3 Mechanic Scams Caught on Camera

Now the lady who owns this car is a new customer. She had taken him to one of these discount auto repair shop chains. A boy was working on it when she retrieved it. He still smelled exactly the same. She knew something was up and they hadn't done it. They didn't do a very good job fixing it, they said they put in a valve cover gasket, well let's take it apart to see if they really did that or if they ripped it off completely or probably worse yet they put the bent gasket in or something and it has an even worse leak, so let's take it apart, it's a relatively easy job and I only have a few of my tools in this plastic box, then I have to keep running back and forth, basically you just need the sockets, a ratchet and a small extension. and the first thing we're going to do with the 10 millimeter socket is remove the stupid beauty cover right in the way, it really serves no purpose other than to make the repair more annoying, remove the two bolts, get out of the So we're going to remove the ignition coils because they're in the way, it's another 10 millimeters, there's four, one, two, three, four and we can take them all out easily and I put the screws up here so you don't lose them and if you're the forgetful sword, take a picture of it with your phone, then you'll know which one goes where and you won't mess up putting it back together, oh just get out of the way, put them here now. they're out of the way so we have to get these stupid hoses off, just twist this, a piece of the hose comes and there's another hose here on this end, we tighten a little clamp, this one is a little stuck so we'll pry it off. with a screwdriver that's the easy way to remove them now that it's out of the way and we just have to remove all the bolts that hold it in place and they're pretty handy, they're all 10 millimeters too, we'll just loosen them one by one.

This time there are a lot of them, they are everywhere, don't forget the ones in the middle and the ones in the back can't even see back, so take out the old flashlight so we don't miss any. Now they are all loose and we will remove them. You can remove them one at a time. I put them here in the front so I remember where I put them once you loosen them. It is very easy to remove them. hand just look closely make sure they're all right there's nothing to hold now so we'll take it off we'll take it off they put a new gasket in it's flexible silicone but they twisted it and they had it crooked so it was leaking Now we're not going to make that mistake , so I use this 3m weather stripping glue when I get the new gasket.

I'm going to put all the glue on the inside, if you notice that when I removed it it fell out without being glued. When you put it down it pinched to the sides and then dripped, stick certain spots on it, push it in and let it dry for about half an hour then it won't slide or pinch like you did with them while we wait for the joint. to come they will deliver it we will clean the rim to get all the oil off it fell off when they pinched it all over leave it nice and clean while we wait we will see this thing has 72,348 miles which for our toyota rav4 is nothing even though that it's 12 years old, it's barely broken and when we look at the top of the inside of the engine, it's in immaculate shape, the cams are all clean, there's no sludge buildup or anything, everything is nice and shiny.

This car has been taken care of with the timing chain as tight as possible which is good, it had a much better design when they originally used timing chains on the timing belt so the rubber would break and they were a pain to change. chains change the oil take good care of it they can last basically forever since the chain is inside the engine the cover is off so we see the inside is bathed in oil all the time so it stays lubricated and it can last indefinitely now that we have the board we need. What we're going to do is we're going to put little bits of this weather trim sealer in little spots every once in a while a little bit of hair a little bit in the middle a little bit of hair then a couple of spots in the middle there and a little bit there put it tight so it doesn't drip or dry out, then you just take the whole gasket assembly, check which direction it goes, it goes this way and we'll start putting it in and we'll realize this goes in the middle so we'll push it in a little bit. then you just feed it all around, press it to fit, you want it to be tight, you want it to be nice and tight and make sure it's all in its grooves all the way around.

The previous person didn't. This fell out when I picked it up. above because it was loose when you put it in crooked this way it can't be twisted, make sure it's nice and solid with the 3m weather stripping in the middle as well and then let it dry for about an hour, okay, now it's dry. You can see you can hang it upside down, it won't fall over or get messed up like the previous job did, then we just put it back in place, line up the studs, remove all the wires so there's a little bit of wire sticking out.

Here then we'll start with the big bolts in the middle because you want to tighten them from the middle outwards and we want to do all the middle ones, so we'll put this one here and there's one in the back and we'll tighten them from the middle one outwards we'll do the one. back metal, we'll finger tighten it, then the front middle one finger tight, then the inner two we'll finger tighten, then we make all the other bolts coming out and then once you've tightened them all from the inside out then you ratchet them from the inside out, so we'll start at the back, we'll tighten it, it touches and then just a little tight, same thing here, take it so it's tight, then we'll do the inside here the other inside then we do the outer ones and the other outer one and the top one here and then the top one on the other side and then the last two now we know they're nice and tight and we know they didn't bend or twist or leak like before because we had glued parts together so that it didn't fall off and overlap now we find the hose that's over here somewhere there it goes back on we tighten that clamp and then we go I'll go over to the other side for the pcv hose tighten the clamp now the ignition coils come back on take them out from the hole they fell into that one goes there it goes here and that one goes there and we put the four 10 millimeters in.

The bolts go back in, you have to move them to align them, then we just tighten them all, then we take out the ratchet and we finish them . We are going to check the oil cap with the old one, the gasket is practically flush, it is worn. Here's a new one with a new gasket. You can see that this gasket will seal better than this one, so we're also going to change the lid. Now people often don't think about the lid, but that stupid gasket can wear out, so it's on. then make it tight and of course you don't know how much oil is lost so we'll check that the oil isn't even on the dipstick so we'll have to add a little bit of oil so we'll add a little bit of oil.

First on a cable and when we measure it we can see it's at the bottom point which means it needs a full quarter so another quarter comes in so we'll check it again and now it's at the top point it's completely screwed the cap on again. make sure the gasket doesn't fall out and of course we're going to start it up check for oil leaks and that's it no more leaks it's all dry now this Toyota overheated this guy took it to the Toyota dealer. The Toyota dealership charged them $531. and the only thing they did was change the radiator hoses and put in new coolant, talk about a scam, but the worst thing is that it didn't fix the car, it's still overheating.

I see that nowadays everyone is in a hurry to make money. I changed the hoses and put cooling on it for 531. They obviously didn't road test the car, got it back, it's still overheating, so I look at the invoice and I look at the car, it has 200,000 miles on it and something is on the invoice. They didn't even mention that they replaced the thermostat, so they didn't change the thermostat. Thermostats are closed when it's cold, they open to flow when the engine warms up. 200 something thousand miles. They often wear out. Common sense. They charge. They were paid $531 to change some hoses and coolant.

They certainly should have changed the thermostat now it just shows poor training. Poor quality of work and this was at the dealership. Hopefully changing this thermostat will fix it and if it does, I am going to advise my customer to go back to the dealership and demand all his money back because this is a total scam. They didn't do the simple thing that these young

mechanic

s have in many places, they don't even analyze the material and certainly don't road test it when they're done, they don't know it's fixed, any fool knows if the thing overheats and you don't see any obvious problems, change the thermostat, it could be good, so let's try it.

Let's see if it fixes first we will put a tray underneath to collect the coolant so as not to waste it now in this case the thermostat is hidden it is down here there it is right here it has a bolt at the top and a bolt at the bottom you can see the bolt bottom, there we will take it out and change it now, maybe out of sight, but it shouldn't go unnoticed by a good

mechanic

, that's the first thing they should have changed, I don't. I know what they're using at these dealerships what kind of mechanics they're hiring if they don't even do anything that simple 10 millimeter socket put a little extension on and unscrew it yeah not much room to work but it's on. tight but no big deal there's a 10 millimeter bolt put it here so we don't lose it and we'll do the other one and the bottom one is harder to get so we'll use a deep well 10 millimeter where there is a well there is a way if it sticks deep just use a deep well socket to go over the thread its not that easy to see but its not that hard of a job now i can get it with my bare finger and here comes number two then we just throw it away now comes, there is the thermostat, not judging by the corrosion on the gasket, this is the original, why oh why didn't they replace the thermostat, I don't understand, I guess it must have been a young mechanic who doesn't know much about cars.

I didn't think, oh, thermostat, that's a car with 200-something thousand miles on it. Try the cheapest part that could possibly fix it. There are 500 hoses which you probably didn't need and didn't solve the problem. because they didn't even road test a new thermostat and the board will put it in, you just push it back into the hole, there's the new one pushed into its hole, then you just put the thermostat cover on it and screw it on, just slide it in . Put it back on and screw it on, first put them in toe socks so the joint doesn't slip.

You don't want the gasket to slip. Then you can get the 10 millimeter deep well gland, turn it and tighten it and then put the coolant back in. I got our tray and it seems to me that they even lied about the new coolant. This coolant is pretty old and dirty looking, so I'm draining it all and putting in new coolant. Now you realize this is Xerix but it's Asian. vehicle one, you don't have to go buy expensive things at toyota, realize that toyota doesn't make coolant, they just buy it from someone, this is what is called high coolant hybrid organic acid technology and that's when you are using this car, so after draining Done, I'm putting in new stuff.

It is always better to use the 50 50 dilution that way it is always 50 50. If you use pure you don't know what is inside. 50 50 is what you want, so buy it that way, it costs. a little more, but what the hell works right now, we have to get the air out of the system, so we're going to start the car and turn the air conditioning on full blast, that makes the air conditioning fan come on and keep running. It cools down while it heats up, as you can see the fan is blowing and another trick is to turn the heater on full power because then the heater will recirculate and pull air out of the heater core that is hiding inside here, the air can get stuck there. and as it warms up add it and we're also going to replace the radiator cap.

This is the original with 200 something thousand miles. The springs will wear out over time, but before putting it on we let the car warm up to get the air out, but then we let it sit for about 40 minutes because then if there is air, it will often migrate and you can pour more coolant until the top, you can see a lot of air migrated, so I'm going to start it again and check it, then complete it the rest of the way, continue until all the bubbles are gone, then put the top on tight and tighten the lid old, came off very easily, loose, this is nice and tight.

Now we can see them, we are going to take it for a good road test, so we will start it, we will start right away and continue, so where we go on a magical and mysterious tour, we cansee that it stays a little below half so far. and off we go, we're driving a good half hour on the highway, we're fine on the highway, now we're going to test it in the city, so far it's holding up well. You want to try it both on the road and in the city. 15 20 minutes of each now as you can see it pretty much fell in the middle but there is one thing that worries me now and that is a possibility with all this overheating as it happened twice after they fixed it it happened again , could have damaged the head.

Gasket, we'll let it cool and test the head gasket. We put a large fan in front and let it cool down. In about half an hour we will do a head gasket leak test to see if the head gasket has been damaged properly. We'll turn off the fan and test the head gasket to perform our block leak test. We will remove the cap and pour in some of the blue liquid you can see that it is blue put the cap back on let me stick it on the radiator make a vacuum with the pump now we start the vehicle see if it changes color if it turns blue to yellow the gasket of the cylinder head is broken so here Come on, as you can see, it's starting to turn yellow still, but it's turning yellow, it's not the solid blue that it was before and what that means is that it has a little leak.

I'm going to try a little sealant, maybe it will work. It won't, it has 244k miles. It's probably time to say goodbye to this car now, although it worked fine for me it was starting to lose a little cooling and I had to add a little more cooling to it which shows it's burning the coolant now I put some checker on it of gas in the head just pour it in and we'll see what happens maybe it works maybe it doesn't but it's probably time to say goodbye to this car because I can't tell if it blew up after the dealer had worked on it or if it was damaged when they had it and They just didn't do a good job and test the system like I did with a block leak test to see if the head gasket had obviously been damaged. has some damage, hey, maybe the sealant will last a while, who knows, but it probably wasn't repaired or diagnosed correctly at the dealer because all they had to do is that simple test I just did to see how good, the gasket of the cylinder head is blowing and then you wouldn't have put in hoses and all sorts of things, you would have just said, "okay, it overheated", why did it overheat well?

The head gasket is blowing, do you want to repair it or do you want to forget about it? Because it was $500 or so, really wasted. but I'm trying to seal it, I put some sticks of gas concealer on my head, you let it sit for half an hour on the heat and air conditioning, then you let it cool for half an hour and repeat it about six times, let it sit. during the night and then pray a lot that it lasts. My client bought this car new and loves it. It has hundreds of thousands of miles on it, but he took it to a Toyota deal last year to get it checked out and they told him.

I need my rear differential replaced or rebuilt for thousands of dollars and it's not safe to drive it like that trying to scare them into spending all that money now that my wife's brother had one and they tried to ream it in Houston Texas with a power steering pump. I had it for 10 years, they said it needed a power steering pump so they ordered it but it never came or they never called them. Two years later I was still driving the vehicle and it had no problems and it was like a 600 repair. The thing would have been thousands, so not trusting them, they took it to an independent mechanic who said there was nothing wrong with the rear part or the differential and this was a year ago and he needed shock absorbers in the rear because they were not out, so he put the shock absorbers on but he did not touch the differential.

I see it's still the original differential down here. It has the shocks on the back of the springs, but the differential is still the same as it was a year ago and I realize this is an all wheel limited vehicle. a lot of them are front wheel drive only but this one is front and rear all wheel drive and they were told the rear differential was going bad and dangerous a couple of weeks later after that job they took it to another Toyota dealership. Who looked for the paperwork that had been done at Toyota? They got it on computers.

What did they say? I didn't need anything. There was nothing wrong with the differential. Now these Toyota dealerships were 20 to 30 miles away, just shows that just because they. Being a dealership does not mean that they are going to treat you honestly, that they are going to give you a fair deal. Now the second guy conceded to the Toyota, whoever owned that Toyota dealership was doing the right thing, but the first dealer walked out. and I lied to the guy it reminds me of when she was back in Houston and that old lady bought the Toyota Tacoma made in Mexico and they bought it for 12 thousand dollars more than what it was supposed to sell for and they said what a shame! signed the paperwork but then after all Scotty made a video the next day she walked in and they gave her a check for 12,000 saying oh this was all a big mistake this is the same dealership that said no There is nothing we can do about it.

You signed the paperwork, but after I magically made the video, she got twelve thousand dollars here. The owner was very smart. He didn't take him at his word for that amount of money. He went somewhere else and discovered that he didn't need it. that job is done and that is a big problem, that is why nowadays you should not trust anyone when you are fixing your car if they are trying to sell you expensive things and it surprises me because sometimes it makes people go to a dealership and tell them they need $6 worth of work and it will be on a car worth maybe two thousand dollars.

I mean, to me it's like they're criminals, but they're dumb criminals. Because no one is going to spend that money, you think maybe they could pay them a thousand or eight hundred, but no, they mark up these inflated prices and in this case they totally made up for it. Here we go from the second dealer, they say the inspector found the drive shafts a bit. play inspected the rear diff differentials working as designed so here we go and what do I hear in the rear. I don't hear anything, there is nothing wrong with the differential now, of course, if you watch any of my videos, Toyota Siennas really are the best fans in the world, there is no doubt that the only thing I have seen go wrong with them is that some of them as they get older, the intermittent change of direction fails and you have to replace them, it's a thousand-something dollar job, but Este doesn't have enough knowledge for that yet and it's not really worn out.

They basically tried to rip them off for a very expensive differential when it didn't need any work, so realize that just because you're buying a reliable car. That doesn't mean you won't get high repairs from dishonest shops. I have seen this happen so many times that a guy even came to see me once and he told me that he was going to get rid of my toyota corolla, which was the worst car. I once had to spend all this money on repairs, so I checked the car and it turns out that probably none of them needed to be fixed.

If you have a Toyota Corolla I've seen them with 300,000 miles on them and the only thing I've ever done was oil changes and brake jobs that's it some of them didn't even change the transmission fluid and they were still working perfectly fine, so don't let people sell you things, think about that, oh, I'll take it. to the dealer they do a good job and they know what they are talking about and these guys have millions of dollars in overhead who pays for it you are the customer so they just make things up and I see it all the time unfortunately so generally it is like that.

It's not so bad to be told you need thousands of dollars to repair a rear end when there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but you still get a big quote, find someone who is honest, you were lucky to have an independent mechanic who said no and then The other Toyota dealer agreed probably because he found out that the independent mechanic said there was nothing wrong and it would look bad if he said yes. The other dealer was right, so you still have to meet someone who knows what they're talking about, but don't take anyone's word as gospel about any car with any repairs, especially a Toyota that won't break down unless you have it. a really serious problem and you still want it analyzed properly if you watch my video on how to find a source of noises in the car. a device like that that has four transmitter units, you place one in different parts of the car, then you put on headphones and you operate it and you click on one, two, three, four sensors, you listen to the noise until you identify where the noise is coming from , always have that Done, if someone tells you you need something like a transmission or a rear end, I've seen it where guys wanted to sell a differential for thousands of dollars, it was an axle bearing, the actual bearing was like 40 and yeah , the labor is like maybe 200, but it's not thousands of dollars, so always make sure they're not trying to sell you something that you don't need, which is very expensive, because look at the Sienna, the leather seats are still on good condition, the car is in excellent condition, why would you want to do it? getting rid of a car that runs so well, they were just hoping to sell them an expensive repair because they like the vehicle.

I mean, I've seen these things with half a million miles on them and this is like 150, so it's got a lot of life left in it, but they thought, "Oh well, it's so nice inside and everything, let's see how much they can get out of them, so yeah "You don't want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring the doorbell."