Another good tech story

[centsless]

Another good technician story for the mechanics in the bunch....
A lady brings in a Ford Aerostar into the shop. She tells the service writer that most of the time when the brakes are applied, the horn sounds. After all day of three techs driving it, no problem is found. She comes to pick up the truck and returns several minutes later. The service writer goes with her and sure enough, every time she hits the brakes, the horn blows. The service writer looks over, and tells her to move her thumbs off of the horn button......When she would hit the brakes, she would move forward a bit and press the horn button.....

Anyone got any other stories.....Lets hear them!

[centsless]

Another one I wanted to share....
A policeman brings his patrol car in and says the throttle is sticking. It was a brand new (1000 miles ) car. We removed the thick rubber floormat that the pedal was getting hung up on and put it in the trunk. He brought it back three times for the same complaint, and each time we did the same thing to fix it. Each time we had explained it to him. The fourth time he let us show him, and he was amazed....never been a problem since....

[special-K]

#1:Soundslike a good blonde joke(even if shewasn`t)
#2:This guy`s a real cop???I meam,gun and all?Scary.
I bet you techs could come up with endless jokes converting real life situations like these.I`m sure there are many.Ever though about "stand-up on the side?"lol

[Rick Mills]

My brother worked at Blacks Auto Shop in Colorado when he graduated from school. This sounds like a typical blond joke and would be a good one if it weren't true. This lady from California comes in and asks to have high altitude air put in her tires... her friends from California told her that the air in Colorado was thinner than the air in California so she should have it changed when she arrived.
She would not believe them when they told her she didn't have to do it.
So... they flattened all her tires while she watched and aired them up again... charged her $10 per tire and she was happy as a lark.

[PanelDeland]

"Ya cain't fix stupid" Ron White

[68C15]

elderly lady with a mid 90s lesabre complaining of her car speeding up after she makes a right hand turn. this one DEFINATELY called for a ride with the customer. she was accidently pressing the resume/accell button while holding the lever. instead of fully engaging the turn signal she was using the lane change feature.

a guy with a late 80s ford needing brakes. (I think I mentioned this one before) he was unhappy with the life he was getting from the brakes the other multitude of shops in town were selling him. (the pads were heavilly smoked to the point of melting the caliper dust boots) when I finished the job I went to pick him up at his house and he gave me a ride back to the shop. he held the gas pedal to the floor and regulated his speed with the brakes.

[centsless]

Good ones!! Keep em comin!!

At Western Auto, Ford Taurus with Brake noise. Upon inspection, found the rear disc outer pads were gone...missing. Cust said a friend put the rear brakes on it and couldn't get the outer pad on, so he left it out....It had the screw in rear calipers and he tried pushing them in. Also said that when the guy got in the car to test drive it, he ran into his house! He asked if maybe that is why he had a broken motor mount...some peoples kids....lol

[Green Machine]

Many years ago Mr Extreme Tightwad brought his buick v8 car to the shop, lifters were noisy, oil smoke etc. We determined the cause was lack of oil changes, as it was massively sludged up. We pulled the engine and did a re-ring and valve job to clean it out.

When he came in to get it back, he was kind of pissed because we used new antifreeze, and wanted to know if we had saved the old oil and filter to put back in !!!

The guy had NO clue his tight ass ways ruined he engine, even though we explained it many times, he wanted us to put the old sludge oil back in the rebuilt engine ???

[redneckgirl]

That's almost as bad as an Escort we had a guy bring in for a free brake check...we told him it needed brakes badly....he said he'd wait. He brought it back a couple months later for another frree brake check and we explained to him that we couldn't let him take the car because the front pads were gone & the rotors were down to the fins...He said he was taking it anyway...a few days later we saw it going past on a tow truck...he had rear-ended someone when his brakes failed....he tried to blame it on us


Another good cop story.....

One of the deputies took his car into the shop (where centsless works)and when the mechanic pulled it in for service he noticed that there were a bunch of little holes in the steering wheel where the air bag is. Upon closer inspection, it is a number. they call the guy in charge of the sheriff's department motor pool and they discover it is the cop's badge #...he got bored and sat with his badge's pin and poked the number in because he was bored. They explained that he had damaged the airbag and it would most likely not work properly if deployed (yes the holes were that deep)...they made the deputy pay for it out of his pocket...

[Rick Mills]

Was talking with a friend of mine that works at NAPA. Telling him some of these stories. He told me a guy came in and wanted a refund on brakes he bought only a week before. Seems they started squeaking just like his worn out brakes.
The customer brought the "new" brakes back and sure enough they were down to the safety tabs and obviously squeaking.
<your gonna love this one>... The customer couldn't get the new pads to fit right out of the box so he put them in a vice and ground them down with a hand grinder until they "fit properly". Asked if he tried to collapse the brake caliper the guy had no idea what they were talking about. Asked if he wore a mask when grinding the new pads... NOPE... Didn't even cross his mind. When told he voided any warranties the customer got so mad he wanted fight. Then decided he'd sue everyone down to the parts driver. Makes ya wanna just

[Hoods69BadBowTie]

Holy sheet, I can't stop laughing. There are some many mechanically inclined people in the world. I have a couple but can't come up with any at the moment.

[jcueckert13]

i work at a toyota dealership i i have seen some screwed up stuff.

first, i had a 2000 solara come in that the customer had installed after market fog lights and in the process shorted the power wire to ground, the shorted wire melted in to the turn siginal wires with the help of a 30 amp fuse were a 15 amp had been and now the customer is complaining that when he uses the right hand turn siginal the fog light comes on.

second, we had a sienna mini van come in about 3 weeks ago, towed in, it had died on the interstate and would not start again, the elderly lady also hands us the letter from toyota for us to check for a sludge motor. we discovered that the vehicles last oil change had been 28k miles ago and the reason it would not restart was because the engine had thrown the rods for cylinder 5 and 6 and the rods had jammed the crank to the extent that the starter would not turn the motor

and third, i had a 04 4runner come in about a week ago that the customer was complaining of a fuel/exaust smell in the vehicle that has gotten worse over the last week, i pull the vehicle into the shop and all i can smell is something dead. turned on the heater fan and the smell went away, opened the rear hatch and found a old dog bed that was causing the smell. just to cover my ass i had my service manager come back and look at the vehicle, he sat in the front seat and told me that there was a dead rat in the blower motor, i told him to come and take a look in the rear hatch, he stuck his head in the rear hatch as far as he could, took a deep breath and barely got out of the vehicle before puking, the 4 techs including myself that where standing around the vehicle when this happened where dying of laughter. i also managed to piss off the rather large dyke (i only use this term because of the gay pride bumper sticker on the vehicle and the fact that she showed up with her girlfriend to pick up the vehicle) when i said that i would not deal with the other complaint on the RO until she dealt with the smell

[Blue'72]

Not tech related, but pretty funny anyway.. The gal that worked next to me here in the office had called one day to get a price for tires. After she was off the phone I asked her if those were pneumatic tires that she got a quote for. She said, no, they were some other brand.. I had her call back to find out if they carry pneumatic tires or not and while she was put on hold (prolly from laughter on the other end) we were busting up in here before she hung up and questioned what I was talking about. Months later she was telling someone about the joke we played on her and how cruel we were to get her to call and ask about "numeric tires"..... I'm not sure even to this day she gets it. She's the one that went all day trying to figure out what the capital of San Diego was and afraid to ask anyone because she didn't want to look "dumb"... She wanted to guess Sacramento, but feared that she would be wrong............

[centsless]

Originally Posted by Blue'72

Not tech related, but pretty funny anyway.. The gal that worked next to me here in the office had called one day to get a price for tires. After she was off the phone I asked her if those were pneumatic tires that she got a quote for. She said, no, they were some other brand.. I had her call back to find out if they carry pneumatic tires or not and while she was put on hold (prolly from laughter on the other end) we were busting up in here before she hung up and questioned what I was talking about. Months later she was telling someone about the joke we played on her and how cruel we were to get her to call and ask about "numeric tires"..... I'm not sure even to this day she gets it. She's the one that went all day trying to figure out what the capital of San Diego was and afraid to ask anyone because she didn't want to look "dumb"... She wanted to guess Sacramento, but feared that she would be wrong............

Now THAT is funny !!! I didn't know you worked with my sister....

[orange72350]

Haha, there are some really good ones in that bunch. I was working for a heavy duty truck shop in northern alberta a couple winters ago when a rathole truck off of a drilling rig came in. The truck got there on a thursday night, with the complain being a failed air compressor and i think it needed a brake job. The truck was covered in snow and drilling mud, so i left it in the shop over night to thaw out. I was the last one too leave that night, and because the truck was a rush, i was the first one in the next morning. We had a shop dog that lived outside in the yard, but first thing in the morning she came in for her breakfast and a snack. The next morning, i came in and made a pot of coffee and let the dog in. As soon as that dog got into the shop she starting going nuts, barking at the truck, running around like a nutcase, and just generally acting stupid. She was really freaking out at one cabinet on the truck, mounted down low behind the fuel tank. I could hear something in there making noise, and i automatically assumed that it was a heater making noise in the cabinet. I figured that it was my duty to open the cabinet door and show this dog that a lil heater is nothing to be scared of....bad call. I barely cracked the door open an 60 pounds of pissed off coyote came busting out. The dog squealed, jumped, and then proceeded to chase this coyote around our shop, either destroying or knocking over everything in the shop in the meantime. It was like watching a cartoon, there were tools and bolts bins and parts trays flying everywhere, it was nuts. I finally got the bay door opened and this stupid coyote shoooed out of the shop and into the yard after about five minutes of this. The shop looked like a bomb had gone off. After rolling around on the floor laughing, i callled the rig crew to figure out why there was a coyote trapped in the trucks tool cabinet. Turned out that the crew had hit this coyote on the way into town, and figuring it was dead, they decided to keep it to have it made into a rug. They must have skipped the part where they realized it was simply out cold, and sometime in the night it came too, obviously pissed off and scared. it made for quite the interesting morning at the shop.