you didn't get his sarcasm :v:

Das Volk
Nov 19, 2002

by Cyrano4747

KozmoNaut posted:

Don't E30s have dual circuit brakes?

Pedal went to the floor, but the car wasn't nearly as well maintained as the seller made it out to be, so who knows.

8ender
Sep 24, 2003

clown is watching you sleep
I had to stop a Dodge Grand Caravan with that stupid foot actuated emergency brake, doing about 100km/h. The ABS module (I think) blew up and drained both circuits pretty much instantly when I tapped the brakes.

As I hurtled towards a busy highway full of traffic I actually considered testing my luck bailing out the window but I managed to slow it down just enough to make a tire smoking turn into a farm driveway right before the highway.

BeastPussy
Jul 15, 2003

im so mumped up lmao
Almost forgot - replaced a bad brake booster on one of the newer Mazda CX-?s and the customer didn't even leave the parking lot before they came back in to complain about a soft pedal. WTF.

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester
Oct 3, 2000

14 INCH DETECTIVE posted:

I'm totally okay with it just being a general idiocy thread, because at some point in time someone has entrusted these people to perform such complicated tasks as 'waking up' and 'breathing.'. And they are around you. All the time. Everywhere. Not knowing how to open a hood is prettyfuckingdumb yo, not even like asking someone to even do their own oil change.
I work on bikes, often old bikes, and I gotta say there's an awful lot of undeserved disdain out there for people who don't know poo poo about motor vehicles. That's fine with me, man. That's why I got my job. There's a lot of poo poo I know nothing about, like astrophysics and dentistry and Chinese history. You don't know what to do, you go to an expert. The problem comes with people who think they know something.

8ender posted:

I had to stop a Dodge Grand Caravan with that stupid foot actuated emergency brake, doing about 100km/h. The ABS module (I think) blew up and drained both circuits pretty much instantly when I tapped the brakes.

As I hurtled towards a busy highway full of traffic I actually considered testing my luck bailing out the window but I managed to slow it down just enough to make a tire smoking turn into a farm driveway right before the highway.
I've owned 2 different Nissan trucks, both of which have blown out their brake hard lines, one of them with no warning at all. One of them blew out in a parking lot shortly after towing a boat on the interstate for 30 minutes.

atomicthumbs
Dec 26, 2010


We're in the business of extending man's senses.
Are all you people who've had to use the e-brake downshifting at the same time, or just relying on the brake?

razorscooter
Nov 5, 2008


Astroman posted:

This will indeed become more prevalent sadly. Apparently the new generation doesn't give a poo poo about car ownership. There's study after study, article after article, and poll after poll saying Gen Y doesn't like cars, doesn't care about them, and many have no desire to ever own a car. :(

Combine that with new cars and their plastic sealed "no user serviceable parts" engine bays and you're gonna find less and less people knowing anything even basic about their cars. 30 years from now a lot of drivers will just think they run on fairydust and moonbeams.

It's less not giving a poo poo and more Gen Y having no money for cars. Car ignorance is for all ages. :v:

Someone at the airport rented a car with an automatic that lets you shift gears on your own and complained that it was slow and made a lot of noise while driving around town. Turns out they were driving it in 1st the entire time.

randomidiot
May 12, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 11 years!)

I wound up with a flat today.

Coworker walked up...

:byodame: why don't you just put air in it?
:byodood: Because it has a hole in it. See where this bolt is sticking out?
:byodame: I don't understand why you can't drive on it like that
:downsgun:

Mat_Drinks
Nov 18, 2002

mmm this nitromethane gets my supercharger runnin'
Awesome OP, but I'm not super surprised since I know the shop and neighborhood 14 is in. That neighborhood is more known for Swedes, fisherman and wispy bearded coffee drinkers than gear heads. Most of the gear heads left when parking became impossible 10 years ago :)

General_Failure
Apr 17, 2005

some texas redneck posted:

I wound up with a flat today.

Coworker walked up...

:byodame: why don't you just put air in it?
:byodood: Because it has a hole in it. See where this bolt is sticking out?
:byodame: I don't understand why you can't drive on it like that
:downsgun:

Would you wander around with a bolt through your foot? I can help you find out the answer if you want?

Going back about 10 years there was someone I knew doing an I.T. degree who had to call NRMA to change a tyre because he had no idea how to. How can someone training in a tech related industry not even attempt to figure it out. It makes me even sadder than people who drive around their car with a "Low oil light" on.

craig588
Nov 19, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
Speaking of dumb things, I had a friend get incredibly pissed off when I ordered a set of spark plugs and wires AND an air filter at the same time for his truck that he brought to me because it couldn't get up hills without misfiring anymore. He hadn't replaced either since he got it over 8 years and 100,000 miles ago. As far as I know, a year later he's still just holding on to the spark plugs and wires after only replacing the air filter and getting enough power back to make it up hills again.

InitialDave
Jun 14, 2007

I Want To Believe.

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

I work on bikes, often old bikes, and I gotta say there's an awful lot of undeserved disdain out there for people who don't know poo poo about motor vehicles. That's fine with me, man. That's why I got my job. There's a lot of poo poo I know nothing about, like astrophysics and dentistry and Chinese history. You don't know what to do, you go to an expert. The problem comes with people who think they know something.
There is a base minimum level of knowledge that is expected if you're going to even get into a car. You know that the planet we're on orbits the sun, that you should brush your teeth, and that there's this country somewhere that is a source of pandas and cheap manufactured goods, right? Because that's the kind of level we're talking about here.

Saga
Aug 17, 2009

BlackMK4 posted:

That's because it is an M3. I assume you didn't get his sarcasm :v:

I sometimes forget that most of AI doesn't come from a place where the 318 even exists, let alone is plastered with poorly executed m badges.

Corey Plumper
Nov 22, 2008

InitialDave posted:

There is a base minimum level of knowledge that is expected if you're going to even get into a car. You know that the planet we're on orbits the sun, that you should brush your teeth, and that there's this country somewhere that is a source of pandas and cheap manufactured goods, right? Because that's the kind of level we're talking about here.

I was gonna try and refute this but then I remembered there's a post in this thread about someone not realizing their stereo can turn off

Devyl
Mar 27, 2005

It slices!

It dices!

It makes Julienne fries!

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

You don't know what to do, you go to an expert. The problem comes with people who think they know something.


I'll agree with this statement. When I worked at a car audio shop for a few years, we had so many people come back with blown subs from turning the gain up to the max on their amps that we had to put a sign up about it. You could tell who they were just by the first sentence out of their mouths. "Well, I was adjusting my amp, and the next thing I knew, the subs blew out!"

Sviatoslav
Feb 9, 2010
Customer: Girl in her early 20's

"We replaced the CPS and the spark amp on your 940 and that seems to have solved the stalling and no start issue, however we noticed that your radiator has multiple large leaks in it. It won't hold coolant and we strongly recommend that you replace it..."

"O.K."

"... great, we can order one now and have it in by the end of the day..."

"Oh, no I don't want you to replace it... I'll just keep topping it up with water."

"Well that will be an issue seeing as it won't hold anything"

"Alright I'll be by before closing to pick it up"

"So... you don't want us to get you a new radiator"

"Nope, Thanks for getting it running! I love this car!"

One week later...

"Hi, I'm the girl with the old Volvo that needs a radiator... I guess it really really needs a radiator. Everytime I pour water in it comes right out."


The car was in immaculate... aside from the radiator and typical old Volvo stuff which they've always fixed promptly. We don't see too many rwd Volvos in our shop that have survived their lives in North East Ohio that are in that good of condition. I'm glad she fixed it finally.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Huggable Bear King
Jan 12, 2006
H.B.K.
My co-worker did that with his 01 civic, he kept topping it off even though it was pissing coolant and making terrible noises. He asked me to look at it and it was blowing white smoke when he started it up, I told him to shut it off, pulled the dipstick and it was a healthy shade of green. I told him it needed a head gasket and a new radiator and to get it towed to a shop.

He still drove it home :suicide:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply