Only three days

[none]

My customer came in with a Mazda 6 and he wanted an oil change. He had complaints that the engine started making noises and his oil light would come on. This is also within a month of his last oil change. Per shop policy, I have to check oil and see some on the stick before I’m allowed to perform the oil change. I added three quarts with him standing there. I explained the liability issues for rejecting the oil change, but I did offer to lift the car and try to find a leak source. I did find a nice leak starting at the valve cover going down the engine behind the engine pulleys, but nowhere near three quarts worth of leak. There wasn’t more than a few drops from that leak on the belly pan yet.

My first thoughts are the customer didn’t look like he’d be interested in any repair work and his oil probably went through the rings or the valve stem seals. I parked the car and then realized he might have a PCV valve problem. The shop was dead and he wasn’t coming back for a while, so I pulled the car back in, plugged in the pocket scanner to peek at some fuel trims, and popped the hood. Right away I noticed the clean air hose for the PCV already off the valve cover and my fuel trims are adding 7% long term. The next thing to notice was there was a lot of frickin’ blow by gas coming out of that inlet! I reconnected the fresh air hose to the cover inlet and fuel trims instantly zeroed out perfectly. I pulled the oil cap a few times to confirm all that blow by and verify that fuel trim behavior.

At this point, I didn’t know which work to sell him first. A hundred bucks to try and diagnose rings, or three hundred to replace the PCV valve. What got me was the engine was running great when you listen to it full of oil and those fuel trims were perfect with all the plumbing hooked up right. My first thought was if I sold him diag labor first, I might unnecessarily cost him an extra hundred just to replace the PCV valve anyway.

I talk to my customer and tell him I want to start with the PCV but give him the option to take the diag first and warn him I might have to sell the PCV job later anyway. He was fine with everything I said so I went on to tell him to start checking his oil a lot for the next week and warn him about how no oil can = blown engine. Amidst talking about checking oil and coming back for repair he says, “It’s fine, the engine’s only been making that noise for three days now.”

I can’t stop laughing at that.

Topic

[Mike]

Thanks for an amusing story. I remember two distinct lines I’ve heard from customer that keep giving me a laugh almost everytime I think of them.

It was this nice old churchgoing man that still comes to us now. I don’t even remember what his junky old 04 Outlander kept coming in for several years back, but it had come back to one of out former employees a few times. Each time in, the customer paid for work that wasn’t really fixing the oddball complaint. At one point the customer was arguing with the service manager and yelled “I will not continue to pay to that man’s experimentation!”.

The other one was this ghetto/gangsta guy who we quoted a bunch of work his neglected jalopy needed, but he still owed money on the loan for it. He says “Whoa, Yo uh, that the bank’s car. Y’all better call and let ’em know they car all busted up, cus they needa be fixin this thing”.

[Author]

Replies