For those of you who don't live for getting greasy every weekend, you probably take your car to a trusted mechanic, but sometimes the person taking care of your pride and joy is barely qualified to open a jar of peanut butter, much less turn a wrench on an expensive vehicle. What are your worst experiences with a mechanic?
(Photos by alexkosterman)
I'll start off with my first horrible experience:
When I was a wee lad just getting into my car hobby (now a full-fledged obsession), I had to get my automatic transmission rebuilt, to the tune of almost $3,000. At the time, I had no idea what things cost, and didn't realize that it was more than $1,000 over what any other shop would have charged me. This took me months to pay off with my barely above minimum wage salary. Also, to add insult to injury, when my car was in the shop for two weeks, I found out that it had been broken into and I had to yell at the shop's manager to replace the broken window and ignition column.
In addition, I'd love to hear the flipside. If you're a mechanic and have had belligerent customers come in and demand things that are literally impossible to do, let me know!
We've done this before, but we couldn't even fit all the responses into one story. So email me at apidaonline@gmail.com and we'll highlight the best/worst in a future post.
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world's cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he's the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn't feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.
You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He won't mind.