xrac

I am a shop owner and I purchased a vehicle with a transferable GM Extended Warranty. Before the warranty expired we did about $2,000 in work on it through the warranty. To transfer the warranty only cost me $50. It was a sweet, sweet deal. The warranty company is always free to send out an adjuster to verify needed repairs.

I am not a tech but I can never remember us ever having that type of issue from a hydro boost unit. Have you checked for contaminated fluid? Do calipers retract properly. How are the brake hoses?

Yes! Not sure how I did that.

This has been discussed a couple of times but we now have a lot more participation on the forum. What printer and stickers are you using and what do you recommend?

All I can add to that is "AND FAST".

Gary, that is great to hear.

Joe it was a close game until they snapped the ball. I feel sorry for Peyton.

Our January was up about 7% over January 2013.

We have room for scrap accumulation and so we hang onto that stuff and eventually sell it. The money is saved up and divided among our employees at Christmas. This usually amounts to a couple of thousand depending upon scrap prices.

I agree but very expensive to own. I have a 2008 VW Jetta (not luxury) and a 2006 Lincoln LS sitting at my shop that neither owner can afford to fix. The Jetta may need an engine (timing belt) and the LS needs about $1,700 worth of work. These vehicles have been with us more than 30 days.

People who cannot afford or will not afford expensive repairs should not buy BMWs or Mercedes.

I have been looking at Angie's list and I am going to pass on advertising. http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2013/09/18/why-consumer-reports-says-you-cant-trust-angies-list/

Gonzo, this is another good one but I especially like this line:

Is it normal to leave the keys in the car? I once had a lady with a Volkswagen that needed a battery. When i told her how much she all of a sudden became too busy to do it right now. Evidently she went to Walmart and got a battery and probably had a family member install it. She came back a week later with a radio that wouldn't work because it needed a security code. Guess what? I told her we would have used a memory saver to prevent this and I guess she would have to go to the dealer because we couldn't reset it! Maybe we could of but I wanted her to pay through the noise for her cheapskate behavior.

Yes, but you could be like the customer that we had. She had bought a direct fit catalytic converter on line and had a friend put it on but it didn't fix her check engine light and she came to us to fix it. What we found was that the converter was flawed in the manufacturing process. Where the O2 sensor goes there was excessive weld built up inside the converter and the O2 sensor would not screw in without breaking the end off of the sensor which her friend installer had done. We now faced the issue of how to fix it. If it had been one of our converters we would have sent it back as defective, would have not broken the O2 sensor, and would have gotten another one and never have installed this one. She couldn't get the seller on line to warranty it but I did finally talk to the manufacturer and they said they would if we could get it to them. However, the solution we finally came up with was to go inside the O2 bung and grind the weld down enough to allow the O2 to fit. However, on top of the money she spent on the converter she now had to pay us about $250-$300 for an O2 sensor, tool to remove the weld, and labor. If we had not been able to do this the converter would have had to been removed, packaged up, shipped to the manufacturer, and a return converter shipped back. She would have had the shipping costs and probably been without the car 10-14 days and would have still had a similar bill from us. While some things can be purchased on line it is absolutely dumb to do so in some circumstances.

We have one door in and one door out and I love it. We were forced into building in this style due to our subdivision developer. It is easy to heat and you only have two doors to maintain. Really important in this layout is properly positioning switches to control the door. We currently have 7 bays but could add one more if we reworked things. Sometimes we will have ten cars in the shop at once working on them because we are working on three cars in the center. Our bays are pulled into at an angle. We do have trouble with the quad cab one tons being too long for our drive on lifts and too heavy for our two posts. If I could do it over I would widen our building another ten feet.

Joe, I too am rooting more for Manning than anything. Go Denver!

Glad you found us. Welcome on board. We have a good group here. Are you slammed in the warm months?

Having never turned a wrench the point of view of a technician is always of interest and educational since it is information that can help me potentially in dealing with and managing my technicians.

They are bugging me to advertise. They want me to commit to about $1300 for a year.

In Manchester, TN, today I saw an oil change advertised today at $14 for up to 5 quarts. WOW!!!!!

Don't go full time without adequate financial means. With that off my chest its sounds like the other location is a far superior location and one where you are more likely to encounter success. The wrong location can doom you before you ever start.

As a Car-x franchisee I have the ability to buy directly from Raybestos. We stocked brake parts for a number of years including hoses, hardware, pads, rotors, shoes, drums, and calipers. We purchased brake parts by the skid delivered by truck. You will find it hard to have the right parts in stock as usage constantly changes and you will find yourself with a lot of dead inventory on the shelf. After about 7 years I figured out that the cost savings didn't justify the extra cost spent in the overhead, shrinkage, and inventory management. We currently have limited inventory on consignment from a vendor.

I try to run ads that entice a better level of customer. The only way I would use cheap oil changes is to introduce a new shop but I would discontinue it after 12-18 months.