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Hear me out!! This is to tell what you think about the forum, vids, website, etc… What needs improvements, or what hes doing right.
I was thinking about this so I posted, what its here for right, I’d like to see more people chime in.
First off the forum, I think its pretty awesome. Its kind of simple and you can’t customize your sigs or put links up correctly (which really isn’t a big deal). You should say more about the forum on your videos.
Second is the videos. I think the FATRs needs a new name, I mean it gets old hearing 29, 30, 31, etc, my opinion. You do a darn good job describing what your doing and etc.. Be yourself, thats
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Eric, you changed garages and now there is a lot of road noise and echo effect. Doesn’t have that same personal feel the old place did. The acoustics need work. I’m sure you are well aware of that. The noise distracts us from concetrating on you and even you have an issue sometimes concentrating on what you are saying by pausing to comment on the sounds of trucks going by. It’s all fairly distracting.
I love the format though. Everything about how you put the videos together works extremely well. The website is great. The admin is capable but the design needs a little more work especially the header graphics. Y U NO KEEP ASPECT RATIO, font stretchy bad. Can we get a background tile. The black bg color is a deep abyss of nothing. From the center column bg texture I know you can do better than solid black. 😉
Things I like: Too many good things to list. The RSS feed icons look great. WYSIWYG editor implimentation works perfectly. Might be nice if we could embed YouTube videos from an icon. Since Eric uses YouTube it would be nice if he could embed his own videos at least (preg_match) to respond to questions in which he already has a video that answers it. Love the search function. It works brilliantly for OBD-I or OBD-II. If I got you a list of EEC-IV codes would you add them in? The homepage looks and works great but most people spend their time in the forums so some more forum features would be nice (I saw the plans on the last FATR). Eric and Admin are working hard to make this place special and deserve a lot of credit for so many things they are doing right. Although you might only hear about what you could improve on I hope both of you recognize that you already do so many things right that are worth mentioning but the list would be too long. Keep up the great work.
A different custom intro? The vanishing point intro is nice but technically it’s not yours. The engine sound is nice too but again you might make people believe that was an engine you worked on. I recognized that video and engine sound the first time I watched it. Vanishing point isn’t something everyone has seen though. Would rather see an intro that is all you. I love the ETCG1 intro music. Beautiful organs.
I think the BBB sponsorship is neat but you haven’t gone into why they are quality alternators. It’s easy to say something is quality without explaining what makes it quality vs lesser quality parts of the same type. I don’t know what constitutes a quality alternator so that would be nice to find out. I loved the Airtex tour video. Because of you and your video I’m much more likely to buy from them than any other brand. It’s obvious they put a lot of time into R&D, continually improving their designs and I respected that a lot. Would be nice to see something like that for the BBB stuff too.
I don’t know if theres anything i would like to see changed right now. Ill have to think long and hard about it.
Maybe more advanced video’s on engine performance explaining fuel trims and so forth, along with showing how scopes work, how to utilize them but i don’t think one of those scan tools is in Eric’s budget right now.
I think Erics video’s are aimed at the casual DIY’er and not the technician’s in training if that makes sense?
One of the things I love about EricTheCarGuy (YouTube) is every Friday I know there is a video. I’ll grab a cup of coffee and chill out to see what’s new. As long as I’m wasting time watching youtube videos why not waste it with my buddy Eric showing me what is cool from a mechanics perspective. I find that perspective enjoyable. I regularly check for new vids throughout the week because there’s really no set schedule. You try to hit it on Sunday/Monday but that doesn’t always happen. You said in today’s FATR that they’ve become successful for reasons you aren’t sure of. It’s because the title has Friday in it so you’re compelled to post them on Fridays and that affords you and the viewers (me) a set schedule to enjoy the videos. I guess that’s why TV programs are on a schedule and don’t just come on at any time unannounced.
Unlike television we don’t have to try to scramble to make it in front of a TV at a set time. We have all day or days to watch it at our leisure and still afford to stay current with relevant discussions in the forums. It’s a much more enjoyable viewing experience than being forced to sit through commercial after commercial on tv as well. I think if you gave a name to a repair video like Mechanic Monday and did the same as the FATR that those videos would be just as much if not more popular than the FATR’s. To me you are 10x better than anything on TV. I don’t watch TV. Only reason I still have cable is because some of my family members like to be manipulated by psychological warfare tools A.K.A. The News. I watch the heck out of you though.
You are extremely enjoyable to watch and learn from. It’s works, the whole entire thing so works for me. You’re the best thing I could possibly watch on a widescreen… ok maybe 2nd best. ;P There’s always room for improvement but just wanted to sit down and map out what it is that makes your show so good to watch. I don’t consider it a channel anymore. It’s an instructional car repair show and there’s really nothing like it. RealFixesRealFast and BriansMobile are pretty good and there are others out there too. You’re easily #1 in my book. Keep doing what you’re doing and hopefully you’ll make some tweaks to make it even better in the future.
I like it. The video quality is good. Maybe you can get a vehicle lift. Make it easier on you to work on your cars and film too. And a tall tripod camera stand to help you out.
Eric deserves his own professional camera crew. What he’s able to acheive by filming himself is top notch with exception to confined spaces. He does great with lighting and makes sure for the most part we have a good look at what he’s seeing too. How about getting one of those fiber optic cameras so we can see all those hard to see places? That would be neat.
I’d like to see more large project videos. Sort of like the Dodge and the Chevy engine videos. I realize that engine swaps just don’t come across every day so that’s more of a pie in the sky type thing.
Another idea I thought of, I don’t know if this is possible or will even pan out, but how about sort of mechanic on the street type videos?
Maybe start calling a few used car lots that buy and sell used cars and in exchange for a free youtube plug, you spend a few hours with their mechanic and see what comes in etc. Or something like “flip this house” but “flip this car” (not literally…) or like Pawn Stars.
Lets say the lot pays someone a $500 trade in for a car, but it has obvious problems and you could film what steps go into turning the $500 car into a $1500 car etc. Then you calculate the expenditures and profit.
I guess it is possible with real repair places but you might get into customer privacy issues. So I might think cars that were being worked on that were owned by the lot would eliminate it.
Pick up a repo car or a craigs list car or something, then diagnose it.
Just some ideas.
Most of your suggestions are exactly what mechanics that work for used car lots do every day. They get paid for that kind of stuff so that’s a job in and of itself. Any mechanic that works at a shop could video every car that comes into their shop that way and have a ton of videos time withstanding.
I think one of your ideas is really neat. Find a local car on craigslist that an owner wants to sell because they can’t afford the repair and see if you can get it fixed for cheap so they can keep the car on the road. Or buy the car, fix it up, and resell it without accumulating cars which would turn your shop into a used car lot. You have the skills to do both legitimately. I remember this show where two guys would pick up old furniture from the curb, repurpose it, and return it without telling the owners. Something like that would be pretty neat.
Umm holy crap I think I got bitched out by Eric in today’s FATR 32. My apologies if my suggestions got you a bit upset. I did go back through all the FATR’s and noticed in the first episode you did in fact say that Mondays are “Fixit Mondays”, Wednesdays are “For Sale Wednesdays”, and Friday’s are of course FATR. You never responded that you said that a long time ago (FATR ep1 to be exact). I suppose that’s my fault for not watching every FATR and I’m sure you don’t like repeating yourself, my fault for sure and my apologies.
With that said, why label the FATR’s consistently with the intro sequence but not Fixit Mondays? You regularly refer to them as “my repair videos” not “Fixit Monday videos” while anything in a video from friday it’s in a “FATR video”. I know it’s trivial gnit picking and semantics but if my suggestions were what made you upset in FATR 32 I just wanted to clarify why I made the suggestions. Even you have to admit you haven’t been sticking to your own formatting goals. You might have been hitting the target dates every monday and friday but you aren’t labeling them as such. I’m on YouTube every Friday watching your video but come Monday I’m not looking for a repair video. I figured you just uploaded them whenever during the week. Just something to think about big guy, I love ya, not trying to upset you. Just trying to help you make ETCG even better.
Hi Eric,
I have been a member of your site for a couple of months now and think its great. I ran across you on youtube.I think its great what you do.Not alot of people
showing free how to videos or answering questions on anything big or small.Eric at the end of the day its your show your website.Do what you want to do.
Great Job. Keep up the good work. Keep the Fatr right where it is.I don’t have a facebook account. Asking for a poll on what to do should be done on this site no? I’m not going to go registered on facebook just to give my opinion. I very much dislike facebook and the data mining. My vote is to keep the FATR as part of ETCG not ETCG1 because it’s all mechanic related stuff. The ETCG1 for the most part is your personal life stuff which I do watch occassionally. FATR belongs on ETCG channel.
Quoted From djdevon3:
Umm holy crap I think I got bitched out by Eric in today’s FATR 32. My apologies if my suggestions got you a bit upset. I did go back through all the FATR’s and noticed in the first episode you did in fact say that Mondays are “Fixit Mondays”, Wednesdays are “For Sale Wednesdays”, and Friday’s are of course FATR. You never responded that you said that a long time ago (FATR ep1 to be exact). I suppose that’s my fault for not watching every FATR and I’m sure you don’t like repeating yourself, my fault for sure and my apologies.
With that said, why label the FATR’s consistently with the intro sequence but not Fixit Mondays? You regularly refer to them as “my repair videos” not “Fixit Monday videos” while anything in a video from friday it’s in a “FATR video”. I know it’s trivial gnit picking and semantics but if my suggestions were what made you upset in FATR 32 I just wanted to clarify why I made the suggestions. Even you have to admit you haven’t been sticking to your own formatting goals. You might have been hitting the target dates every monday and friday but you aren’t labeling them as such. I’m on YouTube every Friday watching your video but come Monday I’m not looking for a repair video. I figured you just uploaded them whenever during the week. Just something to think about big guy, I love ya, not trying to upset you. Just trying to help you make ETCG even better.
Not directed specifically at you no worries. To be honest there was one person in paticular that I used to call ‘friend’ that was the catalyst but it seemed that on FATR 31 there were a lot of comments about how I wasn’t how I used to be and I had turned ETCG into a show about me and that kind of bothered me, actually it pissed me off. I’m past it now that I’ve cleared the air and I’m ready to move on. I love my fans and I listen to their wants and needs and do what I can to accomidate but as they say ‘you can’t please everyone’ and the more popular my channel gets the more I’m learning about that very thing.
I really appreciate your support and input, that’s the reason I read this thread everytime I get onto the forums. Even if I don’t like hearing about a paticular thing I do listen and try to make adjustments based on even the smallest suggestion, after all I do this for the ETCG fans. ETCG is my livelyhood and I have every intention of putting my kids through college if I can manage to swing it so I have a vested interest in it’s success. Since I started ETCG I’ve worked tirelessly to get it where it is today and I plan on keeping at it for as long as I draw breath because it’s the best job I’ve ever had.
Keep the suggestions and comments coming and don’t worry about my ‘feelings’ just try and be sensable and I’ll listen and respond, this is a democracy after all and I see a difference of opinion as an opportunity for learning so long as the dialog stays open.
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