Thread: Rip off of the week

Originally Posted by 308

I disagree
I've found quite a few straight up mechs, auto sparkies and tyre guys

I did however once get a wof from VTNZ Porirua which turned out to be illegitimate because the woman working there was stealing wof stickers and her Mongrel Mob boyfriend was selling them on the black market

I would never use Google ratings for anything - word of mouth works for me

I desire with a local non-franchise mechanic, he’s straight up and has saved me money with his diagnosis of faults that I had erroneously diagnosed as a different more expensive fault.

Originally Posted by 308

Yep

I got a honda powered fuel pump second hand recently

Fresh gas, wouldn't start
Ether turned it over but wouldn't stay running once the ether had gone
New sparkplug, same deal
I have now come to the end of my basic diagnostics skills and will happily turn it over to my local small engine mech and give them that information

Point is I try not to fuck with things beyond what I know and try to hand them over to my mechanic not half fucked already

Man's got to know his limitations

Sounds fuel, pilot side of the carby probably.

Originally Posted by blip

My favourite one was a while back, guy comes in in his diesel toyota van asking how much for an oil change gave him the price and sure enough we were rip off cunts its just changing the oil and anyone can do that bla bla. I think it was $150.00 from memory. So he storms off spinning the wheels to try and teach us a lesson I guess. About a week later I see this van parked on the side of the highway at the end of an oil trail. Turns out he saved heaps on the oil change but didnt take the old oil filter o ring off. Couple of days later his wife is ringing around for quotes for a new engine.....

That really annoys me - not the people having a crack themselves as that is the kiwi way and it's how ya upskill and learn. It's the bagging of the pros just because you don't like paying to get the job done properly, just not necessary!

I do a lot of the work myself, but certain things where you need to either have specialist gear or make it it's often not worth setting yourself up for a one-off job. Gotta swap an injection pump shortly, not worth me paying for the tooling even with the savings on labour.

Originally Posted by jusepy81

Yep , Not all mechanics are rip off.
There is a reason it is a trade.

Not all mechanics are good either heck there's some useless mechanics about in all sizes of out fits these days who can't diagnose simple problems.

That is true, there are absolute limits to how useful OBDII is.

My own ute is a perfect case in point, no way ODBII or mechanic guestimate could have ever got to the bottom of that without playing the $25K parts swap lottery. It took a lot of datalogging and investigation and research to get to the bottom of the issues it had - multiple individual faults contributing to the same issue and throwing the same series of DTC's. Getting rid of the noise from the electronic problems allowed us to really focus onto the mechanical stuff, which meant that the actual problem could be diagnosed and fixed. Over a couple of years of work - if I wasn't doing it myself no way it would have made financial sense to do the work as is it's marginal with the number of individual parts that got replaced.

But at the end of it the thing is mechanically good enough and runs so well that there isn't any advantage to change it out especially at the price of the new ones. Circa $90K to swap out now, ridiculous $$$.

Yea things have changed a lot as far as the electronics go on vehicles. Advantages of working for a franchise is you get training on that shit you can get a lot of data off vehicles but you need to know what good numbers are and what isnt. Being a small workshop Im self taught on that kind of stuff so not fully up to date but can do a fair bit of it. Work has a scanner and Ive got a couple and do mobile scanning on the side and can do mobile wheel alighnments as well. Builders are rip offs all they are doing is hitting nails in right?

Originally Posted by blip

Yea things have changed a lot as far as the electronics go on vehicles. Advantages of working for a franchise is you get training on that shit you can get a lot of data off vehicles but you need to know what good numbers are and what isnt. Being a small workshop Im self taught on that kind of stuff so not fully up to date but can do a fair bit of it. Work has a scanner and Ive got a couple and do mobile scanning on the side and can do mobile wheel alighnments as well. Builders are rip offs all they are doing is hitting nails in right?

Haha don't you believe it - the builders are getting their apprentices to hit the nails in and charging you full whack

I once had a builder working at my place with his new apprentice. He was going to charge me full hourly rate for both of them, I politely told him to f-off with that idea as a 1st year isn't getting charged out at the tradies rate and also his productivity drops every time he has to stop work to show the appy something. I later found out he had only recently started working for himself so probably had no idea about those things. Had no idea how to hang a door either so I flicked him soon after anyway.

I've now got 1 door frame 10mm lower than the 1 next to it, Just as a permanent reminder to background check tradies better

Originally Posted by Finnwolf

I desire with a local non-franchise mechanic, he’s straight up and has saved me money with his diagnosis of faults that I had erroneously diagnosed as a different more expensive fault.

I don’t ‘desire’ at all -it should have been ’deal’! (bloody autocorrect!)

Originally Posted by blip

If you put a good quality pump in it last time you might get away without doing the pump. Only used to do mine and the kids when they leaked( taught them to regularly check oil and water) if its driven off cambelt different story tho.

My son at 17 in 1999 had a VW Golf jap import. Solid indestructible....well...took.him.5 yrs but anyway. I asked him when he last checked the oil and, radiator and battery water levels. " Dad, thats what mechanics are for!"

Sigh....

Years ago a young guy came into the garage with a sugar bag full of gears, shafts, bearings, loose needle rollers, and the (now empty) gearbox casing from a Mk2 Zephyr.
Could I please check it over, put in any new bits needed, and assemble it?
Well yes, no problem. All I had to do was suss out what bit came from where, what bits where missing from his strip down (to save money), and get the new parts needed.
It really would have been quicker if he had just dropped the gearbox in to me straight from the car.
At least I wouldn't have lost any bits, or smacked the crap out of every shaft while dismantling the thing.
As per Dirty Harry..."A man's got to know his limitations".

Originally Posted by Grey Kiwi

Years ago a young guy came into the garage with a sugar bag full of gears, shafts, bearings, loose needle rollers, and the (now empty) gearbox casing from a Mk2 Zephyr.
Could I please check it over, put in any new bits needed, and assemble it?
Well yes, no problem. All I had to do was suss out what bit came from where, what bits where missing from his strip down (to save money), and get the new parts needed.
It really would have been quicker if he had just dropped the gearbox in to me straight from the car.
At least I wouldn't have lost any bits, or smacked the crap out of every shaft while dismantling the thing.
As per Dirty Harry..."A man's got to know his limitations".

Fuk those are the worst. We even get guys with their project they have completely stripped wanting us to put it back together for them......until we give them a rough price. Cunts of jobs those ones and takes up workshop space for too long. Im sure some of them do it just to get under cover storage for their pile of shit project

Yeah, man's jigsaw puzzles are fun as a private thing but no way are they a good idea for money making!

We have done a couple for customers where money was no object but those are few and far between