Half Shaft U joint torque method

[Joe L.]

Re: Half Shaft U joint torque method

My 34 year old son is the lead service advisor at a major "heavy-hitter" dealership. The seven mechanics assigned to his team work (on good days) grueling 10 hour shifts, and 12 hours on overloaded days. Many of the cars they service have six figure window stickers. The dealership owner is a corporate monopoly that cracks the whip to push more & more service out the door, while new car sales are depressed from this recession.
Those of us who are armchair mechanics, would be shocked at short-cuts taken in an effort to boost work orders out the door.
I am not defending this practice, nor condoning it. Don't shoot the messenger here.... I'm only saying that if one things every repair is completed exactly as some thick book says it should be preformed, then one should spend on afternoon in the service area of a major dealership. That is life in the fast lane.
Ridge

Ridge------



There's nothing new about this. This is why my biggest concern when buying a new car is and has always been the prospect that I might have to return it to the dealer for service work. One of my biggest complaints is that repairs are rarely done "by the book"---they're done the old fashioned way of the mechanic just "digging in" and going "by the seat of his pants". Car manufacturers spend millions developing service procedures and they're rarely, if ever, followed by mechanics or, even known by the mechanics.

For instance, my 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP which I purchased new in May, 2003 had only ONE problem during it's entire life to-date. That problem was an extremely noisy supercharger drive belt. I returned the car to the dealership FOUR times for this problem. The first time, they replaced a pulley and bracket which was the fix spelled out in a service bulletin they had. That didn't fix it.

I returned the car three more times. The last time it was out of warranty but I told them that the problem should still be covered because the problem was un-corrected from when it was in-warranty. They said they would try one more time. However, they told me that even if they didn't get it fixed this time, I was on my own after that because the car was out of warranty.

On this last visit I showed the service writer that I felt the belt was improperly installed on the crank pulley (it was "one groove off"). When I picked up the car, I think they had done, basically, nothing to fix it but they told me that the belt was properly installed.

I took the car home, replaced the GM Dayco-manufactured belt with a Goodyear belt AND installed it correctly on the pullies. End of problem.

Now, if dealership mechanics can't get a drive belt problem corrected in FOUR service visits, just how much confidence would I have that they could properly repair and correct a really serious problem with a complex system in the car? It makes me shudder just to think about it.

[Terry M.]

Re: Half Shaft U joint torque method

Joe,
Your experience is why I have always (well almost) done my own work. Last time I had a car at a dealership was in 1970 when the oil pan gasket was replaced on my 1970 due to leaks. I had to reconnect the spark plug wire retainers at the bottom of the boomerangs after the job was done -- but the leak was fixed. I considered myself lucky.

Even now when I occasionally have had work on my cars done by trusted independent technicians, there is only one who has done the work to my satisfaction. The other has done OK, but not quite what I would have done. Given everything in the world today, I have to be OK with the latter anyway. Craftsmanship at any price has all but disappeared, for the reasons Ridge points out. We can debate the cause all day long and it doesn't matter.