We Are At Their Mercy, I Suppose

We take our cars to repair shops and dealerships and we have two choices: trust what we are told or not.

I have a wheel bearing problem, I am told. That's what the dealership told me. But the bearing was quiet, not like the one I had a problem with on my last car. That one sounded like it was grinding glass. You knew right away there was a problem. I opted to have that one repaired at a Goodyear shop. They did a good job, accepted my 10 year extended warranty, and I paid nothing for the repair. I do not have an extended warranty on my Buick so I will be paying the repair cost myself. Consider me "self insured" on repairs.

While at the repair shop the other day, another gentleman came in with a van with a "check engine" light on his dash.  They took one of those plug-in gadgets and recorded the error number. The problem was going to be expensive to repair and the man declined. The repair was going to run over $700 and he felt it was not worth the money to repair the problem on a van with 136,000 miles on it. He decided he could continue to drive it, as is, until he could have the engine replaced for $2300. After all, the odds were against the vehicle being worth more than $6000 and why spend the money?

While there, I learned that I had a second wheel bearing problem... this one in the right front wheel. Rather than paying for both repairs, I opted to fix the one (left front) that was identified by the dealership, the one that allowed a bit of wobble. You make choices.

I can no longer do the repairs I used to on my cars. I do not have the tools and I do not have the knowledge anymore. At one point, when I was much younger, I could buy a manual which showed me how to repair most anything. Those are gone now. And the cars have become much more complex in recent years. I have a scanner gadget which means I am not entirely at the mercy of repair shops but I cannot repair the indicated problems.

I miss the days when I could tune up my own car, repair most of what went wrong with it, and could diagnose those problems easily on my own.