The Value of Customer Returns for Repairs: Feedback, Improvement, and Smart Business Moves with Tyler Henry

My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master Tech transmission builder, and the host of the Gearbox Podcast. Here I talk with new and seasoned shop owners as well as industry professionals about day to day operations within their own shops and all the failures and successes that come along the way from what grinds your gears to having to shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the Gearbox podcast. Cool, man. Thanks for

coming back in. Absolutely happy to be here. Always. Lots to talk about. Lots to talk about. There's a lot going on in the car industry. Not king of the Hammers this time, though. No. Yeah. But we have been breaking things, but we found parts quicker this time, so that's good. That's good. Yeah. Nobody trying to get one over on you? No, not recently anyway. No. Yeah, luckily the parts supply chain is somewhat better even in a few months. We've actually been starting to see parts in on a

somewhat regular basis. Yeah. Well, I mean, your whole axle debacle, no one trying to pull a fast one. Yeah, no scams. I didn't have to go to the scams lately. Find an axle this time. Yeah. Broke another rear shaft that just snapped and then tore another front. So fun. Yeah. And then went to the mud and with the torn CV boot and then broke the innards of the axle. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Keep it rolling, man. Yeah. Well, Tyler Henry's, back in the booth. Back to the

gearbox. Well, we're just going to let this thing roll and see where it takes us. That's right. Just rolling. I mean, when we were talking about the service industry, which we talk a lot about, we beat that up a lot. I think it gets kind of negative sometimes, hearing about everybody else bitching about dealing with people. Right. The locker room talk of the automotive industry. We all can relate to it.

We all relate to it. So it's nice to bring it up and hear somebody else in the same boat going through the same water. Yeah, people understand, oh, it's not just me in my service department. And it's amazing. There's a lot of people that really think they're on their own. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Well, I think part of it is as a career automotive industry is fairly rare. And then you go into the

individual roles in that industry and it gets really rare. Like if you just look at a dealership, the service side, the amount of service advisors to other personnel at the dealership is like one to five or so. There's five, six, ten salesmen for every one advisor. Sometimes. That's true. So just the rarity of oh, yeah, there are a lot more advisors out there or there are a lot more managers out there. Or shop owners. Because in

a town you only got four or five owners or something. Or in small towns around here, big cities, it's more numerous but, yeah, when you start thinking in your little islands, you think that, oh, I'm the only one like this. But there's tons of people out there. Tons of people. I mean, doing better, doing worse in between. It's just we're all dealing with the same stuff. And sometimes even I think it's like, I got to be the only one

dealing with this kind of stuff. No, but you're not just you being a mile up the road at the dealership dealing. I mean, when you came in today talking about, man, there must be something in the water, and it's like, yeah, we're all drinking this. Yeah, it's all water going. We've been dealing with the same stuff. Just summertime. That's when it just gets weird. People's timelines. A lot of people traveling, most of. Vacations and coming through the area.

Graduation. Right. Everyone's coming through, trying to look at wedding venues from out of the area. I mean, when you're here on the central coast, people come from the Valley all over the place. I'm sure there's other states that are like that, too, where you live in a town, that's kind of the place to go, and you have all the cities around the area, and everyone's going to that central hub, and they want to get married there, have

their ceremony there. And so, yeah, there's a lot of traveling. That's when I bring that up, because we dealt with that today. Some ladies came in, and they were a little twisted. I mean, they were doing okay, but it was a little anxious. Yeah, they came from Fresno. They're from the Valley, and they were over here, and she was trying to get all her stuff ready for her wedding, and the vehicle broke down. Lost all forward gears, lost reverse. Definitely a little frazzled.

Well, go ahead and get yourself situated. Your vehicle is taken care of. Now you need to figure out, well, you don't think you'll get it done today? That sounds like a couple of days minimum. I hear losing gears, I'm like, okay. A couple of days, best case in a Nissan CVT. So it's like just to really encompass the situation we're dealing with right now. Yeah, we might be able to take a look at it today, but even if we mean, I can't just throw reverse back down the dipstick tube.

There's not a bottle of reverse I can throw down there. In the history of transmissions, is the CVT the most hated? I don't know if it's most. I mean, the DCT is pretty damn close. Yeah, DCT is pretty good. And then you get into, like, now with the ten speeds, that's definitely I think that'd be on the roster, but I think that's the unknown. That's just kind of ignorance a little bit. People don't know it, and so they're frustrated by it.

I feel like with eight, nine speeds right. Something you deal with probably on a regular basis is seeing those eight, nine speeds. They probably don't like those very much, but the CVT is on an island on its own for sure. It's a really cool design, very poorly executed and not usually maintained. So it's like they don't yeah. How much do you service those? When are you supposed to service those? Same as any thirty to sixty thousand. On those. We always say like thirty thousand because the

amount of fluid, you can only get like three or four quarts out. Some of them have a filter, some of them don't. Like the newer Nissans with Anastasia three fluid, which is like the Avatar blue fluid you're supposed to use that has a filter capsule you can pull off. It's got a little cartridge filter, but for the most part it's just a drain and fill. Yeah, like a Honda. Do that a little sooner, like do thirty thousand on a Honda because you can't replace the filter just

better for it. Anytime you drop the pan and service the filter, of course you can extend the service mileage to more to like forty or fifty. And if you're not going to do any towing or any real highway driving for an extended period of time, or you're not in severe stop and go, you probably push it to sixty. But I would say at the dealership I have easily at least a fifty percent decline on transmission services. That's interesting. That's all I do.

That is like our number one sixty. K. Like it's kind of time to do the transmission. Yeah, I'll do that later. That's interesting. All the time. It's at least half. Well, we don't do the flushes, so we don't like doing yeah, we pretty. Much just do drain infills and change the filter. That's the pan service. Yeah. That's the only way to do it. Yeah. The flushing is just going to cause problems unless

you can start it from day one. But even day one you're going to pump twenty quarts of fluid through at thirty thousand miles, that fluid is like brand freaking new. We're not going to flush. Yeah, you don't need to for

one, waste all that fluid. For two charts of consumer, that much fluid, I mean for nothing. Like at thirty thousand miles, if everything's functioning correctly, there's really no point to do it. But then if you extend that service to say sixty, seventy or eighty, well now you've waited too long to flush it, technically because you have too much sludge. Yeah. And the machine doesn't pull the sludge

out, it just loosens it up. You'll get thirty or forty percent out, but most of it stays in the case on the valve body, in the nooks and crannies, in the converter on the stator, there's so many little areas

that it'll settle, but then it gets broken up a little bit. And then later on when you're driving five hundred, eight hundred miles down the road, after a few hot and cold cycles, that's when it falls to the bottom of the pan and then the filter sucks it up and then it plugs the filter with all this sediment and crap. And then without fluid frosted. Yeah, that's it. No more line pressure. Line pressure is critical to have an automatic transmission work. Just let it bake for two

hundred thousand miles. Yeah, just leave it at that point. See a lot of that. I mean as long as you're replacing the filter and then the filter is going to capture that stuff and then you get the filter back out, you'll be fine. But that's why just doing the service thirty, forty thousand, that's the best way. Yeah. I think as a transmission shop you'd be shocked at how many people do not service their transmissions at all. I guess that's the reason why these RFEs are fell in like left

and right. Everything can't find the sixty six RFEs. The sixty eight RFEs. No. All the Dodge transmissions are just like almost impossible to find right now and they're so expensive to rebuild. I'm wondering what's the next evolution of the transmission? That's a good question. How many more gears can you add? Yeah, what's going to change about that? I mean, a lot of things are going electric, but I don't see that as a real solution to any problem that we're having

as a globe. If you're thinking about it in world terms, you can't get people in the middle of the desert a rechargeable Tesla. They need their Toyota Helix that'll last them thirty years. So what are the next evolutions like? Combustion engine. There's a lot of cool stuff that Porsche is doing with e fuel and making one hundred percent renewable fuel that is gasoline that a normal car can run on with no conversion. Yeah. So do we just switch to that?

And there's such big higher powers above us that can make pulling the strings and pulling the levers it's hard. I mean, we've seen a lot of things like hydrogen is a good example. What happened with hydrogen? It's not a good choice. And it's the same as the electric right now. It takes way too much energy to make it. Yeah, that's true. Well, to contain and distort and to refill. I mean, there's a lot behind it too, but it definitely was moving in a direction and it got shot down. Yeah,

there's still a couple of people working on it. The BMW still got their hydrogen X five that they just kind of keep teasing. Toyota has a hydrogen car, the Mirai. Mirai. Sixty to eighty thousand dollars or something. Something crazy. Yeah. That's not a bad option. It's one of the only options. So I guess it's not a bad one. It can't be if you're the only one. Yeah. If you really want a hydrogen car, you got it. You're not a bad choice and you're the best choice. But then because you're the only

choice I even looked into. There was one I think that they had like a really crazy lease on. And I was like, oh, is this even an option? It would be cool to own one of those. I'm always looking to try new crazy tech and stuff. And then I was like, okay, where can I refuel this? Nowhere near me. That's convenient. Yeah. When you're talking about electric cars, it's like living in the desert. That's a great when, when you talk about making these decisions when you're living downtown La.

Downtown San Francisco, that's your know, I think that kind of circles back to the beginning, right. When you're like think you're the only one struggling because you're stuck in your little bubble and it's like, man, you got to think about everywhere in like you're going to mandate this stuff and not allow these ranchers to go buy a brand new truck. Right. There's a lot of world that isn't city. Right. And you think about ranchers like, oh, they got an old Chevy or

Ford truck, they'll be fine. No, I mean they need new vehicles too. I got a lot of ranchers with new trucks that pull a lot of weight. The weight rating is big. They got one hundred and fifty plus extended range fuel tank because there's not a gas station for six hundred, seven hundred miles in Montana or something. They're making these thousand mile treks back and forth nonstop. Right. Well, and they got livestock on board. Yeah.

They can't afford to have a breakdown. So even though they love their old truck, it's like, no, I need something brand new so they don't have to worry about it. So even if they got an old record that they can drive around, they're still not going to put all their livestock in the back and risk a breakdown because the truck's fifteen years old. But same with the EV. We've all seen the charging or the capability when they start towing stuff. The range

isn't there. The range drops to half. I mean you've been driving around and the Wrangler you got yeah. Hybrid. And you see what happens when you go full electric. Yeah. I can tell you when I put a one two hundred pound trailer on it that electric lasted about eight miles. Impressive. So factory range started at like twenty five, which was excellent on the thirty three s. Yeah. That's solid. Yeah, for a brick that moves down the road. And then I moved to thirty eight s and it's down to like

fifteen to twenty depending on temperature. And then you put any weight in it and it's like gone. And that's like it is with any electric cars. You start putting work against it and the Ford Lightning is down to like one hundred miles out of almost three hundred when it starts towing. I think it was like a six thousand pound trailer they did a test on. Yeah, that's right. And that's not a good reaction. And we've all seen the trips they've tried to take across the states with trying to

recharge and waiting forty five minutes to an hour. It's the infrastructure that's the issue right now. It's not the technology in the vehicle that's there. It's got the same range as a gas car for the most part on a lot of these. But the convenience of refueling is the issue. Right. I mean, anytime you want

to take a road trip and that's what everyone's doing, right. That's why we're all busy is because everyone wants to go take their family on vacation because it's summertime. And I just think there's a time and a place. Have you been to SEMA? Yeah. And you've seen the Tesla Loop that's underground. So I know there's some people out there that don't like it, but I think that's rad. And it's like such a cool direction that those vehicles could go. So they had like

north hall, south hall, west hall. So they had the Tesla Loop stations where you go out front and they would take you underground. And they had the tunnels built underground. Those are the boring tunnels. Yeah, exactly. Underneath the convention center. And they just had Teslas running all day long. I've seen the videos of it. Yeah. Free ride. Awesome. From left to right, back forth. It's like, that makes so much sense. It's like that should be like the direction like

Ubers in or Lyfts in. Instead of having public transit be a bus that's like running every twenty minutes, and you got to get on this bus with a bunch of people and it's polluting and it's diesel. Why don't you just replace those with Teslas and just have a Tesla every like eight? That's what Elon said. He said he's going to do it. Yeah, I mean it's just like that makes the most sense.

People are paying him to collect data right now. People are buying his data collectors, doing all the R D for the fully autonomous. He's trying to push this stage five autonomy, that's know, human factor you can't. Equate for what a million other people are going to do. Exactly. That's exactly the point I was going to bring up was like the, they have a thing about that. It's like the McDonald's stop or something like that.

But it's like the thing with you're driving down the road and you see a bunch of kids playing soccer on a field and you know there is a chance that this ball is going to take off and you're going to have to swerve to avoid. Right. You can't teach that to AI. That's like that situation cannot be broken down to artificial intelligence. It can't see

that. It just sees things moving. It has no idea that there's a possibility these kids playing soccer are going to kick it over the goalpost into the street, and you're going to have to stop. And maybe this kid's going to run out and try to get the ball. So you can see that and you can anticipate it. But the car never is going to too many calculations. Too many calculations. But I think we're close. You're already slowing down. I don't know.

And then the same thing with having a tumbleweed go across the road versus a kid going to pick up a ball. Right. And it's like the whole swerve. How do you choosing between two people? What do you do if there's two. People in the road? Yeah. You take out the tumbleweed, right? Yeah. You just demolish that thing. And you don't stop the vehicle in the middle of the road and have everybody run into you or

cause a bigger accident or swerve around it and swerve in it. So the car swerved to avoid this tumbleweed and it went onto the sidewalk and took out fifteen people. Like what? It'll never be able to a bag? Yeah, exactly. You never know what the obstruction is going to be and all it sees is just an anatomic object, like moving. So I don't know. And what was that damn McDonald's thing where it was something about the drive through. You got a bunch of cars piled up and you got

one car that's like pulled in. Right. But it's not off the sidewalk yet. It's still halfway in the street. And you know, you can just slow down and go around it because you know what they're doing. They're trying to get in line. But for the AI has no idea it's just going to stop the car because there's something in the street or it might just keep driving. You see the reverse lights on.

It doesn't see the reverse lights. So unless these cars all become one and it can put the reverse lights out, send a signal to your vehicle. They all know what each other is doing. Right. That's so far in the future, it's ridiculous. I don't even know if that's going to in our lifetime even happen in the next forty years. Fifty years. I don't think we're going to see that. Yeah. The amount of cars you'd have to have out there all

doing the same thing, all talking to each other is generations. And then what happens when Grandpa Joe comes out with his nineteen fifty six Ford? Yeah. What are you going to outlaw these. Old trucks, these old cars? People just need to drive. Like why does it need to be replaced? Driving has gotten so easy. I mean, with adaptive cruise control, I've got it in my wife's Kia and it's so nice. I mean, all you have to do is keep your hands on the wheel and look ahead, God forbid, and

just. Leave it there for the next decade or so. Right. Why do we have to like what was that not even eight years ago. Now we're here. Why do we got to push this so fast? Why are we pushing this envelope. I don't get it. Why do we have to be so distracted? I mean, it's just for the driver, but for the manufacturers. Why can't you just leave it at adaptive and perfect this yeah. And the safety and get into the driving and actually start

perfecting the car. I don't see the point of a fully autonomous driving on a national scale. Who doesn't like driving? Right? You know what I mean? There's kids out there that the adaptive. Driving that we have is good enough. Good enough. It's good enough. You can take a little break, take a little breather. You get back into you don't have. To focus one thousand percent. You can relax, but you don't need to just go to sleep. No, you don't need to go sleep.

You can take a little breather. Take the train. Take the train. You want to sleep while you go. From one side of the country. We have trains. We mastered that a long time ago. And airplanes, man, airplanes are so safe. Also great. Or you could pay a guy to drive you around. Imagine that. The other side of it, too, is not just like the

people driving the cars and dealing with that, but it's like the insurance companies, the registration costs. Where is all this going to land? You got airbags in the event of the seatbelt. Even insurance companies change the way they insure vehicles, depending on what

year your vehicle was because you had certain safety equipment. I mean, it's a law or it's in the books that if you tamper with the TPMS system on a vehicle and it's involved in a collision, they can come back to you as a repair shop that you've disabled a safety feature on the vehicle. You rotate the tires, you don't reprogram them. That's on you. And it's like that's just the tire pressure. What's going to happen with this ADAS? What happens when you remove

headlights and you don't get it? Recalibrated because they just didn't oh, I didn't know. You can't play ignorance and the same. I mean, replacing a windshield, like if you don't recalibrate it, of course we know that one. But there's so many different components now in vehicles that have the LiDAR and the lasers and all this stuff for the calibration. You bump the mirror and it's out of calibration. One of your technicians pulls it in and bumps the mirror, scratches a little

bit. He decides not to say anything because he don't want to get in trouble. But the car leaves getting an accident, and they come to find out, hey, this mirror was out of calibration and it's going to document it, and it's going to know on what day at what time showed up. Yeah, exactly. And that's the other thing, too, is a lot of time it won't even cause a fault if you misalign this stuff. It ain't setting a trouble code for it. It just now thinks this is where we're

going. If you're three degrees one direction or. Another, it's just like where it's just off center. That's the direction we're going. There is no feedback sensors for it for the most part, so it's all about the technician's discretion to make sure that stuff's still aligned and pointing the direction it needs to go. If you're three degrees to the right and it sees a trash can on the side of the road and it stops the car, the guy back behind you runs into you. I have mine go off. Who's

pointing the finger at who? Mine goes off all the time. The frontal collision warning system. Yeah, it thinks something's going to it's kind of good. I mean, there's some times where I'm, like, looking somewhere else and it's like, hey, look forward. Maybe that's driver error, I don't know. Yeah, but other times where you're just driving down the road and the sun hits it and it's like, break and cancels my cruise control, and then my car is just braking on its own down

the highway. That's interesting. So, yes, it saved me, but also it's almost got me rear ended. Yeah, I've seen that happen on multiple brands where you're just driving down the road and the sun's setting right into your frontal collision sensor, and it wigs out the whole system. Wow, that's interesting. My Jeep. Wow. Yeah, that's another problem, too, I guess. I was getting at too with the insurance was like, if you buy these cars and you have this collision avoidance

system they're basing their insurance on, they're. Giving you a reduction. Yeah, but what if it's disabled? Where's the checks and balances on? And you don't think that's right around the corner? You don't think the insurance companies have that same I'm definitely not the first one to think about it. Yeah, somebody's thinking about it. If I'm in an insurance company and I'm giving these guys a rate, now, this car has been on the for

five, six, seven, eight years. Right. Wait a second here. Who's checking to make sure this stuff. Still essentially smog should, right. No, you're not going to get it. A visual light inspection. No, you're not going to get a malfunction. The only thing with the smog is the malfunction indicator light. So if you don't have any trouble codes, I'm sure that some of them will set a trouble code for one thing or another. But a lot of that avoidance stuff has nothing to do

with, you know, unless it's emissions related. I mean, yeah, even though it sets a code for the freaking front dampener on the Chevy cruises getting stuck, like, really? The freaking whatever that flapper is up in the front bumper on the Chevy cruises. Like, that sets a code for the emission system. Give me a break, man. Like, what if they're out of alignment sensors? No, just the car. Just the Caster. The Camber. And so then it's pulling off and then everything else. Everything's off.

Yeah. So who's checking that? Right. The thrust angle of the rear. Yeah, exactly. Caster camber at front, like all that stuff that's all going to change. Exactly. The alignment of the sensors, the way the car reacts. And you're going to say your car doesn't pass small because the alignment is not on, even though it freaking should because you're like dragging a tire down the highway. But that if anything, is definitely affecting emissions. I would say one hundred percent

tires. Maybe not the emissions, but the fuel consumption to say the least. But yeah, tires and the wear on the tires, but yeah, there's no checks and balance of that stuff. And if you don't think that's right around the corner, someone's missing the ball on that one. I think they started looking to it at our cars too much. We just need to go back to simple. It's just a car, don't worry about it. Don't worry. Don't worry. Let me do

my thing. Yeah. Let everybody run into each other, man. Yeah. Why do you have someone so worried about me getting hurt for anyway? Like wearing a helmet. What do you want to felt a choice? Yeah. What do you worry about me for? Use it if you want. Use it if you need it or you want it. But that's the whole pull behind the insurance companies. They mandate it so that the insurance companies that was part of the deal, they don't have to pay out so much.

If someone gets hurt in an accident, you get a reduced rate. You think anybody cares about your well being other than your mom? Yeah. It's all profit margin. Yeah. It's all for the calculations. It's like same with airbags. So if your airbag lights on that you still pass emissions. Right. Which they can't seem to get. Right. What is this? How many times have they recalled all of the yeah. Oh my God. Isn't that crazy? It's all of them. They just did it again too. Right? Just

constantly. Yeah. Like if you have a nineteen ninety five Honda Accord, I'm like, what? Probably the only cars left on the road from. There'S a new one that they're trying to the manufacturer of the airbags is like, nah, it's not a defect, it's just an airbag exploding. Yeah. Because they can't prove that the shrapnel, whatever, shrapnel of some sorts. So there's a whole battle going on between and for another recall about airbags.

At what point is this the recalls are crazy. I mean, how many recalls exist? It just blows me away. There's a recall. I'm sure you see so many of them at the dealership. Ford led the board last year with over seventy recalls. Over seventy in one year. Yeah, I can see that. One of the weird ones that we've had at Dodge is Ram. Sorry. Dodge. Ram. It's different now. Ram. Yeah. Ram is for a tailgate latch being. Out of alignment, like whole recall for it.

Check the tailgate because it could accidentally open by itself. Isn't that just like we're just down to like machine error. No quality control. Right? Like just throw it together and we'll issue something. They'll figure it out later down the road. Or then they issue the recalls that they don't even have the fix for. Yeah, like the eco diesels. Yeah.

Oh gosh. And then they send a reminder to the customer every thirty days telling them, hey, you have this recall where your car may just die while you're driving it. And you could get in a crash and die, but we can't fix it yet. And they remind this customer every thirty days that they could die. Just so you know, we're still thinking about you. Yeah, but we can't fix it. So call your local dealer, yell at them because they should talk to Tyler. And let him yeah.

And then we have know explain I understand you got another notice. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about there's nothing. And that just extends their legality that way if anything happens, they're like, well we told them. Yeah, we told them this month actually. And then they go, what do I do if it blows up? I said, you should probably call the one eight hundred number on the notice. That's all I got. Step one, get out of the vehicle. Yes.

Call nine one one. Step two. Yeah, that's another big one too. Is the amount of information that we're required to give that you would think it would be common sense. Right. You know what I mean? All of it, no more is an owner's manual telling you how to do anything mechanically, just telling you all the things that can and will kill you. Right. It's funny. And I also laugh at how different brands do owner's manuals. For instance, BMW,

page fifty seven, take it to the dealership. Page eighty five, take it to the dealership. Like literally every line is just see, the dealership don't look at it. They've gone so far they don't even have a dipstick anymore. Everybody knows this. There's no BMW dipstick because they don't want you to do anything. Right. The opposite end of the spectrum, you have Jeep who gives you a toolkit and a pictogram on how to take your Jeep apart and put it back together with four tools and the

complete opposite ends. Jeep says, yep, here's the even give you the tools. And not even words on how to do it because even if you can't read, you can figure out how to take a Jeep. It's like an Ikea manual. Yes, I find it hilarious. Because one wants you to do it all. One doesn't want you to even look at it. They just want you to bring it in. Right, bring it in. Let us deal with it. Let us deal with.

Know. And it's tough to wrap your mind around with the thought process behind it because I see that as smart business on both sides. Really? Yeah. I mean, they know their clientele. They know their clients. Exactly. G people want to wrench on their stuff. Most BMW customers don't want to check. Their mean, but on both sides, it's smart. They psyched the whole thing with Ferrari. Like they don't have commercials on the TV, right? No, because they're Target or is it Lamborghini?

It might be both. Really. I mean, they both I've never seen a Ferrari probably started I've never seen a commercial for either one of the TVs because their targeted market isn't watching know, so it's that's a it's in. Gentleman'S magazine, something I don't have a subscription to. It's a gut punch right there. Like, damn man, I like to watch TV once in a know, although rolex. Everybody wants to get a Rolex. Everybody needs a rolex. And then they advertise

everywhere, everywhere, everywhere the time. But with the BMW, I think that's smart too, because it allows them to collect a lot. Like with Elon, and I think Elon maybe took a page from that. Right. With the Teslas, he wanted everything going back to him. The only way he's going to know what's happening in his factories is if everything goes back to him. To get quality control after the fact? No, aftermarket support. Yeah. And

we all kind of hated that and thought that was kind know bullshit, but it's pretty smart business if you really think about it. I mean, if I'm doing it and I put myself in his shoes, which I don't know if I could wrap my mind or even around that, but if I decided to design and build a car, I'm definitely wanting them back here. If something

happens. And I think of it like every time I do a repair and I'm not involved in the process, say comes into the shop, leanne takes it, the guys do the work on it, I see the car come in and out, I just see a flash of light and the car is gone and off and away. But if something happened in that process, I want it to come back to me. And unfortunately, a lot of the time some people just if something doesn't go right, they'll just go somewhere else and you never know

what went wrong or why or what. So I can appreciate some people coming back in whether they're frustrated or not about it, because at least I'm getting that feedback and I know the next time around this is what we need to do to make it better. I don't think people understand how valuable it is on both sides to have consistent service at the same facility. Right. It helps in so many ways. Not only do they know the condition of your car, they know what's changing. They know

what the service history is. They know what has been serviced, what hasn't been serviced, it helps everyone involved when you jump into the middle of something, you don't know, are you fixing something that was an old problem? Is it a new problem? Is it a wiring problem? And you restart and you end up probably paying double for a lot of stuff. Right. And the reference of, like, if somebody else repaired it, they weren't happy and they just took it somewhere else.

Yeah. And a lot of times a problem can be solved pretty quickly and easily. Just going back to the person you started with, why are you here? What did they do? Oh, I just feel bad saying something like, be an adult. Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be fine about it. Nobody's going to yell at you, hey, we just had this repair done somewhere. And I'm like, okay, yeah,

I'm happy to help, but have you talked to them? Them about it? And they're like, no. And I'm like, okay, well, just so you know, we got to start from scratch. So if you don't, I am, because that's what we do. Yeah. If we get that same story, it's like, well, if you're not going to talk to him, we need to know where it came from because we're going to make that call, that conversation with them and figure out what's going on. Because some people have what's the right word for

this? Here the politically correct term for this. They have two sides, right? Yeah. They come in real nice and pleasant, and then all of a sudden, they turn into a different animal an hour later. And so it's like, I'm going to call just so, for one, I can get the service information I need, and for two, to figure out what really went down here, why you're not going back there. Because if I hear something I don't want to hear, like, it's not worth my time.

I'm sorry. Yeah. It's like when the guy comes in with a check engine light, no idea what's going on. And then you uncover all the body damage and the splice and this wire to this. The stories help the complete picture makes everything go a lot faster. Right. And then also making sure

that this is going to be a standing relationship. This is not just someone night going shop to shop, getting free work. You call the last place they went, oh, man, you know what? I just gave him his money because he just turned into such a like, what would you do? And it ends up being a bunch of work that had nothing to do with the reason why he's at your shop right now. Oh, I see what's going on here. I see

what he's doing here. I'm not dealing with that. So, yeah, that's part of the reason we like to make that phone call, but a lot of them get kind of scary. They're like, oh, I don't know if you want to call them. Why yeah. It saves everybody time, and it also lets them know what's happening, because I'd want that. If someone left my place and was not happy with what happened, they didn't say anything to me. They just went to another place. It's like, how am I supposed

to make myself better if you don't for the yeah. How do you give me any feedback? Like, what do we do wrong? Yeah, Elon figured that out a long time ago. He's like, Just keep it coming back. I want all the data. All of it? Yeah, all of it good or know, up or down. It's like, that's what you got to do. I mean, and it's improved a lot. I mean, if you look at how I don't know if there's better model for it in the car industry, if you look at how simple it is, everybody can gripe

over the quality control and that. But in terms of a scalable model of a car business, he did it right from the ground up. And as somebody in the dealership industry, I can definitely appreciate his showrooms, if you will, because it's very low pressure. Everybody gets the same thing. The model is great. You don't have to negotiate. You just get what you want. That's it. Just pick the color,

pick the option. Well, it was like not only a new vehicle or new manufacturing process, but it was like a completely new everything. Yeah. I mean, it's an electric car. There was no game plan he couldn't take know back with the Big Three was coming up. Right. And it's like everyone was competing with one another, but in reality they were just stealing their top guys, right? Yeah. It's like Dodge brothers got pushed around and worked for

GM, worked for the other one and the others. Everyone was just kind of like cycling these people around. Kind of like how all the rock bands of the Eighty S worked too. Right. Drummers and guitarists just kind of mixed it around with each band. And everyone just kind of got better in the industry because it was like the same group of people just kind of rotating through. And that's kind of what happened with

the Big Three with car manufacturing. They're just stealing everybody's ideas. But he went off and did his draft football. Yeah. You can get a way to put it. I mean, look at Kia. They just got the guy from BMW and turned the brand right side up. Yeah, that's true. In not very long, in my opinion. Kia in the ninety s and two thousand s was nothing to reach for. It was like a day. Woo. Yeah. Remember the day. Woo. Yeah. They were there. They were affordable and affordable and affordable.

I don't know if they were I mean, they were let's just say they were cheap. Yeah, that was it. They were not affordable because day two, you already had it back in the shop. Yeah. And then. I mean, Kia had the, on the newer mid century Kias, one hundred thousand mile warranty. But even then yeah, you were using every bit of that in the recent history. They changed the branding, they changed the design, they added a lot of cues from BMW because they took the guy from

BMW and hired him. It's pretty hard to tell the difference if they're driving by fast. I mean, and I think they did a great job, honestly, as somebody who's worked for BMW and who purchased a Kia because I saw the most benefit from like it was hard to go any other directions. I mean, looking at Toyota and Honda and even Ford in the small SUV segment, kia was best in class economy, best price and best features from a Kia. And I mean, this is two thousand and twenty three. And I mean, look at

Genesis, what they're doing with the new GV eighty. Oh yeah. I mean there's a lot of companies that are coming out that were not really great in the early two thousand s that have totally turned it over and now look like nothing else. Right. Yeah, I got nothing. I mean, negative say about the Kia's now, even the Hyundai's, I mean yeah, we have a Hyundai which hasn't let us down the window regulator. And that was a pain in the ass.

What? Window regulator doesn't go out. Yeah, that's true. But this one was extraordinarily difficult to find a new one. Oh really? Yeah. I mean, we had to get off like Rock Auto or something. Which is where I get all my Suzuki parts, my ninety eight Suzuki parts. I don't know, it worked. The whole rock auto thing. I don't know, I get enough of that stuff coming in where they're like, oh, I can get this. Look at the part, part where's that part

come. Forty dollars shipping. Yeah. And then that's where Rock Auto gets you. And then it's like it's never fast shipping, it always charges and it's like pick your price. Do you want to pay twelve, fifteen or eighty five dollars for shipping on this oring so? I get it. Yeah, their prices are good if you just look at the price. But at the end of the day, I've looked at Amazon for that part number and then I've looked at Rock Auto and it comes out about the and but also

you don't know what you're kind of getting half the time. Yeah, that's the problem for, you know, the one thing with Amazon with parts is a lot of it they're merging in. And I'll order parts, transmission parts in particular, and I'll order them get the price from my normal supplier. And the box that I get from Amazon is from my normal supplier. Like ten dollars cheaper, fifteen dollars cheaper, twenty dollars cheaper. Like what the same name

on it? Same bill, like the invoice everything's the same. It's just through Amazon. Wow. Okay. I noticed that actually when I worked at BMW because I got an employee price on something that I wanted to get a BMW lifestyle item and my parts manager and I'm like, what? Why are you ripping me off? And he's like, what, wholesales this? And he's like, you paid ten percent over that? And I'm like, Dude, I can get this on Amazon for like one hundred dollars

less than what you just told me. And it's from the BMW store on Amazon? Yeah, same box from the brand somehow. Either BMW, the brand has a deal with Amazon somehow, or there's some wholesaler that's buying it. I really don't understand. But there are parts stores that somehow have these connections with Amazon and they're selling them dirt cheap. Right. I mean, it's crazy. I don't get it. Yep. It's worth taking the time to look at that because put the part number in. Put

the part number in. Just put it in. Holy moly. Like, all right, whatever. And free shipping half the time, usually. Free shipping and easy returns. That's the other thing, too, about parts, is like, can you return it? Drop it off at Ups? Yeah, amazon perfect. Easy. I mean, that's one thing about having a good relationship with parts. Dealerships are really tough. I mean, for the most part around here, locally, we have a pretty good relationship to be able to

return parts. Sometimes you order stuff because you're trying to get ahead of the game, then they don't show up. Or as we all know, the conversation on the phone is not really what's wrong with the vehicle. Yeah, I've had all of those things happen. So you got these parts here that you don't need anymore and you're like, well, I got to send them back now. And if it's a pain to send it back, you're like, I'm not dealing with

that place again. Usually why dealerships will only preorder parts if you prepay for them or if the car is there, that's when I order parts. I mean, most of the time it's either, do you pay ahead of time or is the car here? Because if it's an inexpensive part, sure. Otherwise I need some collateral, if you will. Especially when there's hundreds of people going through there. I mean, we could end up stockpiling. And dealerships often do a list of parts for people who don't show up

for imagine years ever again. Yeah, that's

interesting to think of it that way, too. That's a fine line to ask for draws. Ask for money before the vehicle is there. It's tough for an independent I mean, depending on how big you end up getting, it's not big of a deal for us right now to even think about it. Yeah, for the for the most part, we can get most of the parts we need the same day.

You look it up and you say, well, that's in stock, so we won't have a problem with it every once in a while if it's something else and they don't show up like, oh, we got it in stock now. But some of the stuff is like, well I don't need that. Yeah, there's certain special order items you. Just don't I'm not going to use that again. Twenty five year old PT Cruiser. I don't need a whole transmission sitting here. I don't know. The chances of another PT Cruiser coming

in and wanting a transmission at a dealership price are very slim. I need to confirm. You really want this? Yeah. You want to do this or not? Yeah. I thought you were going to say a PT Cruiser coming in is slim. But I got one on the rotation that convertible turbo and he comes in pretty religiously. We actually have a few and it's purple just so everyone gets the visual. Oh nice. Yeah, we have a few PT Cruisers and we got a Woody in the shop right now. PT Cruiser. Right on. That's the best

one. That's the best. It's got to be turbocharged though. Turbocharged convertible. Not a convertible. It's a hard top. I mean one thing with parts is like with transmissions, a lot of them will interchange. So like the nag one or the seven two two six. It's like sprinter van, chargers, Mercedes. It just goes across the board on a lot of them.

Right. And it's like the same with most of them. I mean for a long time everybody was using their own stuff like the a three hundred and forty E for the Toyota is the same as the Jeep Grand Cherokee in the ninety S anyway. Really? Yeah. It's the A three hundred and forty. So it's like the same one on the early one. So there's a lot of transmissions that kind of go back and forth like it's Toyota, NS, Jeep. There's

only so many distributors for transmissions. Yeah. So having some of those parts, even though it was for that vehicle, it's like, I can use it for other stuff, but some of the specialty stuff from the dealerships is like, yeah, I'm probably not going to when it's vin specific, which everything freaking is nowadays, pretty much in the last ten years, everything's kind of directed that way. Like a

tekham. Right. For a GM six L eighty or six L ninety, which is the valve body and the computer module. Sometimes they're blank, but sometimes they're vin specific so that can't go into anything else once you order it. So in those situations it's like, yeah, hey, I'm going to need one thousand dollars because I'm not sitting on this thing. I guess any modules really now that I bring it up, it's like, yeah, we do before that we order that, we make sure we get money out of them before we get it

here because you can't return that thing. Yeah. So it varies. Yeah. But for the most part if it's a big or specialty item. We're not going to hold it in stock or something like that. Or if it's usually vehicles after, what is it, twenty years, they stop really readily stocking stuff. I mean, aftermarket is a little bit easier, but dealership pipeline dries out after that. Unless you're like Porsche or I

mean. Everyone went OE for so long and there was such a big push to buy OE parts. A lot of shops would put themselves out there like, we only use OE, we only use OE. And it seems like pretty recently that's kind of dried up a little bit. And the aftermarket just can offer such a better warranty where dormant is really stepped up. And dormant was like, I mean, it was bottom the line stuff for so long. Everybody looked down on dormant. Anything that said dormant was almost like

embarrassing. You take it out of the box and put the part in as quick as you can so no one saw you using a dormant part. But they've come so far now and with most shops getting a three year warranty on them, parts and labor, then you get the same part from say, the OE and they give you just a one year on the part and you're like, I don't care how great. That part is, right. Because parts are going to fail. And if the parts don't

fail, the people are going to break them. Sometimes people are just hard on stuff and they break it and they don't care what the quality is because it's still broken. And so if it's got a three year warranty, it doesn't matter what happened to it. It gets replaced for free to them. Yeah. O'Reilly's got like a lifetime warranty on brake pads. Yeah. Technically limited, but limited. Yes. We only give out like two year warranties of the dealership. That's pretty

much your standard warranty is a two year warranty. Yeah. And that's where we come up with a three year, thirty six thousand mile and we're nationwide warranty being if you can find another certified auto repair shop in the country, they will cover our repair that happens here and anything breaks. If you put brakes on here at this shop, at our shop, and you take off and go to Montana or whatever and you wear your brakes out and you find another certified auto

repair shop in that three year you get another set of brakes. Yeah. Real similar with and it's pretty well, like no questions asked, which is like how do you, I mean, it doesn't matter how mean Acibono brakes or know, Chrysler brakes on, like it doesn't really matter. I mean, Dodge gets their brakes from Brembo. Half the on I mean Acubona is on par with Brembo. I think Accubono is just so then. Do you consider like, Brembo is that OE or aftermarket? Yeah, that's a good question. So like

at what point if it. Came OE with the Brembos, then obviously they're in bed together. So it would be that's like Allison, like an Allison transmission, like Allison was aftermarket. But that's the OE transfer dermat now. So it's like, well, Allison is get a little bit then. I mean, if you slap Brembos on your Honda, is it OE quality. That'S an you definitely if you have a Brembo caliper, you're not going to find aftermarket

pads to go in there. I guess my point is a lot. Of the brands that are aftermarket the quality is getting there across a broader scale as you have higher quality parts available from more places and more people than just the manufacturers. It used to be the manufacturers had

all the money, they had all the machinery, they could make it the best. And now you have so much technology available to more people at a lesser cost that the industries are catching up and being able to produce sometimes superior parts to what OE can do. I mean, Charge Turbos, you can name it, there's probably somebody aftermarket that has almost a better replacement than the OE. Yeah, but it's not a

blanket statement either. No, especially talking about Chrysler's, because when you talk about crank sensors and you can't put an aftermarket crankshaft sensor in a Dodge or a Ram or a Jeep or a Chrysler, right. There's quite a bit of those sensors where yeah. Why are the sensors not quite there yet? A lot of sensors are just or thermostats or like something just we were doing aftermarket thermostats in this thing and every aftermarket we can't get the OE one. But every aftermarket thermostat is

a problem. Every single one becomes a problem. It's a couple of degrees hot, it's too cold, it's stuck already. And I'm like, really? Then you wonder, am I the only one dealing with this? Yeah. How are these things in stock right now? Right. And we're just getting the bad one every time. Or what's going or is everybody getting bad one? Or is everyone getting bad one? They just don't say anything. They don't care. Yeah, keep charging the customer. He can

need another one. Let's put another one and put another one. But that's where it comes to the warranty, too. It's like you used to have this high expectation of this part that you took out of this box, and it's like Eklin, right? From Napa. That was like, oh, if it's got Eklin on it, that's the best of the best. And we'll talk like blue streak. You don't use blue,

it's just garbage parts. But it's like anytime you had this box and it had, say, the Mo part stamp on it, it was like, that was like the best of the best you're putting on there. But at this day and age, it's like, well, what's the warranty on it? That's all anybody cares about anymore. How long is it going to last? How long till nothing's meant to last? Don't go there. But then talking about internal transmission parts is like you

get billet internals, right? Everybody knows what billet internals are. Hardened internals, of course, that's way better than anything stock. Right. But it also pushes that failure point somewhere else down the line that's going to, something else is going to break. Yes. And that stuff's not warrantied but it's like, you know what you're getting. But also you're doing this because someone is extremely hard on their vehicle because it's driven normally at normal parameters and normal

settings, nothing's going to break. Right? Typically you don't need these upgraded parts because you're driving it normally and so that's where it is. Everyone's just so hard on these vehicles and they expect so much out of their vehicles that they need this warranty because they know they're going to break it and they're like, I don't care how good the quality is, they're going to find a way to break it. Absolutely, I mean you know that, right?

I know this in so many different ways. I've broken so many cars, so many axles. But I also understand and I have expectations and funny enough, Jeep called me as a customer a couple days ago. So for those of you people who don't know, I work for Jeep. I was a customer of Jeep before I worked for Jeep, when I worked for BMW and they called me as a customer and go, hey, how's your Jeep treating you? Because my Jeep has reached the critical

threshold of being in the shop. That they're like, hey, we need to give this guy special treatment. When I pulled my Vin today for some other service work, it says enhance satisfaction. Customer, please contact Stalantis for any service needs. They want this guy in and out of the shop as fast as possible. Give him a rental like the top service. And so they call and they're like, hey, how's everything going with the Jeep, we just want to check in. And I'm like, oh it's going great, I love

it. And I didn't think of anything of it at the time, but then I'm like, oh yeah, it's because my Jeep has like one hundred and seventeen registered days in the shop, which is fifty fifty. For people who don't know, days down in the shop reflects of how many days a car was at the shop. Well what dealerships like to do if they can't get parts is leave the repair order open and give you back your car until the parts come in

and then you come back. So it only shows one ticket. But in that thirty days that it took to get the part and my paperwork was open, I had the vehicle back for twenty eight of those. I dropped it off the first day they checked it out, then I picked it up, had it for twenty eight days, they got the part, dropped it back off, had it back the same day. Jeep as a brand. Thinks my car was at the shop for thirty days, but it was really only at the shop for two. So that's why they're thinking that

something's really wrong with my Jeep. Because you're skewing the numbers here, man. Out of skewing for all the hybrids out there. Yeah. Out of the five hundred days I've had the Jeep, twenty percent of the time it's been in the shop. On paper. So much for their checks and balances. You got this inside guy here just throwing the numbers off. Yeah, but I love it. They're like, what? And I guess my point was I'm

really hard on my vehicles, right. And things happen and I understand that I'm going to lose time with it, I'm going to lose some money. Something is going to get lost somewhere. It's not a perfect world. Parts aren't available. I've had a couple of times where I destroy my own vehicle because I love to use it for what it's designed, which is offroading. And then I break something, and then the part is not available, and I

got to drive a backup car for a week. Or these are things that I plan for because I know what to expect. I guess people just don't expect anything anymore. It's just realistic expectations. And a lot of people have unrealistic expectations and it's like you got to be realistic about it. To me, I think it's been a great experience because they fixed it and I broke it for the most part, minus the King of the Hammers experience. And it's been great because Jeep pretty

much stands behind their trail rated warranty. I mean, even when I was a customer and I took it to another dealership, they fixed it pretty much no questions asked. And I understand that's not the experience that every dealership, because some dealerships for whatever reason, don't like warranty money. But as a brand, I've really liked Jeep. Even with your modifications on it? Yeah, to an extent. You have to understand

what's going to happen with that. If you totally modify your vehicle and then you want to replace something that forcibly broke because you did something, they're probably not going to pick it up. I probably push the boundaries. I mean, if you look at Jeeps offered thirty seven inch tires from factory. Right. I put thirty eight on it. So am I stretching the definition of what their stock vehicle is and breaking things? Yes, and they're still backing it up. But also I didn't put like a

six inch skyjacker lift on it with. Forty two s. With forty two S. And then go smash it and break it. And some things I paid for myself to fix, like when I messed up the bumper, I went and replaced that because they're not going to cover things like that. Yeah, but it's a good peace of mind when you buy a vehicle that's designed for something and it breaks doing the thing it was designed for and they're like yeah we'll take care of

it. That's how it's supposed to be. Kind of it is. And it's not always like that but I've had a good experience on both sides of the fence and I try to push that experience on my customers too. And if it's a realistic break then cool. If you just wanted to slam it into a brick wall and now your front end is cracked in half like okay, this wasn't quite in the commercial. If you want to go neutral dropping it with forty five

s on it right? Like something you're going to do something. Yeah, I mean it's like with trucks, like trucks are designed to tow and every Chevy out there with the six speed is going to fail. Right. And it's like GM is not doing anything about it. That sucks. Yeah. I'm a Chevy guy, I like GMs, I don't like to see that. And it's the same with all the front wheel drive ones, all the sixty forty five, sixty, seventy five, six speeds, Acadias, terrains, equinoxes, just all just

junk. Nothing but problems. No sort of extended warranty converters are just failing. They don't have an upgraded converter. I won't buy a GM converter put back in. Mean that's quite a few brands. Nissan CVT. Yeah, that's quite a few of those. That they just don't really I mean. There should be something with the CVTs and I'm not going to rebuild those either. It's just a design flaw. It's an

engineering flaw that you can't fix. You're going to put it back together exactly the same way it was from the factory with all the same OE Nissan factory parts with no changes. And I think that's the definition of insanity. Right. I had a friend who went over. And over six transmissions, six Nissan CVTs within like less than fifty thousand miles, right? Yeah. You go in there and rebuild them and that's why I like to do the ones that I can rebuild and I

can add something special to them and fix what? Improve it. Yeah. And fix what they didn't. Can you improve a CVT? I don't know. There's nothing you can is there upgrades there? No. If there is it's beyond me. I don't know everything. So maybe there's a guy out there that's figured something out. I don't know. I'd like to hear from that guy. I'd like to hear from me on. Instagram, Papa Smurf Wrangler and message me. If you improve a

CVT, I want to know. And you let me know if that happens because yes, I don't think there is. We'll become the west coast CVT builders. Oh my god. I still probably won't I don't know anything to do with those. You could be booked out. It's like the DCTs are the same thing. There's nothing you can do. I mean it's like Ford's manual. When the input shaft seal starts leaking is replace the input shaft seal, put it back together and then hope for the

it. If it experiences any of these symptoms and it's like clutch shatter, shifting, advise a customer that's normal conditions. It's like, just talk them into being okay with it. Is that what you're telling me to do? Oh, my God. That's the TSB. They released on, like yeah, there's definitely some questionable recommendations from manufacturers. Yeah. And I mean,

Luke makes an aftermarket clutch disc set up for it, but it's not any better than the Ford one. It's not like anything different about it's just an aftermarket alternative that's like a couple hundred dollars cheaper. It's like, well, that's kind of nice that it's a little cheaper. Yeah. You know what I mean? But there's like, nothing you can do to improve it. And that design is cool, too. I like

that. That's been around for a long time. In the race circuit, it's a standard gearbox with dual clutches that engage and disengage, so you don't have to worry about hydraulics. And it's just the standard gearbox, which is stronger, so that's cool, but it's just not working out for the daily driver. But it comes back down to, like so is it the design flaw, or are these people just that hard on their equipment? Because I feel like people cared a little more about their vehicles.

Decades ago, that was the vehicle you're going to have for the rest of your life that your grandkids are going to have. And that's true because we get sixty s. Seventy s vehicles in here that are, like, immaculate. Right. Is this thing restored? Like no, we just took care of it. Holy moly. This is a nice car. This car is built well. But was it built well, or people just took care of it? This is my freedom. This is my mode of transportation. This is like, what our family uses to go on

vacation. Our family gets fed. We have to keep this car nice. And it's like, nowadays, this generation just gets in these things, turns the key, and just slams that go pedal down, and it's like, see ya. Yeah. I'd probably attribute it to two things. One, people had to work harder for things. There wasn't a surplus of options of just, say, refrigerators. You had to work hard for stuff. Stuff was kind of expensive back in the day, so you had to

work hard for it. And two, back in the day, everything was meant to last longer. Now we have such this disposable lifestyle, and that trickles down to your car planned obsolescence. Yeah. When everything is meant to be tossed, I mean, your computer, literally everything in your life that you probably have is meant to be replaced in the next two to five years. Everything. And when you just think about that, how are you going to why? Take care of it? Yeah. Why take care of it? Why?

I'm just going to replace it in a couple of years, like my furniture, my couch, everything is going to be replaced in five to ten years for the most part, depending for most people. Once you get to a certain point and you want to spend twenty five thousand dollars on your fridge and then that can last you a lifetime. I forgot whatever brand that is. You want to spend twenty five thousand on a

fridge, it'll last a lifetime. But for all of us better people out there, we're going to spend two grand on a fridge and it's going to be replaced in the next five years. Right. Well, I think we're kind of like the last of the generation that even sees that divide. And I can't speak for anybody younger than us, the generation that's going to come behind us, but I feel like we are the last ones that see the two, the divide. We see that care that

was given to everything, vehicles, whatever. You bought your refrigerator, you actually cleaned the coils out of the back of it. You cleaned it out. You took care of your stuff, you serviced

everything in your home because it was going to be there forever. But we also see this planned obsolescence where, like you said, you're going to buy an LG refrigerator and pretty much guarantee in five years it's going to stop going cold and you're going to call the service tech out nine times and he's not going to fix it. So you're just going to buy a new one. I was actually reading through my wife's Kia's owner's manual to check the service schedule for a couple

different things. And I came across this section that absolutely blew my mind because I wonder how many people read it and how many people do it. And I know I don't do it anymore to an extent, but it says at every fill up, when you fill up your gas tank, check the lights, check the tire pressure, check the brakes, check the oil. It gives you like ten things to check. Like the normal checklist of all your fluids, your lights, your tire pressure, check your spare tire. And I'm like,

that's actually in an owner's manual. I can't remember the last time I read that. But I do it to a minimal extent. I look at my tire pressure, I look at my gauges, I know I'm good. I've got oil level sensing, all these things. Nannies that I have, I can rely to know that I have most of stuff. But the point is, people don't look at their car ever until it tells them there's something wrong. Yeah. There should be a light that comes on for that

or the place I take it to will take care of it. Yeah. And I think that's another problem with where the industry is headed is that they don't realize that this is your vehicle, you own it. It's your responsibility to keep this stuff. Yeah. My dad taught me to go every morning before when I got my first car. Walk around it, check the tire pressure, look at the oil, pop the hood, make sure everything's okay. Plan for ten minutes before you got to leave somewhere to look at

your vehicle and just make sure everything's okay with it. Because that's going to save you an accident down the line. That's going to save you somewhere down the road to know that you're okay. And I mean that's because I had a seventy three ranchero. It didn't have TPMS, it didn't have an oil level sensor, but it doesn't matter. These are all sensors that can fail, too. Yes. And we've become way too we're just like relying on reliant, on waiting for these lights to come on, these

buzers and bells and whistles. And if there's an issue, it'll tell me or somebody else will tell me. Sometimes you can spot a nail before you have a flat tire. Yeah, that's true, too. And not be stuck somewhere. Right? Yeah. I mean, just trying to be proactive instead of reactive is the big thing behind it. Or knowing you have a bald tire, you know how many people come in the shop and I go, hey, you're showing cord on your tires like it's about to explode. It's a may pop. Yeah. And

it's a will pop. They go, really? I thought I just got tires. Sure. And I'm like, well, there's two problems with that. Either your alignment is really off or you didn't just get tires. Or maybe somebody in the middle of the night swapped your tires out for bald ones. Also possible. Either way, keep an eye out on the neighborhood. The fact that you didn't know before you rolled in means you should probably. Look at your car, pay attention. Yeah.

And a lot of people don't even. Know how to air up their tires. I run into that quite often, which just blows my mind. I mean, it's just knowing how to save yourself. I don't know. It doesn't comprehend in my mind self reliant stuff. And it really goes back to just not understanding that you own this piece of equipment. Like you own it. And it's like the manufacturers are taking this and running with it because you have subscription fees coming out right now. Right.

So it's like you buy a car with heated seats, but you don't get them unless you keep your subscription. And eighty to ninety percent of the population is going to be just fine with that. Just like their phone. You own the phone, but you're still paying for apps. They've just become accustomed to it. It's like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. The heated seats belong to them because it's not my car. It is your car, though. You bought it. So that is BMW's model.

So they thought about the subscription based car services, what they came out with, a lot of people freaked out because that's how they thought it was going to be required that you pay monthly for each one. What their idea was, every car would ship with every option, right? So you don't have to have all these different supply and demand issues with all these different things. Say you want all the options, right? Here's the price. The vehicle is eighty thousand

dollars. You get all the options, check they're activated. You don't play another thing. Write your check just like a normal, quote, unquote normal BMW customer would do. I'm joking a little bit. On the other hand, say you want to lease a base three series with no options because you want the lowest monthly payment possible. Well, I can sell you that same three series for fifty thousand

dollars with no options. And now you have the minimum payment, say in six months you want to activate your heated seats. Say maybe you don't even want to activate it. You just want to try heated seats because you don't know if you'd like them. You can pay the twenty dollars and try it for one month and maybe you don't want it anymore after that, so you're done. Or you want to buy it permanently. The factory option was nine ninety five at that time. You can pay the nine hundred and ninety five to

add your heated seats and then you permanently own the heated seats. So the whole idea was to keep inventory flowing. And then if you want an option, you can get it. If you don't want it, you don't have to get. That's just so interesting because it's like the part is in the vehicle. They've already invested the part into the vehicle. So it's like they already own the heated seats. It's in there. Just give it to them. Then. What? If you don't want to pay for it,

you don't want to pay for it. But the manufacturers already spent the money to put the damn element in the seats. The money is already invested into the vehicle. And now the person's driving away with this component that has been the vehicle. You know who did this already elon. Yeah, but it's like you already spent the money. Just give it to the people. No, he's going to charge you ten, twenty thousand dollars for the rights to cruise control, right?

Yeah. No, I may be way off on those figures. I don't know what it is. I think it's in the neighborhood of seventy five or ten thousand for the. Full the bottom line is there's going to be some sort of financial gain. Yes. Even though the technology is already built into the vehicle. Because you're paying for software just like you do

with Microsoft. Yeah, but I'm saying there's like a tangible piece of equipment that's already in the vehicle that you purchase the vehicle and you have this tangible item that's in there. The elements in the seats, the LiDAR sensors, the radar sensors, his freaking laser beam, windshield wipers, whatever, it's already in there. And all he's doing is and layman turned flipping a switch to let them use it. But yeah, it's already in the car though.

Yeah. I guess if we were to sell it, I guess if they sold the vehicle to somebody else and they're like, now I want that, I guess that's when he recoups his money. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully if the car doesn't burst. Into flames and burn or you factor that into overall cost. Yeah. I mean, of course, having options is the most expensive thing. If you own a restaurant, you don't want one hundred items on your menu. If you make one seat

right. They just make one seat. Right. Instead of right now they make ten, twelve seats. Right. That's a lot of different production lines for one seat. You cut five different production lines out for one production line, you're saving a. Lot of money right. And put all the bells and whistles in there, but then just give it to the consumer, you know what I mean? Just maybe up the base price just a little bit. But now you've saved so

much money, you're still up in the base price of the vehicle. And now these consumers are getting all the bells and whistles that they want and everybody's happy. But instead it's like, oh, let's just try to make more money. So we'll just turn this stuff off and they got to pay for us to turn it back on. Like, oh, my God. That doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth. I don't know what will. It's a weird gray zone cop between a luxury brand trying to be bespoke

and an economy brand trying to reach the masses. So it's both of those because that's where BMW is, the luxury sports car segment. They're between the Rolls Royce, the Bentley, the Ferrari and the economy brands down at the bottom, they're right in the middle. So they're trying to find a way to be both. And that's how you get a subscription for your heated seats. That's how that comes together. Yeah. And then everyone else is like, I'm going to do that too. Yeah. What a great idea.

Because look at when Tesla is doing it. It's there. Well, I think originally they tried to get away with it because they didn't want radar. So originally their cruise control system was just camera based, so they didn't need a lot of equipment. So it doesn't matter if it's in your car or not because it's one hundred dollars worth of cameras, wholesale, whatever that they have to put in the car to make it work. But now they had to move to radar, I think.

And that's probably why it's seven thousand five hundred dollars for your software. Yeah. Or just whatever the technology is that's going into it. Pretty much. Name your price. I thought it was a cool there's no comparison to it. I mean, what if you only paid for your heated seats in the winter? Well, let's see. We're in June. It was like fifty degrees this morning and raining. So it's like there's another twelve dollars. This month for heated seats. Then you got to

justify the cost of like how many days this month is it going to be cold? Do I really want to do the whole month? Do we really need these people thinking if it's a dollar? Yeah, it's like one more thing I got to think about. I just leave it off. And they got these cars with this. Now you're using resources for something that's not even going to be used. Because for me it's like I'm not paying for it and it's not even about the money. I'm not paying for it. I'm not paying

a freaking subscription for this. I'm going to pull those seats out. I'll put aftermarket heating system with a freaking switch. It'd be better anyway. And that is why the huge backfire that happened and they didn't do it. I think they did it in one country, they tried it out in a country. They're planning on rolling it out. I mean, subscription based. I think they tried it and it. Wasn'T going to work. It's definitely not getting

a lot of positive feedback. It's definitely not, not a lot of people are like, I really like it. I mean, I like it in theory, I think it's a great theory, but in the practicality I just get all the options. So you don't want to use all. The options, but if you're planning on having another vehicle, like if you lease a vehicle, I get it. That makes sense. If you're going to lease a vehicle, have a lease vehicle with all the options you want to lease it. And here's all your

subscription stuff, right? Yeah. So then you can choose exactly what you want, like time of the year you use it, six months or whatever. Well, I don't want to pay to have that. Also the prime BMW customer leasing. Yeah, that's true. I mean that would make sense. But it's like to roll it out to buy a vehicle, to buy something and then not be able to use all of it, that drives me crazy. Like I bought this because of all these things and now you're making me pay to use these

things. It doesn't feel like it's mine. I don't feel like I kind of. The story of the car. Yeah, a little bit. It's the story of the iPhone, that's for sure. Yeah. To say the least. You buy the car, you got to pay registration, you got to pay taxes on it, you got to pay for your driver's license. I mean, you don't have to though. You can definitely get into the sovereign citizen debate. Those usually don't work out. I've watched those videos. They're great

videos. I really appreciate definitely get into it. Start the damn thing up and drive it down the road without any of that stuff, but I don't know. I mean, you can at least sit in your driveway with the heated seats on without any registration, insurance or driver's license. People do live in their cars for free. Mean, maybe that's a good way to get people to stop living in their you know, you got to pay for this stuff. It's like rent. I think they're subletting

RVs out in La. Now. Yeah, I can see that. It's weird where it's going, to say the least. But

that's welcome to the world. I don't know where it's going. It's going somewhere. I think eventually we just get I'm waiting for the hovercrafts to come make a comeback. That's what I want. Hovercrafts were supposed to be cool. I think they said that in the sixty S. And we've been waiting all this time. It's supposed to be a flying cars by now. Yes. They exist for millions. Yeah.

Everybody'S supposed to have one, though. I'll just get a helicopter. Yeah, they can't beat a helicopter to buy flying cars. We'll get there. Yeah. All right, man. Well, this has been entertaining. It has, to say the least. Yes. Before we get into the sovereign citizen. Stuff, we can add in UFOs and sovereign citizens next time. Oh, that sounds like a plan. Yeah. So the gearbox will call it the trash bin. Just all the stuff that shouldn't be talked

about. The round file. Yeah, instead of The X Files. Thanks for coming in, man. Absolutely.