Troubleshooter: Hints it’s time to find a new mechanic
If you spy any of these shortcuts under your car’s hood after getting it back from the garage, you may need a divorce from your shop tech
Nobody wants to go through the headaches of finding a new auto repair shop once they’ve landed on one they trust, that has fair pricing and is convenient.
But with the shortage of qualified technicians and apprentices, good shops can sometimes get overwhelmed, and when they try to ramp up production to meet demand, often things go wrong.
It’s easy to forgive the little things, like a grease stain on the steering wheel or trunk items not properly stored after being removed for a repair, but there are some shortcuts that happen that can lead to divorce between a vehicle owner and their garage.
Often it’s pretty hard for the average consumer to know if a cheesy shortcut has been taken on their ride. They usually remain hidden until they fail; sometimes weeks, months or even years down the road. But there are some common ones that leave telltale signs, if you know what to look for.
Take, for example, RTV sealant being used instead of a formed gasket. RTV is a great product. It comes in various squeeze-tube sizes, can take a certain amount of engine heat and for the most part is oil- and grease-resistant. But it’s no replacement for a proper gasket.
When an indie shop tech realizes he or she should have ordered a proper gasket for the job but didn’t, sometimes they’ll reach for the RTV rather than wait for a parts delivery. Some covers on many vehicles, such as transmission and engine oil pans, actually require RTV because they don’t use a formed gasket, but intake manifolds and rocker covers aren’t on that list.
So if you pop your hood to take a peek at your shop’s oil leak repair job and see any RTV squeezing out from these areas (it looks like blue, red or black bathroom caulking) you know they’ve taken a shortcut. With age and exposure to under-hood temps, RTV can dry out and crack, leading to oil or air leaks, bringing you back in for another repair.
Also be wary: Wiring repairs can leave you short(ed). Electrical circuit repairs are on very few top-ten favourite lists with techs. They’re time-consuming, and often difficult to diagnose and rectify.
But these are no reasons to take shortcuts. If you’ve had any wiring harness repairs done to your vehicle, ask your shop to point them out. Any splices should be protected with heat-shrink tubing, not electrical tape, especially harnesses exposed to the environment.
Tape loses its adhesion in these conditions, and doesn’t offer nearly as much weatherproofing as heat-shrink. Heat-shrink is a black flexible tubing that shrinks to form a tight seal around a wire splice when a heat-gun or flame is applied.
Also look for small blue plastic clip-on splice connectors. These are an open invitation to corrosion and seldom provide anything more than just a temporary repair.
This might be a picky point, but if you check out a repair where an access cover has been removed and now it has several different types of screw heads or push-pin fasteners, it can mean a new headache when and if that cover has to be removed again. It might not be worth divorcing your tech over, but at least point it out.
Source: https://bit.ly/375VdV5
