05/05/2026
I make this comment as matter of factly and unemotionally as I can:
I am happy to help you with your advice for your car parts. What I cannot do, and it seems this is now the new thing people want and then get upset that I refuse to do for them is make you a complete list of parts you need to put on your car that's 25 or 30 years old, that I can't see, touch, or test drive. How can I be expected to know what your car needs vs. someone elses?
This happened end of last week, some dude calls and does this to me, says he took the car to a shop and it needs stuff. He can't tell me what stuff, just that the shop told him it needs suspension things, but they either didn't tell him what that meant or he just thought I have some sorta mind reading device. And it just happened again, this time out of Ohio, on a car that was bought out of Copart... and is finishing some rust repair. Says the brakes are at 0% on one end and 5% on the other but also that he is driving it around. Uh, okay. I mean you are driving it around with no brakes? I ask what it would take to pass a safety inspection, he says it passed inspection (Ohio so not saftey, but emissions). Terrific but not what I need to know. Are you rubber lines cracked? Are you hard lines rusty? Again I cannot see it. Do you have a budget?
I get terse thanks for your time and *click*.
Flip side of this is sometimes you get some good ones. Yesterday I had 3, today I had 2 more customers who asked great questions, we talked options and they were very happy, so it's not *all* bad, mostly it's pretty good but man, some apples do really mess up the barrel.