June 9th 2006.

It's quite curious how many of my clients liken us to a dentist.

The logic seems to be that a garage and a dentists' office are two of the places you visit where the news is likely to be bad,
the price for overcoming the problem might be quite high and the pain is guaranteed.

In our case, the pain is mostly psychological. The money you are about to spend HAS to be spent in the case of safety related
items, just like cavities. But you really would rather spend the money on a new patio set or a high class Weber BBQ.

However, as with the dentist, it's a case of pay me now, or pay me later.

I've known my dentist for 35 years. We used to compete against one another in club rallies. He in an Austin Healey Sprite and I
in a Riley 1.5. So when he raised the subject the other day of unnecessary equipment and how good basic dentistry practices were
being obscured by the use of expensive high tech equipment, my ears pricked up.

He was citing the example of a machine that can detect cavities before they even appear on the surface of the tooth, without any
use of sharp hooks or other minor discomforts. If a cavity is present, the machine will light a red light and show the location of the decay.
But my dentist went on to muse that the machine costs US$65,000 and he wondered if there might not be a temptation to make the
red light appear anyway. Cavities or no cavities.

Equally, in the garage business, we are constantly inundated with sales campaigns to buy a lot of high tech equipment.

Recently one salesman was extolling the virtues of a transmission flushing machine, costing a mere $5500.
He claimed that a dealership  had bought one from him and in ONE WEEK had recovered the cost of the machine.
Now I think the salesman was lying, but if he wasn't, that meant the dealer had sold 44 transmission flushes at $125 apiece,
plus tax.

If true, I believe that 43 of those flushes were probably unnecessary.

It's true that draining and refilling a transmission leaves behind a considerable amount of old fluid, but in most cases, the manufacturer
of the vehicle doesn't recommend flushing as an essential and neither do we. If you happen to be the owner of an older Chrysler vehicle,
or of late, a Honda with a V6 engine, regular flushing might be a good idea, otherwise we believe that it's very often a waste of money.

Equally I hear stories about the phenomenal profitability of brake fluid and power steering flushing machines and fuel injector cleaning
systems using a unique super clean, super refined gasoline.

"Engine performance improves immediately".  Tralala.

Manual gearbox oil changes, differential and transfer case oil changes all have their place in a good maintenance programme, but
once a garage has acquired a lot of very expensive auxiliary maintenance equipment, the temptation to sell the services, even when
they are totally unnecessary, becomes overwhelming.

I confess we do have one flushing machine and that is for cooling systems. There is no way in this day and age that one can fully remove
all the old coolant from an engine merely by opening the tap on the radiator, if one is actually installed, or undoing the bottom hose and
letting it all run onto (usually) the driveway of your home.

But we don't make our clients aware of this equipment with banners or posters in the waiting room. In a routine inspection, we analyse the
coolant and add this to our report. On average, the coolant needs to be changed about once every 3 years or 60,000 Km (36,000 miles).

We very often lose clients when they buy a new car. In one case, the lady had been promised free oil changes for as long as she owned
the car. After the first year, she added up her bills to find out that she had spent nearly $1000 on routine maintenance. So she came back
to see us and in examining her invoices, we found she had been charged for an injector cleaning and a wheel alignment on every service!

So much for free oil changes.

That lady is back with us now and is not pleased with having been sold a whole flock of unnecessary services.

I know we're in the bad news business, but I believe that we have to ensure that you drive away in your car in full confidence that NOTHING
was done to your car that wasn't needed and no expensive and unnecessary services were performed.

It's the only way of softening the blow.