You are very very welcome. When I was young, my mother would always say, “you should have a trade to fall back on when times are bad.” I think she would then tell me that Winston Churchill always kept his brick-layers card. So I picked up auto repair. Before I knew it, it had become my profession. I loved every minute of it.
”When the key FOB came in, there was no one at the dealership that knew how to pair it to the car.
Inexcusable. How could they call themselves a Service Department? I was in auto service at the dealership level for 40 years. NEVER did we have to send a vehicle out to another dealership because we couldn’t fix it. We had pride in those days. Pride in our product knowledge. Our philosophy was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t break it!”
Yup. What a strange story. They’d pulled over to the side of the highway for a piss break. They hadn’t been planning on stopping anywhere for any reason on their way to “Maine”. But nature called. State Police pulled up to them and spoke with them and then off they went. It was like 3:30am. I’m still waiting for the rest of that story.
”A few days later Mr Enterprise called to say the problem was the plug wires and covered in a service bulletin.”
Yeah, that type of problem comes down to the tech on the shop floor and his own personal product knowledge and his keeping up with service bulletins. Obviously a car doesn’t go through a set of plugs in short order twice! It also comes down to the service advisor checking vehicle history and realizing it’s a recurring problem which should tip them off to look in another direction rather than just replacing the plugs again. FYI, plugs went to 100,000 miles just so they’d clear warranty and the cost would fall on the owner. It’s a game of inches and it turned heavily in favor of the manufacturer towards the end of last century.
”It is a known issue. Eventually, someone read a service bulletin.”
Yes, it could only be something like that. That one vehicle ate three trannies. Had to go back to being a manufacturing problem. No doubt an error on the assembly line going back to the block machining. Surely other drivetrains from that same line had similar issues. Interesting case.
He’s remembered for one line: when the debate moderator asked him some thing about the Kennedy seat, Brown cut in and said, “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy seat, it’s the people’s seat.”