Would you like to…Pet my Peeve?
Monkeys could bite your face off.
I have tons of friends I help to work on their cars, when I can. Ed and I have had several auto repair parties in season, and I look forward to more. My optometrist will drop off his car and leave me the keys. My optometrist’s son has done the same.
I have worked on rides for the wife’s bosses, co-workers, even more or less casual acquaintences. I do not mind one bit. Last winter I helped a co-worker rebuild a 911 turbo engine, quite the ordeal.
I have a friend who lives out east, and he has about five cars. I know he’s carrying notes on two of them. he has an old Saab, sitting in the weeds behind the house. He has a BMW 2002, rusting next to the saab. he has a Porsche 924 and a 914 and a Citroen.
He’s a middling driver, I wouldn’t hire him to drive a race car but he’s acceptable, even if only by my standards. He has all these cars because they break down and rather than getting them fixed – “I can’t afford that! It’s too expensive! they make the parts too expensive and all the shops rip you off!” he won’t fix them himself- he considers himself a driver and actually turning a wrench himself he considers below him. “You don’t see Michael Schumacher wrenching on his car!” I do hate to tell him he’s not Michael Schumacher.
he says “Man, I wish you lived closer so you could fix these cars and I could drive them again”.
Somehow turning a wrench is below him, but above me. Somehow I am expected to fix his shit for free while he considers that work “Alright for the likes of you”.
And he still doesn’t get it. “Why don’t you get a WRX or something that is more durable and reliable?” “Well, you wouldn’t understand because you don’t do the kind of driving I do. You can’t, really, in a truck” Because I have never driven a BMW around a track, or a Saab, or a WRX, or taken an Audi through a ralley stage. Yep, that’s me.
Dumbass. if you are going to buy and drive the more expensive sports cars “because they’re really better in ways you can’t understand” and you don’t have the resources to have them properly maintained or the will and skill to DIY, then go fuck yourself. I got no use for you. I would never say that to him, though the thought of hopping on a plane with a screwdriver, C clamp, and 12mm wrench and doing a brake job on the Saab (he says that’s all it needs) and then giving the keys to someone who will take care of it appeals to me.
A properly maintained motor vehicle will take good care of you. Waiting until it fails to look at it and see what’s going on/going wrong with it will bite you- hard- and you deserve it.
37 comments Og | Uncategorized
Around here, it’s the A8 and CL crowd. Buy them used, drive till they take a dump, and then find out they cost M.M.M.M.Money to fix.
Our shop manager ships them down the road, Won’t touch them. Me, I can laugh at people who look down at the techs…. as I write up the estimate accordingly.
I learned a long time ago…. People like that come and go. The important thing is… *I* have a ride home. *MY* car works just fine.
It’s an attitude that goes way beyond cars too. I recently had a guy (who considers himself a musician) why people won’t pay musicians like plumbers. In other words, why won’t you drop $200 to see a bar-band play, but you’ll drop $200 on a plumber. He didn’t like it when I told him I have never ONCE heard of someone calling a musician on the phone and saying “It’s 9:00 on Thanksgiving morning, I’ll have 20 people here for dinner in four hours, and I REALLY need you to come play a song for me.” Change musician to plumber and “play a song” to “unclog my sewer line” and yeah, I’ve heard it.
Art (and a performance car counts as art) can only exist under civilization. No one cares what’s on the sound system if you’re up to your knees in sh*t because the sewer is clogged. Best not to look down on the people who make civilization happen and give art a place to flourish.
You don’t want to get your hands dirty, expect to pay the price. I know how to get my hands dirty and I know what to do when they are. But the old body just doesn’t hold that awkward position for hours to get that bolt just right like it used to.
the guy on the east cost though, I would expect to find his picture in Wikipedia under snob.
Anybody who does not live in France and still buys a Citroen deserves whatever they get.
I like that perspective Mark. Plus poo.
I get the whole ” i dont know how to fix it” thing, i really do. There are things i wont touch. If you cant diy, though, be prepared to spend $3600 to tune up that maserati twice a year.
Lol@Tam: anyone who buys a citroen deserves what they get. There i fixed it for you.
Og,
Oh yeah, I’m pretty handy and do a lot of my own home repairs, but if there’s a little voice in the back of my mind saying “If I mess this up I could burn the house down” I’ll hire a pro. I don’t do much work on my car because (a) I don’t know how to do much more than the basics and (b) I don’t have a safe way to get it in the air or a safe place to do so and (c) I’m too old to be crawling around under a car.
Citroen? Isn’t that those little pieces of fruit-booger some people insist upon putting in baked goods? Oh, wait, that’s citron.
My car limits are the three t’s. Tin, tuning and transmissions. I wont do body repair. I wont do auto trans work other than oil changes. And i can get points running but i leave the final tune to others. I like electronic ignition a lot.
I knew a guy who swore by and drove nothing but Saabs. Until they dropped and he didn’t have the money to fix them.
Og: Tin?
Sheet metal. Body work.
Og: forgive the ignorance, but how’s that different from the body repair you said you don’t do?
From following you I know you are a a wiz at automation programming, would that extend to the programming that tells a hybrid car when to engage the gas engine vs the electric.
I’m asking because I have a hybrid Toyota that gets good gas mileage but always seems to engage the gas engine, it seems to me (the only moderately educated) that I could improve my MPG if the gas engine was not involved till after ~30mph?
Mark. I wont do tin. I wont do transmissions. I wont do tuneups. How can i be more clear than that?
Thomas: the computers in most modern cars sort of adapt to the drivers i expect that you can modify your style to improve mileage, mr B if he stops in can probably shed light on this. I would not own one at gunpoint.
Sorry Og, by limits I thought you meant the things you WOULD do (i.e. things you’ve limited yourself to doing). It’s Monday, can’t brain too well yet.
Mea culpa.
Lol. I know that! No, i wont touch the three t’s. Anything else is fair game.
I don’t care what Tam thinks, I’d love a (pre-restored, because I’m not stupid) Traction Avant.
Oh, dude, if you’re buying it for the joy of fettling, then you _want_ to get what you deserve.
There’s a difference between toy and transportation, as I was finally forced to grudgingly acknowledge.
Now I’ve gotta find a nearby shop who’ll swap out the viscous coupling on a Subie. MY preferred local small shop won’t do it, and it’s looking more and more like a pillaging by a dealership is in my future… :(
Auto repair shop no. Auto transmission shop yes. You need to find a trans place to get this done.
Viscous coupling? In a car?
Damn, those aussies anyway, new there was reason I did get one.
Sound like a radiator cap trade to me.
Needed a not between get and one. Need to get the eye checked, it is seeing double.
Highest-recommended transmission shop in town just practically hung up on me when I asked if they could do the job.
Festive.
The Subie’s been fun, but if it’s got a part on it that takes a dump every 60k-90k miles and every shop acts like you’re asking them to work on a reactor core, my estimation of the vehicle is taking a nose dive.
Let me see what i can find. I have a guy does my trans work.
Also: Awd drivetrains are VERY sensitive to tire wear. Tire rotation is a must to make sure rubber wears evenly. One new tire on a subie with three worn ones will hose up the viscous coupling.
If I had time space and tools, it doesn’t look impossible: http://www.subaruforester.org/vbulletin/f89/center-diffs-how-replace-them-46979/
Its not. Ive done it to an explorer.
Og,
Auto transmissions aren’t that bad, at least if they aren’t really smoked. I’ve done a couple that were just a bit “old” and had seals that no longer did. Seal, that is. Had to make a special tool for the unit in my Dodge truck, and needed the hydraulic press to compress the O.D. spring, but it really wasn’t too bad a job. In neither case did I do the R&R, I don’t have a lift and tranny jack. Getting way too old to balance the thing on a floor jack.
Did both to save money AND because “Honest Transmission Shop” is sorta like Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, or Honest Politician, mostly mythical.
I have a place that is honest, good, fast and cheap. I’ve been using them for thirty years and they have never steered me wrong. I have recommended dozens of people to them and they have all come back saying the same things about them.
And auto transmissions are not hard, they’re just not worth the effort when you have someone good close by. It’s like, why reload when you can buy reloads for less than the cost of components?
Your limits are the same as mine, Og.
There is one automatic transmission that I would try to rebuild myself: the TH350. Otherwise, hell no. The TH350 is simple and the parts are cheap; you start getting into overdrive gears or electronics with all the fiddlybits and it rapidly turns into a nightmare requiring about a thousand dollars’ worth of special tools.
I have done a bare little bit of bodywork, but it’s not for me. (I did hammer a dent out of my motorcycle’s fender and you can barely tell it was ever dented, though.)
And I can’t tune an engine to save my life. I can get it running and I can get the timing set, but that’s about it.
I’m pretty good at fixing cars, though. MOTIVATING myself to fix them is entirely a different story….
Going wayyyyy back to the start of the thread: I would wager that someone who IS a musician (or artist or whatever) knows the true value of their work far better than someone who “considers himself” a musician (or artist or whatever). The latter category helps make up the Hyacinth Buckets of the world.
“Bouquet”. I always wondered, was Hyacinth related to Charlie?
Joanna: I’ve found there are two types of artists (of whatever stripe, musicians, writers, painters, etc). First, the ones who treat their art as a business and understand that if they want to live on it it has to be something that enough people will enjoy enough that they’ll pay money for it. Second, the ones who consider the first category to be sell-outs, they’re self-absorbed twerps who believe they’re upholding the purity of their art while they work as bartenders/waiters and insist that society owes them a living because they’re artists. All while nursing a drug or alcohol addiction that helps them live with themselves.
This of course doesn’t count the hobbiest, like the accountant who likes to jam on the weekend and takes an occasional bar gig just got gits and shiggles.
[…] Would you like to…Pet my Peeve? By: Jim on November 20th, 2013 Would you like to…Pet my Peeve?he has an old Saab, sitting in the weeds behind the house. He has a BMW 2002, rusting next to the saab. he has a Porsche 924 and a 914 and a Citroen. He’s a middling driver, I wouldn’t hire him to drive…See all stories on this topic […]
What’s the year make and model on the SAAB? I’m still trying to find another mid 80’s SAAB 900 3 door Hatch with the 2.0 H Engine and a 5 speed. I never should have gotten rid of my old one.
I think its a 900 turbo. He’ll never sell it. “I would never get what its worth!”