YouTube mechanic...now TWO of the best; see last post

[Ace-Garageguy]

There are trainloads of bozo "mechanics" on YouTube that I wouldn't let work on my ex-mother-in-law's lawnmower.

There are also a few I'd let work on something I'd drive...which is just about unheard of.  

This guy is great about explaining how things work as he goes through the motions of fixing typical daily-driver cars. 

He's smart, funny, articulate, and always entertaining...and if you watch enough of his videos, you're bound to learn a thing or two.

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[Plowboy]

A prime example of what's wrong with a lot of mechanics/workers today. Instead of doing the job he's being paid to do, he's running around with a cell phone in his hand making a video. Imagine how much more work he could accomplish if he was able to use both hands. 

[peteski]

6 minutes ago, Plowboy said:

A prime example of what's wrong with a lot of mechanics/workers today. Instead of doing the job he's being paid to do, he's running around with a cell phone in his hand making a video. Imagine how much more work he could accomplish if he was able to use both hands. 

LOL, why you make a humorous point, this guy is likely making money from his videos - consider it as a "second job" he is working at the same time as hist primary job.  Plus he is having fun doing 2 jobs at once.

Edited February 17, 2022 by peteski

[Ace-Garageguy]

28 minutes ago, Plowboy said:

A prime example of what's wrong with a lot of mechanics/workers today. Instead of doing the job he's being paid to do, he's running around with a cell phone in his hand making a video. Imagine how much more work he could accomplish if he was able to use both hands. 

That right there is pretty funny. Most of the time when he's actually working on a car...not driving... he either has a camera on a tripod or on his head.

Anybody who actually works on stuff can see he's using both hands in most of the work shots, but hey...criticize away.  

I've seen him do a job that book-times for 7 hours in 45 minutes, then give the customer a big discount because of it. 99.9% of guys would take it all.

And most of the dwerps I'm lucky enough to have worked with recently spend large parts of their days on their phones WATCHING YT videos because they have no clue how to do the work, or how anything functions, or why.

Final point: techs like this work on commission. They're not paid salary. They're paid for what they actually accomplish, and if he wasn't turning a decent number of hours every week, he'd be gone

Edited February 17, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

25 minutes ago, peteski said:

LOL, why you make a humorous point, this guy is likely making money from his videos - consider it as a "second job" he is working at the same time as hist primary job.  Plus he is having fun doing 2 jobs at once.

And he's fast, and he understands everything about what he's doing. That's unbelievably rare in the business these days.

[Can-Con]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

 

I've seen him do a job that book-times for 7 hours in 45 minutes, then give the customer a big discount because of it. 99.9% of guys would take it all.A

Was that changing a lower control arm on a Toyota, Bill? 

Yea, I seen that one and I don't usually watch this type of video

[Ace-Garageguy]

21 minutes ago, Can-Con said:

Was that changing a lower control arm on a Toyota, Bill? 

Yup. As he was doing it, he kept saying the book must be wrong...but in the biz, if that's what the book says, that's what you usually charge...unless it takes longer due to genuinely extenuating circumstances like rusty fasteners snapping off, etc.

Any competent mechanic can make a very good living, as it's routinely possible to "beat the book" by 50% or more on straightforward work and still do it right.

Turning 80 to 100 billable hours in a 40-hour week didn't used to be unusual. My personal best was something over 30 billable in one day.

Diagnosis, on the other hand, is a whole 'nuther animal...and the vast majority of techs today are either idiots, crooks, or both.

One thing I'm not crazy about is that this guy kinda slings stuff around more than I'd like to see, and isn't as fastidious about making "tool marks" as I tend to be.

Still, when you're working on things that customers have no emotional investment in, see as semi-disposable appliances that they helplessly depend on but don't understand, and who want to spend a minimum to stay mobile, it doesn't make much sense to be too anal-retentive.  

[1972coronet]

I have watched a few of his videos, and am entertained each time. He rights the wrongs of goombahs whose butchery and trickery are unparalleled ; obstinate customers, too. 

This guy, Car Wizard, Vice Grip, and a few others are my favourites. 

[THarrison351]

Never mind, I unsubscribed from this guy because he displayed his politics once too often

Edited February 18, 2022 by THarrison351

[espo]

I would say this guy defiantly knows what he's doing and understands the systems he's working on. I have two questions for Bill on this particular job that I wonder about. #1 The rear brake shoes. While they show a good about of lining left, I notice the ends of the shoes are not cut back at an angle. In days long ago when replacing the shoes and having arced them to the trued drums the leading edge would be cut slightly where the shoe first makes contact with the brake drum. I was taught that this may or could create a vibration and or cause the shoe to "catch" on the drum when first applied. At the very least it would smooth out the initial contact I would think. #2 Reatatching the wheels, even though they are already jacked up. Again, I was taught that the lug nuts were to be tightened by going to lug nuts on the opposite side of the bolt pattern when tightening. and they should be tightened in stages and not using an air wrench or other power tool to tighten the lug nut as hard as you can. Reasons I have learned are to prevent the wheel from being tightened off center and damaging the seat on the wheels itself and or the wheel center and the end of the axle. Wheels should be tightened by crise crossing between the lugs and tightened to a manufactures spec. Over tightening and not tightening in a proper manor may also warp a rotor if over tightened, especially when working with a car like the one in the video that has what could be called questionable quality parts.  Your thoughts Bill, Am I looking for the fly droppings in the pepper? 

[iamsuperdan]

I wonder though, after watching that video, if the customer is arguing about the diagnosis and claiming work has already been done, then why wouldn't he just show the customer the issues? Take him back to the car, show him what's going on.

 

I always question when I see shops that won't let customers watch what's going on with their cars.  

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

50 minutes ago, espo said:

 ... Your thoughts Bill, Am I looking for the fly droppings in the pepper? 

I agree with you for the most part. BUT...I haven't seen shoes come with tapered ends for a long time. I don't know why. I still do it to the stuff I work on out of old habit, but apparently it's not considered necessary anymore. I haven't seen anybody arc shoes to match drums much in the past few decades either (though we did at Mills hot-rod shop). We have the equipment to do it all in the vintage car shop, but everybody there is pretty much a parts-changer, and the sad little machines sit covered with dust. It's among the vintage tooling I'm going to try to buy when I leave...like the distributor machine, the '60s vintage Sun machine, etc.

On the wheel tightening thing, he usually uses the impact just to snug the nuts or bolts down (which I find to be acceptable if the wrench power is turned way down) and in a more-or-less correct cross-pattern. He'll often show going back with the car on the ground, final-tightening the fasteners with a click-type or old-school pointer torque wrench.

One aside...recently I had to buy a new-fangled $800 electric impact to do a front hub bearing job on a friend's Corolla. The peak torque of the thing is astounding, but the precision of control over tightening torque values is pretty impressive too. On most street-driven cars, I'd be pretty OK with tightening wheel fasteners with a high-end unit (which his is) adjusted to a reasonable torque limit...though I always use a torque wrench on alloy wheels, and never final-tighten anything with a power tool.

But yes, sometimes he does final-tighten lug nuts with the impact, and it makes me cringe.

I said above that I think he "slings things around" a little much for my taste, and the wheel fasteners come under that heading.

STILL...finding a mechanic today who understands what he's doing and how systems work, well enough to explain in simple terms, is extremely rare. That's where this guy really shines.

Somebody really smart once said that if you actually know what you're doing, you can explain something complicated in simple terms; I find this to be true.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

DUMB GUY DOUBLE-POST  

Edited February 18, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[cobraman]

Bill, you have helped me more than once with questions I had on either my F 150 or my Mustang GT. You advice has been spot on and I thank you . I trust you a great deal more than anyone on youtube. Thanks again for all your past help.

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, iamsuperdan said:

I wonder though, after watching that video, if the customer is arguing about the diagnosis and claiming work has already been done, then why wouldn't he just show the customer the issues? Take him back to the car, show him what's going on.

I always question when I see shops that won't let customers watch what's going on with their cars.  

I don't know what the shop policy is, or how good a communicator the service-writer or manager is (lotsa them are zero-hands-on-experience idiots; the best ones are usually ex- or retired mechanics, same as in the body biz), and lotsa times the shops don't want techs actually talking to the customers. Again, the shop policy is unknown to me...but the technical competence of this particular mechanic is obvious.

There's no question the front brake rotors haven't been replaced in a long time, though the rear drums might have been. Stuff rusts fast in damp, salty Florida.

But I always take everything any customer tells me with a grain of salt. Over 5 decades in the biz have taught me most of them have no idea what they're talking about, and you might as well listen to their parrot on the same subject.

Case in point: I once had a guy bring me a Triumph Stag on the hook, popping, spitting, missing entirely on one cylinder, too feeble to get out the driveway. He said "there's nothing wrong with it; it just won't run...so don't try to sell me a lot of work because I JUST HAD EVERYTHING DONE".

He shows me a receipt for a valve-lash adjustment, points, condenser, cap and rotor, wires, distributor rebuild, both carbs rebuilt, plugs, fuel and air filter...and again states emphatically "there's nothing wrong with it...it just won't run".

So whatthehell am I supposed to do? Wave a magic wrench over it? Hold a séance? Call in a priest to drive the demons out?

We finally came to terms, and I let him watch as I began going through a diagnosis starting with a compression test...which nobody had bothered to do previously...and get numbers that look like lotsa valves are either burned or adjusted WAY wrong. Plugs are fouled and gaps are wrong. Point gap is 1/2 of what it's supposed to be. So finally, he realizes he's been screwed, gives me the green to fix the damm thing, picks the car up in a couple days, and loves it.

Point being: the customer isn't always right, but knowledge and open communication go a long way to solve most problems...and there are jerks who just won't listen because they think they know better than anybody about everything.  

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[espo]

32 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I agree with you for the most part. BUT...I haven't seen shoes come with tapered ends for a long time. I don't know why. I still do it to the stuff I work on out of old habit, but apparently it's not considered necessary anymore. I haven't seen anybody arc shoes to match drums much in the past few decades either (though we did at Mills hot-rod shop). We have the equipment to do it all in the vintage car shop, but everybody there is pretty much a parts-changer, and the sad little machines sit covered with dust. It's among the vintage tooling I'm going to try to buy when I leave...like the distributor machine, the '60s vintage Sun machine, etc.

On the wheel tightening thing, he usually uses the impact just to snug the nuts or bolts down (which I find to be acceptable if the wrench power is turned way down) and in a more-or-less correct cross-pattern. He'll often show going back with the car on the ground, final-tightening the fasteners with a click-type or old-school pointer torque wrench.

One aside...recently I had to buy a new-fangled $800 electric impact to do a front hub bearing job on a friend's Corolla. The peak torque of the thing is astounding, but the precision of control over tightening torque values is pretty impressive too. On most street-driven cars, I'd be pretty OK with tightening wheel fasteners with a high-end unit (which his is) adjusted to a reasonable torque limit...though I always use a torque wrench on alloy wheels, and never final-tighten anything with a power tool.

But yes, sometimes he does final-tighten lug nuts with the impact, and it makes me cringe.

I said above that I think he "slings things around" a little much for my taste, and the wheel fasteners come under that heading.

STILL...finding a mechanic today who understands what he's doing and how systems work, well enough to explain in simple terms, is extremely rare. That's where this guy really shines.

Somebody really smart once said that if you actually know what you're doing, you can explain something complicated in simple terms; I find this to be true.

On the brake shoes on drum brakes, we always had to cut the edges ourselves. Alloy wheels of some type are so common anymore I can't even remember the last car or truck I have owned with steel wheels. I still use an arm strong type torque wrench on all my wheels and work them down with at least three passes before the final click of the wrench and then one last go around after that. My labor is cheap and I'm a little AR about these things. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Just now, espo said:

On the brake shoes on drum brakes, we always had to cut the edges ourselves...My labor is cheap and I'm a little AR about these things. 

Last drum brakes I did were on my Neon a few years back after one of the OEM shoes lost a bonded lining. I was in a hurry, it was my own car, and either I forgot or just didn't bother tapering the shoes. Little car didn't seem to notice...which is not to say it's not still a good idea.

I'm right there with you an the AR thing, but I know what I can get away with on my own stuff, and take shortcuts and make rigs I'd never dream of doing on somebody else's machine.  

And boy...I've blown a lotta time this AM. I gots stuff to do.   

[Ace-Garageguy]

27 minutes ago, cobraman said:

Bill, you have helped me more than once with questions I had on either my F 150 or my Mustang GT. You advice has been spot on and I thank you . I trust you a great deal more than anyone on youtube. Thanks again for all your past help.

Glad I could help, Ray.   

[Ace-Garageguy]

15 hours ago, THarrison351 said:

... I unsubscribed from this guy because he displayed his politics once too often

I'll have to watch for that. You've really piqued my curiosity.   

[iamsuperdan]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

...and there are jerks who just won't listen because they think they know better than anybody about everything.  

 

My favourite clients are the "ever sincers."

 

Ever since you guys worked on my car.....

 

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

41 minutes ago, iamsuperdan said:

My favourite clients are the "ever sincers."

Ever since you guys worked on my car.....

Yup...I've known a lotta those.  

"Ever since you worked on my brakes, my horn doesn't sound the same".

[Erik Smith]

55 minutes ago, iamsuperdan said:

My favourite clients are the "ever sincers."

 

Ever since you guys worked on my car.....

 

 

Or the "it worked fine before I brought it in" people.

Well, it worked fine before it broke hence the reason you brought it in...

 

I was little discerned by his handling of the parts he was removing, but, yeah, that's still showing slightly more respect than the owner of the car is displaying. It's funny how some people, or a lot of people, treat cars like $1 toys they buy at the dollar store. Even people who are environmentally concerned. You don't have to like the fact cars aren't the best for a lot of things environmentally speaking, but not respecting the amount of materials and time that was put into the design and manufacture of ANY automobile is near sighted to say the least. If people would take care of things we wouldn't need to make soooo many unnecessary new things (or if things were made better...but that's another big can of wriggly worms).

 

Anyhow, nice video. Reminds me of how much fun I had doing the brakes on my recently deceased 1993 Camry wagon.

[Ace-Garageguy]

2 minutes ago, Erik Smith said:

...It's funny how some people, or a lot of people, treat cars like $1 toys they buy at the dollar store. Even people who are environmentally concerned. You don't have to like the fact cars aren't the best for a lot of things environmentally speaking, but not respecting the amount of materials and time that was put into the design and manufacture of ANY automobile is near sighted to say the least. If people would take care of things we wouldn't need to make soooo many unnecessary new things (or if things were made better...but that's another big can of wriggly worms)...

Amen, brother.  

[Ace-Garageguy]

This is another one of the best guys on YT.

This particular clip illustrates the joys of working on electronics after another shop has done an incorrect diagnosis, and the customer installs the wrong part, buggering things in the process. The logic of his approach to getting this hot mess running is what you want to find in a tech...and very rarely do.

Any wonder I've quit doing this stuff on old, nasty, unloved cars?

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[peter31a]

I remember you posting about SMA a few years ago in another topic and have been watching him ever since. It’s amazing the number of times that he is cleaning up other shops botched or incomplete work.