Eighty--no, five-hundred--no, eleven-hundred dollars (a car rant).

The BBQ Pit
1

I hate going to mechanics.

My beloved car–my only car–started making a groaning noise last week. At least, that’s when I noticed the noise. It only happens when I turn the wheel right while going over thirty MPH. Being a fairly responsible car owner–and not really wanting the wheels to fall off while I’m driving on I-90–I took the car into the dealership this morning (because that’s the only place my parents will let me take this car, which is technically theirs).

We start off with an eighty dollar “look into it” fee. They call here and say it’s going to be five-hundred dollars (something about the knuckle bracket and the rod).

Okay, fine, whatever. Just fix the damned thing, but before you start, why don’t you check the other wheel (because I don’t want them to fix the one side, and then say “well, the OTHER side needs to be fixed, too”) and tell me what you find. They want to do it after the other side is fixed, but I want them to just get everything down on paper before they start fixing anything.

Surprise, surprise–they say that one’s shot too. So now they want eleven-hundred dollars.

I could probably buy a car for that much money. This is why I hate going to get my car fixed.

See, my dad never bothered teaching me how cars work, how to check them, and how to do anything besides changing a tire, checking fluids, and changing oil. He knows stuff about cars, though; he just wouldn’t teach it to me because I was a girl, and he was more concerned with having me learn how to apply makeup ( :rolleyes: I suck at that, too). Yet everytime I have to take my car in, he refuses to come with me.

Fuck. I don’t know whether I’m being scammed or not. I don’t know if the car really needs what they say it needs. I don’t think that any unscrupulous dealer would hesitate to try to scam me because, honestly, I don’t look like I know much about cars. Unfortunately, in my case, the looks are not deceiving. And even if I’m not being scammed…1100 dollars is so fucking expensive. I can’t imagine any part of a car short of the engine costing that much. And the labor…they said it’d take maybe two or three hours, tops. I could have my car back tonight.

I just don’t get it. I want my dad to come with me. I want someone who knows something about cars to come with me. It’s so incredibly frustrating, too. I know a lot of things; I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person. Yet I have no fucking clue whether the dealer is bullshitting me or not–and as long as I’m clueless, I’m going to be paranoid as hell. I’m without knowledge, and I hate, hate, hate being in that position.

WHY DIDN’T I LEARN ABOUT CARS?!

::sighs:: Time to start rolling up my pennies…

2

When I was buying a used car about five years ago, you could take any car into a Kmart auto center and they would do a free “what’s wrong with it”-type inspection. If they came up with a problem, you weren’t under any obligation to have it fixed there. I haven’t taken advantage of this for a while, so I don’t know if they still do this.

If this option doesn’t work out, I don’t think you have anything to lose by taking the car for a second optinion. Don’t tell the second shop what the first guys said, just describe the problem and see what they come up with. Not only will you be confirming the diagnosis, as it were, you’ll be shopping around for the best price, which is always a good idea.

I don’t know a great deal about cars either, but I applaud you for having the sense to get the sound checked out. So many people assume that, since they don’t know anything about cars, they don’t know anything about when the car needs to see someone who does know about cars. There are a few things everyone should know about their car, but even if you never learn to tell the axle from the engine, you’ll probably be okay so long as you respond promptly to things you think are wrong.

Finally, do you have power steering? Have you checked the fluid? It’s probably dumb suggestion, but I know low power steering fluid can result in a groaning noise. Good luck

3

Sounds high, but it’s hard to tell without knowing what kind of car, how old it is, and exactly what they’re doing. I think you should get a second opinion, or at least get a very clear description of what these guys plan to do, and then check around (maybe at the CarTalk site) to see if the price is in the ball park.

4

God, I know how you feel.

I begged my grandfather, who had owned a garage, to teach me how to change the tires and check the fuses on his car. “No, that is men’s work, go play inside.”

Now I’m at the mercy of every garage mechanic I come across (and I’ve put at least 800 dollars into my car this year), because he didn’t understand the value of teaching all his kids the lessons he reserved for his boys. No advice for you, but at least you know there is another girl out there who is as clueless as you.

P.S. I keep trying to work up the nerve to take a auto repair class at a community college. Maybe that would be an option for you, too?

5

Thats definetly a crapshoot on the stores side when they do that. When I used to work at a auto shop years ago, we’d very often get calls from people wondering if we gave “free estimates”. And when we’d say no, they’d be all pissed.

Look. The Mechanic makes $20-$40 per hour, plus overhead costs. Why should we pay our profesional to diagnose your car for you* just so you can go fix it yourself*? Hell, he isn’t going to work an hour for free. Would you? Its a hard way to stay in business, giving away stuff for free.

6

Sadly, Angel of the Lord’s father and Romola’s grandfather are the only two possible sources of automotive knowledge in the Western Hemisphere, which means that their refusal to impart their knowledge to their female family members has, as they suggest, left them without any conceivable source of information on the subject.

::sigh::

Sorry to be sarcastic. Perhaps a community college, or adult education/continuing education, course on basic auto mechanics is available in your respective areas? I know that my dad was not mechanically inclined; his idea of checking the car’s road-worthiness was kicking the tires. But when I bought my own car, a then-seven-year-old 1974 Plymouth Valiant, I taught myself how to change and gap the plugs, check and change oil, change a tire, check and adjust the timing, replace the alternator, replace the distributor cap, and replace the voltage regulator… all through the virtue of necessity. I bought a “Do It Yourself” Sears car book, and the Chilton’s manual for the car, and when I was still stumped, I visited the high school shop teacher for hints.

I guess I’m responding to the implication in the OP that because the father failed to impart this knowledge, all is lost. It would have been nice… but it’s not the only way to get there.

  • Rick

P.S. Those skills are mostly useless now; modern cars can’t be tuned by a do-it-yourselfer. But the confidence of having at least a general knowledge of how a car works remains.

7

I can’t really blame you for your sarcasm; I sounded pretty self-pitying.

I did mention the possiblity of taking a community college course to Angel of the Lord. Considering Angel of the Lord is having trouble paying for this job (and from her posts she sounds like an impoverished early twenties girl, like me), I can understand why she hasn’t had the time or money to take an auto repair class. And the problem of continued ignorance is more than your father just failing to give you information. When you have been told that you are incapable of understanding something simply because you have female genitalia or in my case, have been actively pushed into the role of a weak, ignorant princess, it can take awhile to realize you are a capable person.

I’ve owned several old cars, and in time learned how to change my own fluids and gain a very basic understanding of the anatomy of an old car. Like you said, my weak knowledge of old cars does not help me when a mechanic is giving me information about newer models, especially when the problems involve complicated electrical systems, heating/cooling systems, etc.

8

Romola,

Undoubtedly a subject deserving of a thread all its own – and not a Pit thread: at what point is it incumbent on a person to shake off the bonds of weak, ignorant princess-dom, and take the helm of her own life? Or to state the case more generally, at what point do we expect people to rise above the limitations imposed on them by others?

This is not a rhetorical question. If you tell a child something often enough, and start at a young enough age, you build some pretty serious belief patterns. If you’re told at six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen that young ladies don’t get their hands dirty with car grease, it’s a real effort to say at seventeen, “Why not?” and take steps to fix it.

On the other hand… history is replete with pioneers of all sorts who rose above their upbringing to accomplish great deeds; people can break their “programming” and often do.

I know there’s no general answer to my general question; it depends on the circumstances. But I do feel that at some point, regardless of what you’ve been told over and over, you have to take charge of who you are and what you wish to be.

And it sounds like you have.

  • Rick
9

First, let me thank the gods and my father for one second: He’s the man who would not allow my sister and myself to get our drivers’ licenses until we knew how to
• check and replace basic fluids, i.e. gas, oil, power steering, windshield, etc.
• could demonstrate we could change a tire in the driveway – which was about a 30 degree incline.
• Could steer out of a skid on snow/ice
• and were aware of what resources are available to us should some mechanical issue come up that was beyond our basic maintenance capabilities.

Bless you, dad. You may be an asshole at times, but I am eternally grateful that you taught me these lessons. To the OP, my comment is: there but for the grace of my daddy, go I.

If taking a class at the local community college is cost-prohibitive, then I highly recommend the Car Talk guys. Hell, call 'em up. At the very least, go to their web site, www.cars.com. There’s a mechanic finder in there with reviews from other customers. You plug in your zip code and a list of mostly reputable repair shops come up. At least then you’ll be in a better position to pick out the second opinion. If all else fails, e-mail me and I’ll give ya my dad’s phone number.

10

I guess I came off as blaming my dad a little too much in the OP. Sorry about that. I wish he would teach me more about cars, but he won’t–he claims I know everything that I need (which is basically checking/replacing fluids and changing tires according to him). I haven’t made much of an attempt at learning this stuff on my own.

That’s why, at the end of my post, I screamed “why didn’t I learn about cars?” It’s mostly my fault for not taking the initiative with people other than my dad. I do wish, though, that he’d go with me to the garages, so I’d know if I was being scammed or not (or so that, at the very least, the garages would be less likely to try to scam me).

I don’t think people realize how important having automotive knowledge can be. I know I sure as hell didn’t until today. I’m taking it in to a garage by my house that I know does good work tomorrow. Hopefully, the estimate’ll come down…

I think I’ll check some books out of the library, too. Hey, it’s a start.

11

Angel,

If your car is up on the lift, and you get on a friendly basis with the service advisor, they might bring you in the shop for a minute to show you the trouble. Just make sure you phrase it as personal curiousity, rather than fear of being ripped off.

12

Angel, good show on getting a second opinion. $1,100 seems pretty high for a job that requires 2-3 hrs of work. Even at the princely sum of $100/hr you have $800 of parts alone! That sounds awfully pricey for some steering parts, what kind of car do you have, make, model and year? There are online sources for part prices such as NAPA that may help put things into perspective.