”Don't worry, your car is in good hands”
Posted on 09/17/2013 8:30:51 AM PDT by rickmichaels
Actually the guy sort of laughed about it. Said “those guys....” I went on to work, and took the car back the next morning and picked mine up. All European in Jupiter. The guy (Aldi) is now dead, but I think his family still runs the business.
“One of the swankiest restaurants in town used to hire derelicts from my high-school to work in the kitchen and as valet parking attendants.
If you pulled up there with any kind of an interesting car, it WAS gonna go for a joyride! Sadly a couple of them were killed when they wiped out in some sort of high-end sportscar that they were joyriding instead of parking.”
Mutiny Bay Club in Coconut Grove, FL. Late 70’s, same thing.
No modern, fuel-injected, computer-controlled vehicle needs an "Italian tuneup."
Don't get me wrong, though. I often stomp the gas pedal in my modern, fuel-inject, computer-controlled vehicles and explain to the wife that "I'm blowing out the carbon." She just looks at me and says, "It's your gas money".
That's my choice, on my car. The shop does it, well, that's quite a bit different.
That happened to us while our jeep was in the shop. We received a ticket for running a red light from one of those cameras at the intersections everywhere here in Florida. We had to prove it was one of the jeep staff who drove it home to eat lunch. Finally jeep accepted responsibility and paid the ticket.
Mrs. RQSR had a 91 SAAB 9000 SPG once upon a time many moons ago. Had it in a shop for a tune up over in Highland. Young fellow working at the shop took the car for a joy ride to San Bernardino College, was apparently showing off to the ladies walking down the sidewalk to classes, and ran that sucker into the back of a Mercedes Benz. The car was a Total loss. Was a real heartbreaker. It was not a car one replaced easily, and we never did. Insurance never seems to cover the entire loss.
My dad had his Mercedes in the shop, and when he picked it up, there was an extra engine in the trunk.
We theorized that a mechanic was bootlegging an overhaul when a supervisor suddenly showed up and he hid the evidence in the trunk of the nearest car.
700 to 800 miles. More than needed for a repair shop to see if the car is working properly after service. Much more.
So, it’s impossible for a modern car to foul its plugs or have carbon buildup? Not impossible.
Even a car with the fuel air mixture and even the spark timing and pulse width controlled in a feedback loop and with unleaded gas can have a problem, not as bad as earlier cars but still, you drive a high performance car like grandma and it’s going to load up, not as sensitive as it was since the manufacturers try to lean out the mixture past stoichiometric but it’s still possible. Even though plugs are supposed to last 100K miles (which is pretty awesome) they still should be replaced well before the 100k limit as the gap gets larger as the electrode wears away.
Modern cars also do a self-cleaning oven kind of thing to keep the cats clear but it’s not impossible for the fine openings in the converter matrix to get clogged as well.
Newer cars fail smog tests, why do you think that happens? And I’m not talking a physical problem like a blown coil or stuck injector.
Any self-respecting mechanic would have raised the front end off the floor, put it in reverse and backed the mileage off the odometer.
Not impossible. Just far less likely.
Compared to a ‘69 Chevy, definitely.
Friend of mine once dropped off his sports car at the service shop. He was given a lowly courtesy car and drove away. Few minutes later he was overtaken by his own sports car. He stopped and phoned the shop, “Where are you taking my car?” “Hold on a minute,” they said. “Ooooooooooooooh it’s not here!” Turned out someone must have driven it out of their shop and nobody noticed! Never seen again. Shop paid up!
Only 100 copies of the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California were built. So, it's a rare car, and they couldn't afford one for the driving sequences. At the time of filming, one was worth $350,000 -- and one has recently sold at auction for over $10M.
They used a real one for close-up scenes. But, for the rest of the movie, they built three replicas. The one used for driving scenes was... difficult. They had to film the scene at the garage multiple times because the engine died when the attendant tried to drive it off.
However, one of the replicas was restored, and recently sold at auction for $235,000.
My insurance might not cover the entire loss, but I would have been sure that the repair shop's insurance did.
Or, they would have be explaining to the local police about unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
I had a '66 Nova SS with a 327 running a Holly 750 dual inlet vacuum secondary. That sucker would load up at open throttle (ha). Really, it was too much carb for a 327, it hated to idle, and it hated normal driving, but man, was it fun when you stomped on it (on straight roads anyway). It cornered, how shall we say? Poorly.
I'll concede to your knowledge of more modern vehicles. I've never had problems with them, unless something did actually break/go bad. But, then again, I don't baby my cars, either. I let them see red line on occasion.
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