Allah be praised! That 90,000-mile megaservice that was supposed to lighten my bank account to the tune of $1,200? Chuck the Mechanic par Extraordinaire charged me $221.
Whence this generosity, you ask.
Well, he checked his records—he keeps computerized records of all his customer’s work—and discovered that I had insisted on changing the timing belt at 60,000 miles. Mike the Other Mechanic par Extraordinaire observed that there was no need to have changed it then: it should have lasted at least 90,000 miles and maybe more than that. He thinks the thing won’t need to be changed until the car reaches about 120,000 miles.
Think of that.
If I’d taken the car to the Toyota dealer, a) they wouldn’t have known the timing belt had been changed early; and b) even if they did, dollars to donuts they would have gone ahead with the full 90,000 whackaroo by way of extracting $1,350 (their price for the same routine service job) from my wallet. Really, Mike and Chuck could easily have gotten away without cluing me that there was no need to change the timing belt. I was resigned to having to pony up over a grand and had the money sitting on the altar waiting to be sacrificed to the gods of internal combustion. I would never have been the wiser.
Well! This leaves $1,000 in my post-Canning Day survival fund! Matter of fact, I probably can cover most or all of that $221 bill with this month’s paycheck, leaving the whole $1,200 in savings.
And that’s why honest mechanics never have to advertise.
Hallelujah!
Image: Cam drive of a Ford I4 DOHC engine
Dolda2000, public domain, Wikipedia Commons