Eric the car guy

[Bertsail]

Ok
I found this site when I wanted to change a cam belt on what basicly is a Honda Civic petrol engine.
Now it seems you are building some sort of old timer race car.
The forum is , IMO, a bit lost.
It’s between the people who have good non professional skills, professional, and people who probably be better off taking the job to a professional but cannot afford it.
As Jimmy Buffet sang. Where it all ends I cannot fathom my friends, If I know I might toss auto my anchor.
Opinions
Thanks Eric I love watching your vidios but have to throw this out for discussion.

Topic

[Charles]

I think you misuse the tern “Professional”. My personal experiences with auto repair shops and dealerships have been less than “Professional”. In one case the Ford Dealer replaced the PCM when the ignition key was bad. The other wanted $7000.00 to replace the engine in a Dodge that I repaired for $300.00, granted they did not want to work on the vehicle. A friend was diagnosed with a blown supercharger on her miller cycle engine when it was just a bad fuel pump. They charged $400.00 for shotgun parts and diagnosis. The point is that only a small percentage of cars are repaired by fully qualified “Professionals”. The rest are repaired by guys that dropped out of high school to attend trade schools, not saying they are unskilled. Myself, I went to automotive trade school after high school then Vietnam then college and worked as a Control Systems Engineer for 40 years. Still like getting dirty.

[Bertsail]

Yeah ok.
I have the same sentiments about the professional bit.
I live in Europe and consider my self as a jack of all trades but master of none.
I work on yachts/ boats so you tend to have to fix anything.
But Eric has a lot of videos out, and people seem to not even try to get the basics from them before asking on the forum.
In France now people lease new cars from the manufacturer, they sell cars on a cost per month not total cost.
And after a certain period you either buy the car buy paying whats left, or get a new one.
So the car has to be serviced by a dealer for obvious reasons.
But then gets thrown onto the market.
Ok I am banging on about a bunch of stuff. But cars can be dangerous if brakes or suspension or what ever are not done correctly.

[zero]

The joke in Canada at least is that you don’t buy a German car, you lease it. The only Euro brands we see are German aside from Fiat and they only sell one model.

Modern cars require a specialized skill set and access to the proper information to do anything beyond basic diagnosis on most of the time. Anyone worth their weight can easily go wherever they want and probably have. Leaving behind a bunch of unskilled yahoos. A shop has to be dedicated to ongoing education of their techs and those techs have to be dedicated to always learning as well. Ongoing training and the proper equipment are expensive and attitudes in general towards cars have changed in the last 30 years. People now think of them as disposable appliances and treat them as such.

I’m going to go one step further and say the whole culture of dealerships and auto service in general is fucking broken. It’s honestly worse than a joke, I’m not even sure what to say it is. I’ve worked for some real assholes, but nothing as vile as in the auto service industry. My superiors have felt the need to threaten me with physical violence, theft of property, willfully not submitting apprenticeship papers and one guy even suggested I get a gun and kill myself. Oh ya, did I mention I was in the middle of a small breakdown at the time? Needless to say, nobody will ever be able to pay me enough money to work at another shop.

I have a menial job in a steel shop and I’m making more money, more consistently than I did working flat rate for almost 3 years.

[Author]

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