Funny Day

[rockin86ranger]

well i started working at dealership with dad yesterday and had some guy bring a ranger in with a 2.3. he was having trouble keeping the battery charged so he bought a new battery. then it still wouldn't charge and was told it may be the alternator. so he just assumes thats what it has to be and buys one and has me install it. well we check and still isn't charging but it still doesn't charge when the a/c on but it does when the a/c off. but it had real bad belt squeak and it was frayed a little. so we replaced the belt and it fixed everything. the guy payed $400 for a $10 repair because he wouldn't listen to people telling him to get it diagnosed. but we told him it was bad connector in the alternator so thats all it was. it made me smile.

 

[Insanejughead]

True idiot... I always diagnose everything related to an issue before I start spending money to change what might not be the problem.

 

[Will]

Yeah, but a lot of people don't know about troubleshooting. I don't look down on those people. They are simply misled by the knuckleheads they turn to for help. Being a natural born cheapskate I never give up on a part until rigamortise sets in on it--then I stop CPR and buy the best replacement I can regardless of price and expect it to never fail me again. Unless you're looking at inside parts lying outside on the ground--the solution to a sudden new problem is usually simple.

 

[CJREX]

It's called RUF troubleshooting for Replace Until Fixed.

I encounter it all too often from people who are supposed to be experts.

I once had to get on a plane and fly 1000 miles, get a rental car and drive 2 hours, meet the "Lead Technician" and ride another hour out into the wilds of Maryland all to remove a large shipping screw that should have been removed when first installed.

The screw was also bright Blue signifying remove at installation.

The dealer had replaced almost everything in that area of the machine at least twice to try and resolve the problem, which meant that they removed the shipping screw and then reinstalled it .

 

[Shoeboy]

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR INDUSTRY. Stupid people/technicians that lead you to believe or have it set in their mind that it is a component causing a problem is all to common, sadly enough. Even the best do get fooled every so often, so don't let that one time set the standards for everything. You'll get to "love" the people that bring their own parts, they will annoy the hell out of you to the point when you do install them (if company policy states that no customer parts are to be supplied, although there are the rare occasions where the rules have to be broke), just to shut them up, and if the part fails they expect you to replace it at no charge, despite the entire loss of pay on your part. Whenever we have some bring a part to us we always refer to it as "bring your own stake", bringing your own part to a garage for them to install is like bringing your own stake to a restaurant for them to cook for you.

 

[rockin86ranger]

this isn't the first one we had a f150 come in that needed a module ereplaced so to try to fix the problem the customer installed new spark plug wires. so now the 5.0 has 16 spark plug wires. the idiots left the olds one on and just left them dangling, it's really quite a funny sight if you see it.