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Thursday, August 23, 2018

Last to work on it


We are doomed!

In automotive, there is such a thing as "the last one to work on it'
This is what it means, the last person or repair shop to work on the vehicle will get blamed for everything else that fails on such vehicle. With any luck, it will be for a period of time. With no luck, it could be for the rest of the natural life of the vehicle and or client combination.
Makes no difference if there is a connection or not. We have been blamed for brake lights that failed after we replaced the serpentine belt on the vehicle, connection,,,,None!

Recently, we changed the oil on a Mercedes C 300, it all went well with a single exception. Our technician managed to spill oil atop the valve cover and it must have gotten down to the exhaust manifold. Fast forward to a few miles and the vehicle came back with lots of oil smoke under the hood. He thought he had cleaned up all the oil he could see but, obviously he didn't.
Three weeks later and 2500 miles down the road, the same Mercedes C 300 is back. The client is claiming the battery light that is now appearing on the dash, it related to the oil we spilled and would like for us to take care of it at no cost to him.

Some background, vehicles are designed to be able to run almost indefinitely with oil leaks. Alternators are made to run with all kinds of spills around them without any loss of performance. Truth is, if alternators failed every time  they come in contact with oil, we'd be incredibly busy replacing alternators. No such luck though!

I told them we would remove the alternator and have it send to a place of their choice, if they said it had failed due to oil intrusion, then we would put an alternator at zero cost to them. However, if such wasn't the case, they would have to pay the quoted price.
They wouldn't agree to it and towed the car away.
I've learned there is no such a thing as impossible in automotive but, I'm 99%+ sure the oil spill had nothing to do with the alternator failure. The 120,000 miles on the odometer were the most probable cause I can think of.

This is only the prelude to the real story. It really starts here.

Four months ago, we did a front brake job on a dear friends vehicle. He happens to be extremely knowledgeable about cars as he has worked in the trade his whole life.
He came by last week and told me he didn't want anything from this but, I needed to know so we wouldn't do the same thing when we had an expensive vehicle.
He showed me the front wheels on his vehicle and told me, when we did the brake job last October, the mechanic must have had brake fluid in his hands, touched the front wheels causing the paint lacquer to damage. As further proof, he pointed to the rear wheels letting me know only the fronts were damaged.
Here are pictures of both front wheels(allegedly damaged by brake fluid) and the rear wheels as well, the ones presumably okay. You decide!

Case and point. There are many assumptions made. First, wheels are removed and installed being handled by the rubber part of the tire (the contact portion) and not the wheel part. Second, if we had to add brake fluid, we do it after all the brake work is completed. The reason being that you have to compress the brake calipers to install the new brake pads in them. Once you pump the brakes, then you check the reservoir and add fluid if necessary. New technicians may do this backwards once or twice, then they learn and probably never do it again! The technician who did the work has been with us for 15 years and he is my most motivated tech. Also the most knowledgeable, most up to date and the most read.

But in the end, the reason I think we are doomed, is because if, a guy with lots of automotive
knowledge and training can quickly jump to conclusion,  then we should expect someone with no formal automotive training to do so as well.




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