Car Inspection Day

I had my car inspected this morning. I also had them change the oil and filter. After it came back down on the lift to the garage floor, I asked the manager if the mechanic had lubed the chassis. He said "newer cars" don't have lube points. I told him my Jeep is a '95 and yes, it has lube points. So they put the Jeep back up in the air, and then they had trouble finding a grease gun that worked. Who knows if it really got lubed? I sure don’t.

The incident reminded me of the Magic Lube quick oil change shop in Roanoke where I used to take my Subaru. I took my Sube there for 10 years in a row. At every oil change they gave me a list of things they had checked ... transmission fluid level, check ... differential fluid level, check ... and so on. One day after I had put about a hundred thousand miles on the Sube, I watched the mechanic do the oil change. From the customer waiting area, I could look through a window into the garage bay. I knew they didn’t check the gearbox oil because you have to remove the spare tire (which was mounted above the engine) to get to the gearbox dipstick, and I saw that the mechanic didn’t touch the spare tire. So after the car was put back on the ground and brought around to the front of the building, I told the manager that they hadn’t checked the gearbox oil.

“Yes, we did,” was his reply.

“No, you didn’t. You have to remove the spare tire to get the dipstick out, and no one removed the spare tire.”

“You don’t have to remove the spare tire,” the manager replied. “You can get the dipstick out without doing that.”

“Show me!” I said to him.

So he raised the hood and grabbed the gearbox dipstick and tried to pull it out. He bent the dipstick this way and that way, trying to get it out from under the tire, but the dipstick would not budge. Finally he admitted defeat and told one of his minions to remove the spare tire. When he finally pulled the dipstick out of the gearbox, it was bone dry. There wasn’t a hint of oil on the dipstick. The gearbox oil didn’t go from OK to nothing in 3500 miles. Obviously, it hadn’t been checked in tens of thousands of miles. I had been paying these guys to check my engine, and each time I paid them they gave me a sheet of paper indicating that they had checked all these things. When I challenged them, they insisted that I was wrong and that they were checking my engine. And they were lying.

A final addendum to that story: after they added gearbox oil and I was on my way home, I drove the car about 100 feet before I realized something was wrong with the engine. It was running rough. I stopped and raised the hood, and I discovered that the mechanic had pulled off a vacuum hose and had not re-attached it. After I plugged the vacuum hose back onto the throttle body, the engine ran normally. But I shouldn’t have to fix my engine after I pay for an oil change.

I wish I could say that encountering a dishonest auto mechanic is rare, but my experience has shown me that encountering an honest auto mechanic is the rarity. Oh, I have stories I could tell you.