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Dealership won't adjust aftermarket carb??

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dirtynails

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I was surprised recently when having the dealership work on getting everything dialed in right for a chevy crate engine I had them install. I have the Edelbrock Q-jet and it needed some adjustments. They say they can't do it. Although recently they did adjust the choke on it. I don't know it seemed odd to me. I went home and did it myself with tach and vacuum guage. I was hoping maybe they could do more with their fancy scopes and stuff. Dealerships are funny. Sometimes not that funny. Anybody else experience this?
 
A friend of mine was a Senior Master Tech at Toyota for 22 years. He is an off-roader and a car guy through and through. But the dealership he worked for was very hesitant to touch anything aftermarket. I had an 81 with a mild lift and 35's and they almost didn't want to touch the engine when I wanted a tune-up and timing adjustment. (I know, I know, why didn't I do it... cause my tools were MIA at that time, long story) They also wouldn't do an alignment cause of the lift and tires. And that's here in Oregon in a fairly rural town. Like you said, dealership are funny. Sometimes not that funny!!!
 
Most of it has to do liability issues.
But think about it, that tech has been trained(hopefully) to work on the manufacturers parts/cars. He has years of experience on one particular piece. You bring in an aftermarket part. To him, it might as well be from another planet. Its not what he is trained on, and not what he is used to. True, in theory they are all the same. In his position, would you be any different? Someone brings you something you have never worked on before and wants you to do something you have never done, and if you mess it up, you are going to be married to it forever. Is it even worth it to try.

I have seen that kind of thing happen to others and was foolish enough to let it happen to me, a couple of times. If it is your buddy, no problem. If its just a regular customer, forget it. You try to help a guy out, and everything is fine for the first 10 guys, and then the one wants you to buy him a new motor because your idle adjustment caused him to shift into third at 120mph and scatter the bottom end.
 
I can't imagine taking anything besides warranty repairs to a dealership, much less something with a carb.
I've never met any dealership wrench who wasn't a hack. That's why I quit the dealer after 6 months.

If you can't do the work yourself, find the oldest, greasiest, smallest repair shop in your town and it'll probably have the best mechanic on duty.
 
goldwing2000 said:
If you can't do the work yourself, find the oldest, greasiest, smallest repair shop in your town and it'll probably have the best mechanic on duty.
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X2 :D
 
Leper said:
think about it, that tech has been trained(hopefully) to work on the manufacturers parts/cars. He has years of experience on one particular piece. You bring in an aftermarket part. To him, it might as well be from another planet. Its not what he is trained on, and not what he is used to. True, in theory they are all the same. In his position, would you be any different? Someone brings you something you have never worked on before and wants you to do something you have never done, and if you mess it up, you are going to be married to it forever. Is it even worth it to try.
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I suppose this is true with younger techs that have no outside experience. But in my experiences many of the techs (guys in their 40's & 50's) became a wrench at a dealership because it payed the bills so they could do things like work on their trucks and hotrods. The dealerships are where the money is. Like it or not, many many people still think that this is the best place to get their vehicle worked on. And usually these people have the money to get the work done so premium prices are not an issue.

goldwing2000 said:
I can't imagine taking anything besides warranty repairs to a dealership, much less something with a carb.
I've never met any dealership wrench who wasn't a hack. That's why I quit the dealer after 6 months.

If you can't do the work yourself, find the oldest, greasiest, smallest repair shop in your town and it'll probably have the best mechanic on duty.
Click to expand...

I don't agree that their 'hacks'. The dealerships that I have delt with in my local area won't keep a hack. I have friends and acquaintances at the Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Chevy & Ford dealerships and IMHO opinion they are all good mechs who work on their own stuff and do have a great deal of pride in what they do. In fact I have had quite the opposite experience to what you indicated. While I was not living in Oregon for 5 years my mom started taking her Toyota to a local shop that has a good reputation. When I got back there were many 'fixes' that he had done and sold my mom on that were just abortions. For instance, instead of fixing the charging light, he put in a gauge. Now a gauge is ok, but the install was Master Hack work for sure. And he told mom that there 'wasn't a fix' for her charging light. I replaced the alternator with a Toyota part and removed the gauge and BAM it all works just fine.

Just my $.02 worth
 
Jason4x4 said:
That doesn't just apply to dealers, that can be anywhere.
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True enough. But it just seems to me that dealers have more than their fair share. Most of them are more concerned with getting it out the door and beating the book time than they are with actually fixing it right.

At least that's been my experience. YMMV
 
I had an airbag problem with my 99 (that I caused long story) and when they tore it apart to get to the wires and all they broke one of the clips that holds my heater ducts up, so now it would hang down sometimes but i fixed it.
 
My family always goes to the same dealer for service because we know they do it right and the service manager now knows us and my family's vehicles pretty well.

Other dealers don't have that great of service departments. My sister had problems with other repair shops finding the problem with her Prizm, took it to our usual dealer and they fixed the problem in 2 days.
 
goldwing2000 said:
I can't imagine taking anything besides warranty repairs to a dealership, much less something with a carb.
I've never met any dealership wrench who wasn't a hack. That's why I quit the dealer after 6 months.

If you can't do the work yourself, find the oldest, greasiest, smallest repair shop in your town and it'll probably have the best mechanic on duty.
Click to expand...

**** you too. Eh, there are a lot of hacks out there, dealerships have large concentrations of technicians in one place. You are going to have a few hacks in the mix. In my experience the biggest hack stuff comes from little crap shops. Especially with Mitsus and timing belts, I see tons of just HACK work.

Ok sorry for the hijack.

A lot of guys just don't know how to tuen a carb like that. I mean most guys in your modern dealer have been working on fuel injection for the past 20 years. I'd bet that half the shop I work with has never touched a carb on a car professionally. I know I haven't(though my year of experience isn't a massive amount). Its either they'd tune it not knowing what they are doing, or leave it on you.
 
This happened to me. Three weeks ago had Whitnell Dodge (Salem, Oregon) do the 30K mile service on my truck (2005 Dodge Ram 3500, CTD, 4x4 etc...)and I mentioned that the back right chrome wheel cover had a piece of chrome chipped off. They said its a warranty thing and would order it for me. I get a call that it is in so I go to the parts counter and they wouldn't give it to me, they had to have a tech install it, of course this is the day I drove the Excursion, so now I have to make an appointment to have a wheel cover installed. And if I had the truck there that day I would still have to have a tech install it, I couldn't do it my self in there parking lot.

There is going by the book and then there is stupid, this is Stupid.
 
2BLAZERS said:
This happened to me. Three weeks ago had Whitnell Dodge (Salem, Oregon) do the 30K mile service on my truck (2005 Dodge Ram 3500, CTD, 4x4 etc...)and I mentioned that the back right chrome wheel cover had a piece of chrome chipped off. They said its a warranty thing and would order it for me. I get a call that it is in so I go to the parts counter and they wouldn't give it to me, they had to have a tech install it, of course this is the day I drove the Excursion, so now I have to make an appointment to have a wheel cover installed. And if I had the truck there that day I would still have to have a tech install it, I couldn't do it my self in there parking lot.

There is going by the book and then there is stupid, this is Stupid.
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no that is warranty. Some people amaze me when they feel they should just be handed warranty parts. Warranty requires the return of the "failed" parts. Think we can really just trust every Tom, Dick, and Harry to return the parts? There is a process in place. For an item to be warranty it has to be installed by a manufacturer specific technician. If it isn't they feel the likelihood it was installed wrong and was damaged goes up(which is true in many cases).

Say we hand an alternator over the counter to someone who had one fail. They go home, put it in, and hook up the battery cables backwards. Fry the damn thing AND their PCM right then and there. Should we warranty both of those now??

It may be stupid for just a wheel cover, but its the way the process goes, they have to have a warranty technician install the part or else there is no warranty on it and the manufacturer will not cover it, in the future or now.
 
sled_dog said:
no that is warranty. Some people amaze me when they feel they should just be handed warranty parts. Warranty requires the return of the "failed" parts. Think we can really just trust every Tom, Dick, and Harry to return the parts? There is a process in place. For an item to be warranty it has to be installed by a manufacturer specific technician. If it isn't they feel the likelihood it was installed wrong and was damaged goes up(which is true in many cases).

Say we hand an alternator over the counter to someone who had one fail. They go home, put it in, and hook up the battery cables backwards. Fry the damn thing AND their PCM right then and there. Should we warranty both of those now??

It may be stupid for just a wheel cover, but its the way the process goes, they have to have a warranty technician install the part or else there is no warranty on it and the manufacturer will not cover it, in the future or now.
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Actually what really upsets me is that first they call me says its in, I leave work early and run down to the dealership, they had ordered the center cap not the outside skin, so wasted 1 hour of work (and pay). Then this week is when I drove the wrong vehicle there. They never mentioned to me ever that I would need to have the truck with me, have them install it, and have an appointment made to have a wheel cover put on by a tech. So far this has cost me two hour of pay to leave work early. If they had explained to me the whole thing the first time I won't have a problem with it. Now, I do understand that the dealer needs the old part to get paid by the Germans. If when they called to tell me the parts in and asked to set up a time to run down there for a quick appointment I would have been fine. By time this is done I will have wasted 3 hours of work time, ($94/hour billing rate= $ 282, (I'm a CPA)). I could have bought the damn thing myself and been ahead.
 
sucks, thus is more of the bull**** of the dealership service department. They likely ASSumed you are like most of the people that come in there, dont work on their own vehicles and want them to do everything. I would say 75% of people would not even bother thinking about installing it themselves.
 
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