To Maintain or Not to Maintain, that is the question . . .

“All I’ve done is change the oil, and do whatever service my local garage told me about."  That’s what the owner of a ten-year-old 150,000 mile Lexus told me yesterday.   So what should I do now?

We looked at the receipts and she was right.  A bunch of oil changes, a few sets of tires, a few sets of brakes, and a battery had taken her all that distance.  It hadn’t been very expensive, especially compared to what the dealer wanted when they quoted the recommended services.

Now the car had an engine misfire.  That had caused catalytic converter failure, and a check engine light.  The owner knew the car wouldn’t pass inspection that way, and the corner garage didn’t do work like that.  So . . . the car ended up at our shop.

What does a responsible shop owner do, when someone like that comes in?  It’s like when the CPA has a new client walk in the door and say “I haven’t filed any tax returns since 2003, and now I’ve got this letter.  What do you suggest?”  What indeed.

I have seen some very high mileage Lexus cars in my day.  We had one fellow put 420,000 miles on a 1999 LS400 without a single major failure.  But he did his maintenance.  This car was a bit different.  It was fifty thousand miles past the timing belt change interval, and a hundred thousand past the transmission service date . . . . this car was living on borrowed time.

As I explained to the owner, it costs less than $1,600 to change a timing belt, water pump, and all the stuff in front of the engine.  If the belt breaks the bill is going to be at least $5,000, maybe considerably more.   It’s an all or nothing thing.   Every day you drive without belt breakage, you win.  The day it breaks, you lose big.  No belt lasts forever. 

She decided to change the belt.

We moved on to the other items on the service schedule.  Spark plugs were next.  Why?  Because the car had an intermittent skip.  Ignition failure is the most common cause of misfire faults.  What happens is that the plugs get old.  As they age, it takes more and more voltage to fire them.  That extra voltage puts stress on the wires, connectors and coils, and eventually something fails.  For that reason, whenever you have an ignition miss, step one is spark plug replacement. 

You may still need other parts but you certainly need new plugs if the old ones have been in the car 150,000 miles.

She decided to change the plugs

Now we get to the “other” fluids – brake fluid, transmission fluid, rear axle lube, coolant and power steering fluid.  Some people say, “I went this long without changing them, best leave it alone so I don’t stir things up and cause a problem.”  While many people use that line as a rationalization for doing nothing, it ensures the eventual failure of the system.   Lubricants, like belts and plugs, have a finite lifespan.

Brake fluid absorbs water, and it will rust your brake system from the inside.  Coolant becomes acidic, and dissolves your radiator and engine from within.  Transmission, steering, and axle lubes all pick up tiny metal particles.  Left in the old oil, they will grind away at the bearings till something fails.  At the same time, oil gradually loses its film strength, which is what keeps the gears from galling against each other under load.  

She decided to change the fluids.

In the end, after going through the list line by line, we agreed to do all the deferred service on the car.  It cost a hefty sum, to be sure, but it’s still less than she would have spent had she done it all on time, because some of the things we are doing would have been done several times already.

Which begs the question . . . .

Was the original maintenance schedule too conservative?  If so, she saved quite a bit of money with little or no consequence.  Or will she pay a higher price down the road, as the un-maintained parts and systems fail before their time?

I wish I knew.  I’m sure some carmakers are conservative and others are not.  I’m also sure some drivers are hard on their cars, while others are gentle.

In the past five years I have lost count of the engines I have changed in Mercedes, BMW and other cars because the owners failed to change the oil. I used to ask how they could be so dumb, but after the tenth or twentieth car came in the door I knew the answer.  Cars don’t talk back.  So when money is tight, the car gets neglected.  Most live, but some die.

When I point that fact out, the owners get mad at me.  Fine, I tell them.  I’m not the one making loan payments on two tons of scrap iron because I failed to protect my investment.  That’s the thing about being autistic.   When people act dumb, and machinery suffers, I may take the side of the car and not the human.  Vets feel the same about people who abuse cats and dogs.

The lesson to take away from all this:  You can probably push the maintenance schedules a bit if you drive gently.  But when you do, you take a big risk.  Deferring a $1,000 service won’t be so smart, if it costs you a $7,500 engine.   Carmakers make maintenance schedules for a reason.

Most of the time, when we suggest altering a factory schedule, it is to do something more often, not less.  The carmaker, after all, wants a schedule that keeps the car alive long enough to give them happy owners and a good reputation, but not so long that the car never wears out.  We, as repair people, expect to care for things and have them last almost forever.

So I guess you pick your philosophy, and with it, your repair shop.

The Philosophy of Car Restoration

Yesterday I posted some pictures of newly painted parts that are part of a Land Rover restoration we’re doing.  I captioned them “better than new,” and one of my readers asked if that was really the right goal of restoration.  Shouldn’t we follow the vision of the designers, he asked?

When we tackle a rusty old Land Rover Defender or Series truck, we are working with something that was originally a roughly finished utility vehicle made to a low standard of finish for use by military forces, farmers, and rural residents.

Today those vehicles are valuable, and often owned by very affluent people who are demographically very far removed from Land Rover’s original target market.  Land Rovers were built to be working off-road vehicles that would wear out in time, and be scrapped.  Today’s collectors have a very different expectation.  They don’t usually “work” their Rovers though they may attend club events.  Rather than expecting them to wear out and be scrapped, many collectors expect a level of quality they can cherish for a lifetime.

Where the original buyers bought for function and value, collectors buy for sentiment and sometimes-potential financial gain.  Most of the people who are drawn to Land Rovers discovered them years ago, perhaps on a farm, or at a camp in the wilderness.  Others – like me - saw Land Rovers in Wild Kingdom or National Geographic and dreamed.

When I grew up one of the things I became was an automobile service manager.  I watched people use Land Rovers to work power line projects and go where no other car could, and we fixed them when they sustained damage.   I saw the compromises Land Rover chose to make the vehicles affordable, and I saw how they subsequently fell apart in the field.  I learned how engineering oversights and errors could leave a person stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere.  I saw how New England winters turned bare metal undercarriages to cheesecake, and I wondered what might be done about that.

When I began overseeing restoration work I saw how cars are put together, and I began to understand the tradeoffs designers and engineers had to make to deliver a combination of cost, performance and durability.  One of the first things I learned was that cost is one of the most important design goals of every car engineer.  If a dollar could be saved by leaving a hidden metal part unpainted, Land Rover was very likely to do it.

Other carmakers – like Rolls-Royce – had bigger budgets and made fewer of those compromises.  They had their own issues, to be sure, but initial finish was not usually among them.

People would say thing like, “I want my Rover to look just as it did when new,” and at first I took them literally.  However, when we saw the results it became clear my clients did not really want the rough fit and finish of the original, even though it was true to their words and the way Rover had done it.  When they said, “like when it was new,” they were actually envisioning an idealized “new” where it was hand built, hand fitted, and near perfect.  That is quite far from what the factory did.

The more of these jobs I did the more I realized that our clients put a lot more emphasis on finish quality than any factory ever had.  That meant all parts needed to be painted or finished even if they never had been before.  

As we acquired more experience our philosophy of restoration diverged farther and farther from the manufacturer’s philosophy of car building.    Every step down that road made our clients happier.  We acquired the ability to restore cars so that they looked great and drove better than they did when new.

We built a reputation as a shop that built vehicles to perform, as well as look great.  Too many restorers see their job as cosmetics-only, and we could never agree with that point of view.  If I had a choice I’d take a fine running car that had some cosmetic imperfections over a beautiful trailer queen any day.

When we do cosmetic work, we always consider how it will perform in addition to how it will look.  If we weld up a custom bumper, we ask if it will hold the weight of the car on a floor jack.  When we paint something we ask if the finish will hold up when our clients use the vehicle.  Often that leads us to use more rugged techniques like powder coating.

When someone comes to us and says, "I want to drive my Land Rover on the beach," we think long and hard about how we can minimize corrosion in that hostile environment.  Every part we successfully protect today is a part that won’t have to be chiseled off, ten years down the road.

Here's one of our projects, from beneath.  It's not the perspective most people see, but it looks good and more important it will be durable.

Then there’s the matter of customization.  As much as some people like originality, I like tasteful custom work because it’s an opportunity to express our creative skills.  We love building custom bumpers, hidden winch mounts, or special racks and carriers.  Those things are like custom cabinets in a fine home – you can look at them forever and know they were made just for you, and not bought from a parts catalog.

Obviously the word customization can mean many things, all the way to the Batmobile or the George Barris custom rods of the sixties.    If you have something far out in mind, make sure the restorers share your vision.  Otherwise you run the risk of being like that sailor who passed out in the tattoo parlor . . .

We’ve also learned how much time quality work takes.  We know a full restoration can easily consume a thousand of hours of labor.  Some complex cars can take far more.  Jobs like these can take a year, maybe more to complete.  But the results will be worth the wait.

If you’re thinking of restoring a car – Land Rover or otherwise, I urge you to talk to the shop.  Learn their philosophy and make sure it’s in line with what you want.  Remember attitudes can vary with car lines.  I’d approach a 1954 Rolls Royce with a very different mindset than the one I’d apply to a 1978 Land Rover pickup.  Some people want to work on one line only but I’m happy to take a variety.  There’s room in the restoration world for all of us.

One final piece of advice – pay attention to how the shop manager communicates with you.  Ask whomever you will be dealing with to explain some aspect of their trade and listen close.  Do you get the sense they really understand the theory behind what’s proposed to do?  If you have doubts – watch out!  Some of the biggest mistakes I see come from well intentioned ignorance.  Another thing to watch for is specialized knowledge.  If you care about originality the shop should know what is and isn’t correct for your year and model.

Ask how they will update you on progress.  We send updates with images and text every week.  People may roll their eyes at endless images of wheel bearings and pistons but they sure know what we are doing, every step of the way.  We may send a client a thousand images in the course of a job.  We want our clients to be fully informed so there are no surprises when they see their finished car.

Best wishes for the holidays
John Elder Robison

JE Robison Service
Springfield, MA, USA

Intermittent Problems That Can't Be Fixed

I receive a surprising number of messages from motorists who are unhappy with dealer service departments.  Who can repair my BMW right?  Where do I find a competent shop to work on Mercedes?  Who repairs Land Rovers?  One of the biggest sources of distress comes from intermittent problems with certified used cars that are out of new car warranty, but still covered by certified warranty.  This recent missive typifies what I hear:

For the past few months I've had both the check engine light and tire pressure monitoring system warning lights come on and off.   I check the gas cap and the engine runs fine.  My tires pressures seem ok, too.  I've taken my Mercedes to a dealer three times for these warning lights, and every time they've returned the vehicle saying it's fixed. After driving the car again for a few hours, or a day, the lights come back on. The dealer said that as long as the check engine light is not flashing, it's not a critical problem.   I'm just tired of dealing with this dealer's service department.

Why does this happen?  Is the dealer incompetent, or the problem so intractable?  In most cases, the answer is neither.  Much of the time, the answer can be boiled down to four words:

No pay = no work.

To explain what this means in the context of car repair I need to start by explaining some things about warranty and service.   When a car is new, it is backed by a warranty from the manufacturer.  With rare exceptions, there is no limit to that warranty, and the dealer is not responsible except as the service agent.  The manufacturer cannot say, “we’ve done all the warranty repair we are going to do,” and abandon you.

If a new car has a really intractable problem the manufacturer will usually offer a replacement vehicle or in some cases a refund or lease cancellation.  Carmakers go to great lengths to satisfy customers.

They also expect a lot of their dealers.  One thing they expect is that the dealer will do something in response to customer complaints.  If a car comes in with an intermittent fault the dealer will often change the most likely parts even if the fault is not present at that moment, because that gives the best chance of cure, and the manufacturer stands behind them and pays the bill.  If a subsequent repair is needed, they generally stand behind that too.

If a lot of time is needed to diagnose a difficult problem the manufacturers have a policy of paying the technician as needed.  Knowing that, they usually get the job done.  Problems can still happen but the vast majority of new cars get fixed successfully.

Cars covered by certified programs are a whole different story.  Once the new car warranty expires the manufacturers unlimited obligation comes to an end.  The certified program is often administered by a third party company who didn’t make the car and has strict limits on their responsibility for it.

In most cases, there is no longer provision for paying to diagnose difficult problems.  Indeed, many used car warranties – technically called service contracts because they are not actual manufacturer warranties – don’t pay for diagnosis at all.  Those that do often pay a fraction of the real time taken.

Yet customers don’t know the difference. They just expect their problems to be solved.  But that can’t happen when no one is willing to spend money to find a problem.  It’s not the dealer’s car – so he’s not writing a blank check if the trouble can’t be found in 15 minutes.  The car’s owner thinks warranty covers everything and the dealer must be trying to cheat him if they ask for any money.  The result – the dealer says “no problem was found” and boots the car out the door. One day, they figure, it will come back with a visible failure and they can fix it then. 

The focus of carmakers is to make money by keeping customers happy so they buy more cars.  Good service on new cars is part of that.  The dynamic for a third party administrator is totally different.  They make money from finance, by collecting fees for service contracts and paying out as little as possible.   

Once those folks manage the car’s service, everything changes.

Yet the motoring public knows nothing of this.  Everyone tries to hide this ugly truth.  Many dealers are told they cannot charge customers extra for so-called certified repairs.  That is presumably meant to prevent gouging, but in practice it ensures no dealer technician will waste a single unpaid minute chasing a difficult intermittent problem. 

The system works for most people, most of the time, because most problems are not intermittent and motorists learn to ignore the rest.

For the rest of you . . . .

We’re here in Springfield, Massachusetts, and we’ll diagnose and fix anything at our regular shop rate.  If an extended warranty pays us, great.  If not, the owner can pay.  From the shop perspective that’s the only fair way to do this.  We get our clients everything we can from their service contracts and they pay the balance.  We charge for actual time worked, and WE WILL solve the problem. 

J E Robison Service Co, Inc

Springfield, MA, USA

Bosch Authorized Car Service

Specialists in Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Porsche, Land Rover, and Rolls Royce-Bentley

When cars break, and break again

My friend Bob called me to ask about his most recent car repair experience.  He said, Last week I noticed my brake fluid was low, and the pedal went to the floor.  I took it to the shop, and they replaced a leaking caliper.   Two weeks later, the same thing happened.  This time they say I need a master cylinder?  How come? 

The experience of sequential repairs is all too common in the automobile business.  Sometimes it’s due to technician error.  But more often, it’s the inevitable result of service policies or the step by step nature of some repair operations.  Let’s look at some examples to see how it happens.

When Bob brought his car in for service the first time, he had a visible problem.  Brake fluid was leaking at one of the wheels and it’s didn’t take much to see the source was a failed caliper.  Replacement was a straightforward job and the garage sent the car on its way assuming it was fixed for good.

Yet it failed again, just a few weeks later.  This time the failure was not so obvious.  There were no leaks at any of the wheels but the fluid was low.  When that happens there is only one place to look in most cars – the power brake booster.  Indeed, when the master cylinder was pulled back from the booster the technician could see where fluid was leaking and he ordered a new cylinder.

The question is, why did this happen two weeks after the first repair?

The answer was clear with a little bit of thought.  When everything is normal the guts of the master cylinder don’t move more than a few thousandths of an inch to actuate the brakes.  When the system gets bled following repair it moves through a much bigger range, half an inch or more.  If the seldom-used reaches of the master cylinder have become roughened by corrosion the act of bleeding the brakes may lead to the internal seals failing.

That’s what happened in Bob’s case.  I asked myself how the repeat failure might have been avoided.  The first answer that came to mind is more frequent brake fluid flushes.  When the fluid is flushed the cylinders are run through their full travel.  Doing that periodically would prevent buildup of corrosion and presumably prevent failures like this.  But at what cost?  The more flushes would have cost more than the cylinder, and required three service visits instead of the one repair.

Some would say the brakes could be bled through air pressure, without moving the pedal.  That’s possible on some vehicles but the problem with that is that you never see the system work through its whole range and that may blind you to another more serious problem.  So that may work, or it may replace a harmless problem like this with a worse one.

In the end I concluded there is no way to assure a “one step fix” in a situation like this.  Most of the time, when the first job was done, the master cylinder would not fail.  But every now and then, it will.  When that happens you have a two step repair.

Then there are the so-called emission problems – those “check engine” lights that just won’t go away.  Many motorists believe that scan tools point us directly to failed parts, but all too often that is not the case.  Fault codes are symptoms, many of which have numerous possible causes.  Sometimes we can test and verify a failed part and we have a simple one-visit repair.  Other times the tests all come back good – the problem is intermittent or not picked up by our testers.  Other times we reach a point in the diagnostic tree that says “Replace A and re-evaluate.”  So we replace A and see what happens next.

The problem is, low level emission faults cannot usually be detected on a short drive.  Many require that the car be run through a tank of gas, sometimes more.  As a practical matter that makes the owner the test driver – and if more work is needed, the car comes back.  Sometimes twice, sometimes three times.

I wish there was a way to streamline this, but with the ever-increasing complexity of cars, we face a choice between exchange of major systems where we swap out all the possibilities (prohibitively expensive) or multiple repair efforts (a hassle for motorists). 

Winter and Waxoyl

Winter is coming and it's time to think about protection for anything you plan to drive in the snow and salt.  Robison Service is the most experienced installer of Waxoyl corrosion protection products in the East.

Waxoyl treatments start at $1,000 and we're still booking appointments for fall.  Read more on the Robison Service website, email mwhite@robisonservice.com or call Maribeth White at 413-785-1665 for an appointment