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How to handle neighbors and family, who want you to work on their car when you’re not even a mechanic. Don’t get me wrong I do want to help, however, I don’t want my spare time to be completely full of doing nothing, but working on other people’s vehicles. I think back to this one at that ETCG 1 episodes where he talked about legality of doing side work. Also, sticking with a brand that you know. Not too sure how to handle the issue. So I thought I’d ask to see what you all would suggest.
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I just politely tell them… “Yeah the mechanic is right, it’s definitely a worn muffler bearing seal,I just don’t have the $400 extraction tool for your car…” or “I’d need a lift for that…” or “My scan tool can’t clear that code…”
You see where I’m going with this.
Also a #@$*ing engineer, retired. I agree. Once you have helped somebody with something on their car, somehow you are married to it. I make an exception with my now-adult kids. I help them; they help me.
The Electrical Engineer’s curse: Used to be “Can you fix my TV?” Now it’s “Can you fix my computer?” Probably. I just don’t want to.
BTW: Also worked in space launch; mostly range safety. If your stuff goes bad my stuff blows it up.
[quote=”DBFSubs21!” post=109443]Also a #@$*ing engineer, retired. I agree. Once you have helped somebody with something on their car, somehow you are married to it. I make an exception with my now-adult kids. I help them; they help me.
The Electrical Engineer’s curse: Used to be “Can you fix my TV?” Now it’s “Can you fix my computer?” Probably. I just don’t want to.
BTW: Also worked in space launch; mostly range safety. If your stuff goes bad my stuff blows it up.[/quote]
That’s where I went wrong helped one friend now it’s this or that and I’m still trying to just be good at working on my crv.
[quote=”DBFSubs21!” post=109443]Also a #@$*ing engineer, retired. I agree. Once you have helped somebody with something on their car, somehow you are married to it. I make an exception with my now-adult kids. I help them; they help me.[/quote]
Definitely. My issue with helping people is that I’m not in any position to honor any sort of warranty. Also, I have found that the type of people who won’t take their car to a mechanic, tend to let multiple problems stack up. They bring the car to you because it’s overheating. So you swap the the t-stat out, and they’re like “So you think that was it, huh? Well that seemed simple enough, thanks! By the way, I noticed it makes a clicking noise when I make right turns…”
[quote=”DBFSubs21!” post=109443]
The Electrical Engineer’s curse: Used to be “Can you fix my TV?” Now it’s “Can you fix my computer?” Probably. I just don’t want to.[/quote]
Sigh… you’re singing my song brother. I started my carrier as an engineer at a computer company… so you know what that was like.[quote=”DBFSubs21!” post=109443]
BTW: Also worked in space launch; mostly range safety. If your stuff goes bad my stuff blows it up.[/quote]
Cool deal. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go to launch parties nearly as much I’d like to, but I’ve done some work out of White Sands and Vandenberg.
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