Here's a motorcycle one. This particular bike had a yellow then red zone then it went back to tacho face colour. The guy told us he revved it quickly past the bad yellow and red zone to get into the good spot (past the red zone). It blew a piston a little while later.Andrew
The "commodore club" were telling me how the Holden V6 makes more power than the Falcon I6 due to the V formation.Ben@Work
A lot of people think they'll blow an engine, or wear it out fast if they rev it anywhere within cooee of the red-line.Clockmeister
I always remember the dickhead who brought his car back after we had just serviced it yelling and screaming that we had fucked up his radio 'cause it worked alright before you serviced the car... etc.Darren
I pressed the "on" button and lo and behold, the radio started to play music.
No apology, nothing... he just drove off.Car booked into the dealership. Dickhead picks up his car early in the afternoon and starts carrying on about a laptop that was on the passenger seat when he dropped the car off, but was now missing.
No-one had seen this mysterious laptop, not even the service advisor who checked the handbook etc as soon as the car was dropped off.
Complaints to leasing company, complaints to the general manager, everyone in the workshop gets the third degree on stealing from service vehicles blah blah blah...
Police get involved, it all gets very messy.
Dickhead gets home and had left it on his dining table in the morning, it was never in the car when he dropped it off. No apologies, explanations, nothing. The police notified us that it had turned up.Another dickhead drops his car off. I did the service and noted that one of the rear tyres (on a Statesman) was bald, and had a shredded appearance (ie burnouts) and that it needed replacement. I showed the manager before roadtesting the car.
Anyway, dickheads daddy picks up the car, and when told about his tyre, he hits the roof and goes off. Apparantly the tyres aren't very old and we (meaning I) must have done it.
I get accused of doing burnouts on the roadtest, and daddy demands that he gets a new tyre. I suggested that perhaps his dickhead son may have done silly things on his way to drop it off in the morning. No way that is possible of course...
New tyre fitted, off they went never to be seen again.
Favourite "Tall Tale":Darryl Walford
I once heard a guy I knew (who owned an old valiant) explain that flat engines were more powerful, because they did not have to work against gravity, but that they wore down the bottom side of the cylinders, therefore Chrysler had designed the slant six as a compromise between greater power and uneven wear.Favourite "Ancient Myth":
That "a guy" once invented a carburettor that got 50mpg (or 100, etc) but that "the government" wouldn't let him sell it because it would bankrupt the oil companies.Favourite "Modern Myth":
That premium unleaded fuel makes your car run "cleaner" (whatever that means) no matter that the engine was designed and built to run on standard ULP.
When I worked in the service dept of Ford Tractors I had to go see a very agro customer in the Orbost area in Vic. He had been complaining about lack of power and wanted a new engine and was making the usual threats about going to the media etc etc.David Z
To cut a long story short I dynoed the tractor at the local dealership and found its power output was spot on. The tractor was transported back to the farm and I went for a drive with operator.
As soon as he started ploughing it was obvious the engine was really struggling but a look at the tacho showed only 1700rpm. The bloody thing was turboed and the dickhead wasn't giving it enough revs to get the turbo on boost, I leaned over the driver and pushed the hand throttle wide open and as soon as it hit 1800rpm the turbo came on boost and the tractor started pulling really well.
When I called my boss he went of the deep end and threatened to send the customer a bill for my time which would have been very expensive. We never got an apology from this idiot despite the only problem being his inability to press the throttle.
A friend of mine who drives a '91 Toyota Lexcen GL (i.e. VN commodore) at one point actually believed that the V6 engine in his car was more powerful than the commodore's - that it was a different engine, made by Toyota! LOL. This same guy also didn't believe me when I told him how hard it was to keep a black car clean. "black??" he says. "I don't think so. I think white would be the hardest color to keep clean". Only after speaking with a guy at a garage did he finally admit that what I said was true.E2
This SAME guy, also once got a $100 (or so) cut and polish done, hoping that somehow, it would turn the crusty , very badly faded blue paint on the Lexcen (which is ALWAYS parked outside, never undercover) into a shiny looking brand-new car. After it was done the car looked *exactly* the same as before, and needless to say he never spoke about the cut & polish again.Replies to David Z
The First Brendon: "Myth: CRV's are good cars."
David Z: "Myth: Brendon's opinion matters."
The First Brendon: "Myth: You don't get bagged all the time about your CRV"
Dana Drury: "Myth: You actually know what your talking about."
Just last week had a cranky old bastard who wasn't happy about the play in the centre seat of his relative new Jackeroo. The service manager called me out to determine what was wrong with it. I felt the movement and told them that the level of play was normal. The owner snapped back at me ...Grenade
"No it isn't! I own two of these 2000 year model Jackeroo's and the other is nowhere near as bad!"
Having seen this complaint a few times before I told the owner that I would be happy to bring another new Jackeroo down from the new car lot so we could compare the movement. I brought down a new Jackeroo with 13km on the clock and we all inspected it. If anything the play in the seat was worse than his one. He then changed his stance and went on to say how that kind of play was unacceptable for a new vehicle etc. etc.I had a lady the other day who was unhappy about having to fork out to have her heads serviced on her VS V6 to rectify valvetrain noise (worn valve guides). Once I told her that it wasn't going to covered under her extended warranty she went on to complain about the poor service work from our dealership. She told me that 4 months after she had the car serviced she happened to check the oil one day when she was out driving in the country and it didn't register on the dipstick. She told me that a mechanic had to put 4.5L in the engine to get it to the right level. I told her that I found that very hard to believe and she went off the deep end! They only take 4.5L on a change. If she needed 4.5L then I'm sure her engine would have seized a few weeks earlier .... but you can't tell them. They seem to know more about the product than you sometimes!
I think I know this guy !!! (The guy Hyena spoke of) Does He wash his car every two and a half years, and even then does a half-arsed job of it??? oh-oh and also had an Excel , which totally seized after having been driven with no oil for 3 months??And then he announced ..... " I'll never buy a Hyundai ever again! "Hatzolah
Don't forget the normal byline for every Holden/Ford assorted problems by the service manager.....Hyena
"They all do that "We have this ALLEGED intelligent customer pick up a Kubota (small Japanese tractor) he phoned from home and claimed the reverse gear would not engage and could not drive it off the trailer.
Told him to calm down and bring it back....
Got it back started it up UN TIED the cable that was holding it and drove off....
Helps to untie the cable first......Got a slab of beer off him (VB of course) for all the phone abuse he gave us he felt like a fool but least was not arrogant about it
I've got a mate that thinks engine capacity = speed (acceleration) - straight out, no ifs, no buts. He was talking about his laser (1.8l) and how it beats excels etc because they're only 1.5l. He went on to say that its pretty good because it's almost as fast as a VL and they're a 3l. Mine being a 3.8 he says will be faster that the 3l but not as fast as a 5l. I pointed out that my 3.8 is faster than several 5l, 4.9l, 4l etc but he refuses to believe it. The bigger the engine the faster the car, thats it. unless it's turboed or supercharged because that's different...Marco SpaccaventoMy boss at work (female...) apon first seeing my car commented, 'that's a very sporty model, it even has a luggage rack' - pointing to my clubsport rear wing...
"Alloy wheels are different to normal wheels because the wheel and tyre are one piece. The downside is that you have to replace the whole lot when your tyres wear out."Masta
I mentioned it not long ago but a mate was talking to a friend of his dads, about the new pipe hed jsut got on his VFR (motorcycle), i think an SP-1.Mother Superior
When asked about how it went he went on about how much more power he had how great it sounded, and how when cruising at 100 it was 1 or 2 thousand RPM lower than before!!
My friends boss has a newish Mercedes van, he doesn't use the clutch when changing gears as he believes he will get the gearbox replaced for free by the factory before he sells it, and that he is saving money by not using the clutch...he also has the speedo cable disconnected as he believes he is doing too many km's in the van to be able to sell it for enough when he's finished with it..damn I'd hate to be the sucker who got that heap sold to them..Noddy
Years ago when I had my GT I knew a guy who was into Valiants big time, and his name was Wally (no, it really was :). He had a VC sedan that was in pretty good nick and he gave it a shockingly hard time. To his credit, he's the only guy I've ever seen shift a speco shifter equipped Valiant 3 speed crash box back to first gear at 40mph without causing it to explode :)Rainbow Warrior
Wally was a devotee of the slant six and he was *convinced* that they made exceptional hp for their capacity because of the slanted stance of the engine. He believed that it made the inlet ports work like a tunnel ram manifold, and his particular Holley equipped car, with his own custom camshaft selection, was more powerful than any V8 as he had "worked out the secret" to tuning these engines to great effect.
When we did eventually match race the GT made it look sick...A lady once had her then 10k km old Accord tilt trayed in from up the bush (I can't remember how far away it was, but it was a good distance and must have cost a shitload) because the service indicator light came on and she panicked. Why they include owner's manuals in cars I'm fucked if I know...
Another rang the service department in a mad rage complaining that his brand new Legend had broken down in the middle of peak hour traffic and he was ropable as he'd been lead to believe Honda were a quality product and he'd never had this sort of problem with his Benz. We despatched the on site van immediately only to discover he'd run out of fuel. Idiot :)
There was literally no end of people who demanded that their radio's be tuned in because they couldn't figure out how to do it. You'd get the odd panicky call of worried folks about the thermo fans "still running and I've turned off the car and locked it up" and the odd idiot complaining about their driver's door window that went down "by itself" after just touching the switch. Funny that...
Still, the best was this bitch who came in on a regular basis. She was a prominent Melbourne doctor and she was the most miserable old skank you could ever come across. Basically, she felt she was important and expected everyone to treat her as such and she complained about every fucking thing there was to complain about, and if there was nothing to complain about she complained about that too.
She once demanded that the timing belt on her car be sent away and analysed to determine it's life expectancy as she thought the idea of changing them at regular intervals was a dealer organised con that was totally unnecessary. In the end, she was politely asked to take her business to Robert Lane's :)
I remember a guy we nicknamed "WingNut" skiting about his brothers 327 Monaro with triple Strombergs, we then asked if it ran an RX7 cam conversion, and he said yes.The Red KrawlerLike a guy who was telling me after fitting 35inch diameter tyres to his 4x4, that his speedo still read spot on by the tacho :-)
Or the wingnut who asked why his dato only did a burnouts on the drivers side, we told him 120y's were all 1 wheel drive on the drivers side only and we even talked him into a bet jacking that wheel off the ground to prove it. Mate made $20, unless of course he had a difflock and a broken passenger axle :-)
I overheard a guy at TAFE (who owns a kinga ute... heh) say that "a vee configuration engine will handle alot more boost than a straight engine because it has two heads to hold the pressure"..... Meh??VellicetGetting a lift with someone who owns an SR20 powered pulsar I couldnt help but get frustrated that he changed gears at 4500rpm every time, even when he was trying to go fast. I said "WTF you doing? Take it to 7500rpm if you wanna get anywhere" and he said "Oh no no no I dont want to blow up the engine".... I let that slide and a little later said "It's only just starting to hit its powerband about 4500, you really gotta give it a few more revs" and he said "Of course it starts to pull hard at 4500, its a twin cam and thats when the second cam starts to kick in".... Beh??
This one came from a Mitsubishi dealership service centre. A guy from about 300ks away dropped in with a Chrysler by Chrysler (big tank) with a sick 318 V8 running on 4 cylinders and low oil pressure. When theypopped the bonnet, they found white powder around the carby of what looked like a newly reconned engine.
When the mechanic asked the owner what it was, he replyed "washing powder". Apparently a friend had told him pouring a small amount down the venturri helped the engine 'run in'.
He left the next afternoon with a second hand truck 318 fitted as he had little money, and a new found knowledge on how critical engine oil lubrication systems are to grit and dirt.
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