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Your car is such a wild card when you’re going on a road trip. All too often, I meet you at my shop at the very last minute before that trip, or when you’re broken down half way across the country in the middle of that trip. I just wanted to talk to you a little about how and why this meeting seldom ever goes well.
I work for a national automotive service chain so, naturally, we’re open most major holidays. Very consistently over holiday weekends and/or on the day of the holiday itself, I find the first customer at the door has some rare, classic, obscure, or otherwise exotic car that I just can’t service today or service at all. The part that car needs is no longer available, was never mass produced by OE or aftermarket to begin with, or takes a minimum of three to five business days to deliver. Sometimes, the car itself just isn’t serviceable because of how the car is built. I have examples for you:
On Easter Sunday, a customer with an old Austin Healey or MG roadster showed up looking for a 13″ inner tube. We did make the effort to find one on the warning to the customer that we were probably not going to find one and that he’d be better off trying a farm & barn type store. When you call a parts store for such a thing, the cookie cutter reply is, “Oooh, I don’t think I’m going to be able to find that today…Hang on a minute.” Then you hear them talking to another parts guy. “Hey other parts guy, do we have any 13″ inner tubes?” And, of course, the other guy says, “Oooh, we’re not going have that. Tell them to try a farm & barn type store.”
The day before Labor Day, the first car at the door was an Acura NSX needing front tires. In doing a little reading on Wikipedia, I learn that these cars were pretty much built to compete with a Ferrari 348. This particular NSX also had a lowered suspension with a heavy negative camber condition in front. (Now you know why he needed the wrong tires replaced.) I’m going to happily exaggerate that the car sat so low, that I could have rolled each tire onto a piece of paper and by the time the wheels rolled back off the paper, the body could have bottomed out on the pavement. We had to turn that car away because we just didn’t have any resources to lift such a unique car.
Realistically, the last example actually caters well to all you kids out there with fast & furious ambitions for the tuner you’re building regardless of holiday weekends or not. The second you get done lowering your suspension and adding ground effects, the car becomes impractical, if not impossible, for a regular service shop to work on. The first thing you’re likely to be in for is an alignment. The majority of alignment racks out there have a drive on lift that’s elevated with ascending ramps to drive the car onto. We’re not getting your car on the rack without destroying the new ground effects. I don’t want to try and convince you not to build your import wet dream, just have the towel to wipe up the mess is all I’m saying. That means take the time to find a shop that specializes in servicing these types of cars. Hunter has tweaked a version of their alignment racks that are designed to be sunk into the floor just for you guys. Most regular service shops can’t justify the cost of tearing up their floors to install one, which makes those specialty shops that much more important to you.
Getting back on track for the rest of you driving on the holidays; your Toyota Camry and Dodge Caravan aren’t immune to vacation travel headaches either. In my observations, it seems the biggest problem is people wait until the very last minute to get their car looked over before they make that big trip. Cars have become really resilient and can take a substantial amount of neglect without giving you a hint of trouble. When a noise does finally show up, so many people solve the problem by turning up the radio. Then they bring their car to me and tell me that they want the car looked over before that big trip expecting nothing too serious. Turning up the radio has always taken care of all the other problems after all. In reality, there’s a lot that can go wrong at that point. Not only did I find the noise problem that induced a louder radio, I’ve found another $2000 in work that the car honestly needs.
Customer interactions can go something like this:
“I don’t have time for this, I’m going far away tomorrow…How much of this can wait ’til I get back?” I do want to be able to say this part or that part can wait because my recommendations are usually putting a dent in your vacation budget. However, this can be a loaded question that I’ve been getting more prone to evading shamelessly with an I don’t know kind of answer. For example, I know power steering hoses are prone to leaking on GM and Hyundai/Kia cars as they age. In my experience, they generally fail more readily compared to other manufacturers, but they die a very very slow death. Still, I can’t guarantee your hose won’t blow out hundreds of miles from home. That vacation spot hundreds of miles away might have a severely hotter or colder climate. That severe climate change tends to break stuff on your car. I’d much rather sell you that part now. Yes, I’ve been digging into your vacation budget. I’m also trying to improve your odds of getting to that vacation spot on time.
“Well ok, how long is it going to take to fix it?” More loaded questions! This time I’m evading solid answers because contingencies are boundless in the shop. Even cars that they’ve made millions of can still have a part on the fix it list that’s almost as hard to find as that 13″ inner tube. The right parts are also hard to find because they could have made three versions of the same part for your car and two of those versions don’t work because it was built in April instead of May. Maybe the parts guy still delivered the wrong version of that part anyway. Your car might have 180000 miles of rust on it and the old part won’t come off without an extra half hour and two more cracked knuckles. Other times, some other parts get broken we weren’t planning on and we’re all stuck waiting longer. There is a lot more plastic getting used under the hood and that stuff gets brittle with all that heat under the hood. Now we might be going back to that problem with finding another part they made three versions of. Before any of this happened, you never realized you were the fifth guy in line at the shop who’s got to be on the road tomorrow. It might be three to four hours in labor before these other contingencies started happening. At first, any of these things can seem like little things. They tend to accumulate into one big problem for both of us.
“Jesus Christ! You want how much to fix it? That’s insane!” No it isn’t. Turning up the radio to solve your car problems is insane. Ignoring problems in your car can compound the cost of repair because a failing part can put stresses on and damage other parts that would have otherwise lived long lives under your hood.
European cars….ugh. At least for me…ugh. To a degree, I can kinda qualify many European cars as being rare cars. At minimum, they’re a minority in the US car market. This, in turn, makes finding available parts a bigger challenge. Parts houses will stock the most common wearing parts for the most common European cars. This still tends to limit aftermarket supplies to brake parts, tie rods, and a few tune up items. Because of their minority status, the aftermarket won’t even make a lot of parts for European cars. This is where I most often hear the words “dealer part only”.
The next problem is that dealer parts can even tend to be scarce. This may not be true if you’re in a larger metropolitan area. As for me, I’m more likely going to wait for a hub in Chicago, New York, or the greater Los Angeles area to ship me a part in a few business days somewhere in the rest of the Midwest. This usually isn’t good for your travel plans.
The next problem is European specialty tools. A lot of shops just aren’t going to have those tools. It’s not that unusual specialty tools are limited to European cars; specialty tools are available for practically any and every modern car out there. But since the European cars are such a minority of the repair market, it’s hard for a technician or a shop to justify spending the money on those tools. Case in point: I bought a set of triple square sockets just to start working on Volkswagens. A year and a half later, they’re just as new as the day I bought them. One of the burdens of working in a general service shop is that you sometimes just don’t know that you’re going to need that weird tool until you’re already neck deep in a repair. Finding those tools in a pinch can be just as hard as finding the part I was replacing to start with.
Where cars are complex and getting more complex all the time, European cars can just be complicated. BMWs now need a scan tool with a specific process just to change the battery. I’m told that doing it wrong can result in frying the engine control computer. We’ve just opted to never replace a battery in an 08+ Beemer.
What was supposed to be a few tips has turned into a small book…you’re welcome. I feel like I’ve thoroughly beat the shit out of the details and still haven’t told you enough…I apologize…just a little. Now that I think just a little harder, know where the key is for your wheel locks. Flat tires are a pain in the ass. Not knowing where that wheel lock can exponentially complicate changing that flat tire no matter where you’re going. Now I have told you enough…you’re welcome.
Now seriously, what I’d really like for you to take away from this is to think of your car’s condition as one of your top priorities when you’re planning that holiday trip. Get your car into the shop a week or two before hand so the things that can go wrong can be dealt with in a calm and timely fashion. Your stress is my stress. I don’t want you fuming in my waiting room. I want you to enjoy your vacation.
For those exotic and antique cars, you’re going to have to learn to plan better and do so more carefully than you would with the daily driver. Have that inner tube ready before you think about leaving home or just leave the car at home and do some research when you get back from the trip. Even something as simple as a quart of oil can have an impact on your antique car. Your antique was originally designed to run on an oil with a zinc based additive to protect your cam lobes and flat tappet lifters from extreme pressures. Modern engines don’t need that zinc in it’s oil. If by some weird chance, I suddenly need to try and find you a cam and lifters for your antique, you’re screwed. I can’t even find you an inner tube.
Drive safe everybody!
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I do not travel much these days but I figured if one was going to drive more than say 200’ish miles out of town especially if the weather is gonna be dangerous, renting a car would be the way to go. THAT way if it breaks down, it is not your problem really.
I mean imagine being in the middle of BFE (aka Kansas) and your ride decides to kapluut.
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