According to relayed information from the Ford dealer, the repair performed met Ford's current specifications. The flex-hose graft, properly done, is supposed to function as well as the original lines, now no longer available.
Interestingly, my mechanic was able to obtain and install proper lines. These include a flexible section, but not clamped externally.
The cost of transmission repairs rivals the price of a used car of similar vintage. The advantage of repairing this one is that I know its history and condition. I just have to decide which repair procedure to buy: transplant a used one, rebuild the current one or transplant a new (or rebuilt) one.
The transmission wizard likes to rebuild. He sounds like he works to my standard and the Gilford Guru's. I just don't know if I can afford that level of meticulousness in an eleven-year-old car.
Meanwhile, the long-suffering 1995 Toyota Corolla wagon provides daily transportation. Its age and decrepitude keep me from getting frisky. If it goes, I'm screwed.
This experience confirms that automatic transmissions are another example of the expense of laziness. A manual transmission has ONE clutch. Learn to use it. If you fry it, replacement ain't cheap, but it's a damn sight cheaper than anything inside a slushbox. Anything that performs work for you has to have some ability to think for itself. That means more parts working in greater coordination without any input from you. That means more little things that can go "sproing" and complicate your life much more than they were simplifying it while they worked.
At this point, automatic transmissions dominate. More than likely, my next car will have one, too. I'll just roll the dice the way we all do and hope I win the gamble and keep the red juice inside, where it belongs.
I notice transmission puddles along the road now more than I did before. When I see them down at the corner where the hotrod idiots do doughnuts and burn out thirty feet of rubber I just laugh at them. Along the roads and highways they tell a different story. Someone just got bad, bad news. The tow alone from some of these emergency landings would have been a chunk of change. If they didn't get the car stopped soon enough, their troubles have just begun.
And so the economy moves.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Ford Situation
I've heard nothing from the Ford dealer that screwed up my car. I don't expect to. From a pure business standpoint, he gains nothing by compensating me.
Consider it clinically. His good customer, my father, is old and unlikely to buy any more cars there, so he's more of a liability than an asset. Ford as a brand gains when people like the cars and keep buying new ones, not when they try to own them for five or ten years. The dealer might make it back in service if the customer takes the car to the dealer for service, but most frugal, long-term car owners probably get tired of dealership service departments pretty quickly.
Long-lived used cars make Ford look good, but their true monetary value is hard to quantify. In each individual case, the car itself and its cheap-ass owner are an annoyance.
The dealer gains nothing by helping me out. I don't live in that town and I don't have money.
Disposing of the financial aspect, consider the moral one. Repairs often carry a warranty, but that is usually measured in days or weeks. While it's undeniable that the botched repair led directly to the breakdown that damaged the transmission, the service department at the Ford dealership can say that subsequent mechanics had ample opportunity to notice the substandard repair and correct it.
I might do damage to the dealership's reputation, but I live far away. And what auto dealership doesn't have a few stories circulating about questionable things they might have done? I single out none of them, distrusting all of them. Hey, prove me wrong, guys. Prove me wrong.
Auto dealerships are not all staffed by crooks and con men. They're just big institutions with all the problems a big institution normally faces when maintaining quality control. Repairs are not like manufacturing. A category of repairs might all be very similar, but they're not all alike. They don't fall perfectly into a time-and-motion model of efficiency. But big institutions have notorious problems dealing with creativity and adaptability. A little bit slower technician might yield much better results but cost the company too much money because they're willing to settle for lower precision for quicker turns. That's only one aspect of the problem.
If the dealer who screwed up my car is the smart business man I take him to be, he will do what he has already done: take the information, pledge to look into it, and do absolutely nothing while he waits for it to go away. Neither my father nor I have enough public relations value to make us a good investment.
Consider it clinically. His good customer, my father, is old and unlikely to buy any more cars there, so he's more of a liability than an asset. Ford as a brand gains when people like the cars and keep buying new ones, not when they try to own them for five or ten years. The dealer might make it back in service if the customer takes the car to the dealer for service, but most frugal, long-term car owners probably get tired of dealership service departments pretty quickly.
Long-lived used cars make Ford look good, but their true monetary value is hard to quantify. In each individual case, the car itself and its cheap-ass owner are an annoyance.
The dealer gains nothing by helping me out. I don't live in that town and I don't have money.
Disposing of the financial aspect, consider the moral one. Repairs often carry a warranty, but that is usually measured in days or weeks. While it's undeniable that the botched repair led directly to the breakdown that damaged the transmission, the service department at the Ford dealership can say that subsequent mechanics had ample opportunity to notice the substandard repair and correct it.
I might do damage to the dealership's reputation, but I live far away. And what auto dealership doesn't have a few stories circulating about questionable things they might have done? I single out none of them, distrusting all of them. Hey, prove me wrong, guys. Prove me wrong.
Auto dealerships are not all staffed by crooks and con men. They're just big institutions with all the problems a big institution normally faces when maintaining quality control. Repairs are not like manufacturing. A category of repairs might all be very similar, but they're not all alike. They don't fall perfectly into a time-and-motion model of efficiency. But big institutions have notorious problems dealing with creativity and adaptability. A little bit slower technician might yield much better results but cost the company too much money because they're willing to settle for lower precision for quicker turns. That's only one aspect of the problem.
If the dealer who screwed up my car is the smart business man I take him to be, he will do what he has already done: take the information, pledge to look into it, and do absolutely nothing while he waits for it to go away. Neither my father nor I have enough public relations value to make us a good investment.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Ford dealer owes me a transmission, but I don't expect to get it
Funny how things happen. The transmission oil cooler lines in my car rusted out and failed when I was on a trip to visit family. The car was repaired by the local Ford dealership. Instead of putting in the real replacement lines, which are steel, they cut the rusted portions away and clamped in short sections of rubber hose. They did not call attention to this fact.
I trusted the repair shop at this facility, where my father has done business faithfully for years. The bill was not cheap, after all. They'd jumped in for a brake job while the car was there.
Rubber grafts are an emergency, short-term repair. I was not told I had received a short-term repair. I was told the lines were repaired.
Oil degenerates the rubber hose. Unlike the metal lines, which rust and develop leaks slowly, the rubber fails catastrophically. Fluid blows out rapidly. As a result, internal parts of the transmission suffer damage from heat and lack of lubrication. According to my car guru's transmission guru, I probably smoked a clutch pack, leading to the strange slippage between second and third gear.
The benefit out of all this is that I got to meet, by phone, yet another cool, down to earth mechanical guy who digs what he does and loves doing good work. It makes me want to round up sick transmissions and send them to him. But such ministrations aren't cheap. Not by a long shot. The ballpark repair estimate for his recommended option, or indeed any of the options he laid out, is around the blue book value for the car.
People complain to me all the time that they've spent more on repairs and upkeep to their bicycles than they paid for the bike itself. I answer that the value of the bike exceeds its cost, which makes it a better bargain. Whenever you have to pay someone to take conscientious care of your stuff, you are buying a portion of their life.
As the dealership demonstrated, a high price tag does not guarantee that the work was well done. Examining the bill in detail now, I could see where the part cost showed a cut corner. Since I did not know the price range for such parts going in, I had no warning flag to tell me to probe more deeply when I first got the bill.
Until I resolve this issue, I cannot drive the car. The conscientious transmission guy is even farther away than the Gilford Guru. He sounds well worth the trip, but do I roll the dice on a drive down there, hoping I won't smoke more tranny parts, or pay huge sums to have it transported there by flatbed truck? No AAA Plus for this boy. It's cha-ching as you go, beyond the first few miles basic motor club courtesy would cover.
This is why I go through all the crap I do to go to the mechanic who always takes good care of me. Between the underhanded and the incompetent, it's too easy to have expensive mistakes made on your behalf in the world of automobiles.
The bill for all this is going to cut deeply, along with the bills already incurred for other things that needed to be done right when they needed to be done. There's nothing frivolous in my economy, yet it is still stretched to the breaking point.
All because of some two-bit hack in a dealership garage.
Whatever you do, do well. Take pride in your work and your integrity. Be honest and give full information. The people who tune you out, who complain that you're boring or make their dumb, thoughtless lives too hard can go get humped by the courteous dudes in the matching blue shirts who call you sir and screw you hard while you're anaesthetized by their marketing.
I'm kind of pissed about this.
I trusted the repair shop at this facility, where my father has done business faithfully for years. The bill was not cheap, after all. They'd jumped in for a brake job while the car was there.
Rubber grafts are an emergency, short-term repair. I was not told I had received a short-term repair. I was told the lines were repaired.
Oil degenerates the rubber hose. Unlike the metal lines, which rust and develop leaks slowly, the rubber fails catastrophically. Fluid blows out rapidly. As a result, internal parts of the transmission suffer damage from heat and lack of lubrication. According to my car guru's transmission guru, I probably smoked a clutch pack, leading to the strange slippage between second and third gear.
The benefit out of all this is that I got to meet, by phone, yet another cool, down to earth mechanical guy who digs what he does and loves doing good work. It makes me want to round up sick transmissions and send them to him. But such ministrations aren't cheap. Not by a long shot. The ballpark repair estimate for his recommended option, or indeed any of the options he laid out, is around the blue book value for the car.
People complain to me all the time that they've spent more on repairs and upkeep to their bicycles than they paid for the bike itself. I answer that the value of the bike exceeds its cost, which makes it a better bargain. Whenever you have to pay someone to take conscientious care of your stuff, you are buying a portion of their life.
As the dealership demonstrated, a high price tag does not guarantee that the work was well done. Examining the bill in detail now, I could see where the part cost showed a cut corner. Since I did not know the price range for such parts going in, I had no warning flag to tell me to probe more deeply when I first got the bill.
Until I resolve this issue, I cannot drive the car. The conscientious transmission guy is even farther away than the Gilford Guru. He sounds well worth the trip, but do I roll the dice on a drive down there, hoping I won't smoke more tranny parts, or pay huge sums to have it transported there by flatbed truck? No AAA Plus for this boy. It's cha-ching as you go, beyond the first few miles basic motor club courtesy would cover.
This is why I go through all the crap I do to go to the mechanic who always takes good care of me. Between the underhanded and the incompetent, it's too easy to have expensive mistakes made on your behalf in the world of automobiles.
The bill for all this is going to cut deeply, along with the bills already incurred for other things that needed to be done right when they needed to be done. There's nothing frivolous in my economy, yet it is still stretched to the breaking point.
All because of some two-bit hack in a dealership garage.
Whatever you do, do well. Take pride in your work and your integrity. Be honest and give full information. The people who tune you out, who complain that you're boring or make their dumb, thoughtless lives too hard can go get humped by the courteous dudes in the matching blue shirts who call you sir and screw you hard while you're anaesthetized by their marketing.
I'm kind of pissed about this.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
I hope no one is surprised
According to a US intelligence report, the balance of global power is shifting toward Asia. This unintended consequence of outsourcing is grimly amusing. Business and political leaders are learning the hard way that you can't exploit foreign laborers effectively without bringing them into your own country, where you can control the economy more completely.
All that money sent overseas isn't coming back, because we have made our nation a place with nothing to offer except suckers to buy cheap goods. Once our pockets are empty and we've forgotten how to make anything we will just have our real estate to sell. That's underway already.
The full crash will take down people who presently consider themselves wealthy. Only the few wealthiest who have resources to rival those of a small nation will be able to buy themselves a place in a global order where there are no discrete superpowers. You can't really prepare for life in a regime we have only experienced in fiction. All anyone can say for sure is that vast wealth always helps. If you don't have it at this point, you probably don't have time to get it.
The people who plan to build their little forts and live with heavily-armed exuberance will find that their little fantasy depended more on an indulgent government than they realized while they cursed its "intrusiveness."
Is the future democratic? Why should it be? Popular government is not efficient. Since the financial leaders of this country have demonstrated that they really don't care about the average citizen, and our country supposedly led the way in enfranchising Joe Average, why should any government stemming from nations with more heavy-handed traditions take up the burdens of it?
Giving away the farm bought a temporary boom. Any place the United States retains after engineering its own downfall will have to be earned on standards we probably will no longer have the strength to set.
The big change will not happen overnight. Patient nations will simply wait for human nature to take its course. And eventually their turn will come as the unified race grapples unilaterally with our tendency toward slothfulness.
Too bad we can't agree right now that work basically sucks and we should just share the load of necessary tasks and show each other a good time in our off hours.
All that money sent overseas isn't coming back, because we have made our nation a place with nothing to offer except suckers to buy cheap goods. Once our pockets are empty and we've forgotten how to make anything we will just have our real estate to sell. That's underway already.
The full crash will take down people who presently consider themselves wealthy. Only the few wealthiest who have resources to rival those of a small nation will be able to buy themselves a place in a global order where there are no discrete superpowers. You can't really prepare for life in a regime we have only experienced in fiction. All anyone can say for sure is that vast wealth always helps. If you don't have it at this point, you probably don't have time to get it.
The people who plan to build their little forts and live with heavily-armed exuberance will find that their little fantasy depended more on an indulgent government than they realized while they cursed its "intrusiveness."
Is the future democratic? Why should it be? Popular government is not efficient. Since the financial leaders of this country have demonstrated that they really don't care about the average citizen, and our country supposedly led the way in enfranchising Joe Average, why should any government stemming from nations with more heavy-handed traditions take up the burdens of it?
Giving away the farm bought a temporary boom. Any place the United States retains after engineering its own downfall will have to be earned on standards we probably will no longer have the strength to set.
The big change will not happen overnight. Patient nations will simply wait for human nature to take its course. And eventually their turn will come as the unified race grapples unilaterally with our tendency toward slothfulness.
Too bad we can't agree right now that work basically sucks and we should just share the load of necessary tasks and show each other a good time in our off hours.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Period of Adjustment
Much has happened since the election of Barack Obama. Most has simply been further settling of the broken chunks of the economy.
Gas prices have plunged. Climate change seems forgotten as chilly weather makes warming seem like not such a bad thing.
Supporters of Obama spoke openly of their hope and relief after the election. His detractors grumbled. Some swore to resist in dramatic terms. No running off to Canada for the folks who will give up their guns when you pry their cold, dead hands off of them. They load in supplies and ammo, rig their perimeter alarms and defenses and wait for the next Shot Heard Round the World.
When I visited my car mechanic a few days after the election, a fat, angry white man was there, sounding off to Rich about all that was wrong with the new administration. He grunted out separate lumps of condemnation that lay around him on the floor in disorganized piles. He spoke proudly of his service in Vietnam.
"We killed plenty of gooks," he said. "If we killed a few extra, so what?
"You want to know how to treat prisoners of war? I'll tell you how. After the Vietnam war they never found any enlisted prisoners, you know that? You know why? The gooks killed 'em all. I'm proud of what we did over there."
He was offended that Rahm Emmanuel had served in the Israeli army instead of the US Army. He considered it less worthy than service in Desert Storm would have been.
"We were over there fighting to save Israel's ass. Did they do any fighting? No!"
I didn't try to remind him that George HW Bush had pressured Israel to stay out of it so it wouldn't inflame the Muslim world any more than it already had. He growled warningly whenever I said anything that didn't sound like hearty support. Not wanting to make an uncomfortable scene that would mess up my relations with the mechanic, I fell into the same mode Rich did. We just went along with the ranting, let him vent.
The fat man had a whole lot of militarism in him for having served less than ten years. He may have served the minimum required by the draft. It was a little hard to follow. All I knew for sure was that this soft bodied man loved to talk a hard line.
The worst of the grumbling seems to have subsided. I don't believe for a minute that this reflects acceptance and support. The grumblers simply have other things to do. If you ask them, they still hate the way things turned out. Just don't ask.
We have not elected a messiah. No candidate could be that good. So, by extension, we have not elected the embodiment of evil, either. Thoughtful people will see how it goes and adjust their opinions accordingly, regardless of how they voted this time.
Gas prices have plunged. Climate change seems forgotten as chilly weather makes warming seem like not such a bad thing.
Supporters of Obama spoke openly of their hope and relief after the election. His detractors grumbled. Some swore to resist in dramatic terms. No running off to Canada for the folks who will give up their guns when you pry their cold, dead hands off of them. They load in supplies and ammo, rig their perimeter alarms and defenses and wait for the next Shot Heard Round the World.
When I visited my car mechanic a few days after the election, a fat, angry white man was there, sounding off to Rich about all that was wrong with the new administration. He grunted out separate lumps of condemnation that lay around him on the floor in disorganized piles. He spoke proudly of his service in Vietnam.
"We killed plenty of gooks," he said. "If we killed a few extra, so what?
"You want to know how to treat prisoners of war? I'll tell you how. After the Vietnam war they never found any enlisted prisoners, you know that? You know why? The gooks killed 'em all. I'm proud of what we did over there."
He was offended that Rahm Emmanuel had served in the Israeli army instead of the US Army. He considered it less worthy than service in Desert Storm would have been.
"We were over there fighting to save Israel's ass. Did they do any fighting? No!"
I didn't try to remind him that George HW Bush had pressured Israel to stay out of it so it wouldn't inflame the Muslim world any more than it already had. He growled warningly whenever I said anything that didn't sound like hearty support. Not wanting to make an uncomfortable scene that would mess up my relations with the mechanic, I fell into the same mode Rich did. We just went along with the ranting, let him vent.
The fat man had a whole lot of militarism in him for having served less than ten years. He may have served the minimum required by the draft. It was a little hard to follow. All I knew for sure was that this soft bodied man loved to talk a hard line.
The worst of the grumbling seems to have subsided. I don't believe for a minute that this reflects acceptance and support. The grumblers simply have other things to do. If you ask them, they still hate the way things turned out. Just don't ask.
We have not elected a messiah. No candidate could be that good. So, by extension, we have not elected the embodiment of evil, either. Thoughtful people will see how it goes and adjust their opinions accordingly, regardless of how they voted this time.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
How about a little change?
Change is tricky. The longer we persist in some mistakes, the more radical the correction needs to be. But you can't just slam the ship of state into an all-standing jibe. Large, important things are liable to break and many of the crew will probably be washed overboard. This is why the real reform candidates of the fringe parties don't--and probably shouldn't-- get a lot of votes.
Parties based on pure ideals seem so...pure. The idealists who form them believe that their selection of simple principles will streamline government into the perfect machine for the perfect society. Let's have a mere handful of laws and almost no taxes! Then we each get to keep most of the money we earn and spend it on whatever we see fit. Sounds good. Okay, which laws?
Oh shit.
Other small parties focus on issues like the environment or social services. But we all know that things like a clean environment, public transportation and everyone's health are Special Interests. Taking care of the planet and each other is a concern for Creeping Socialists and other Big Taxing Bureaucratic Totalitarians. Those people are the Enemies of Liberty.
Hear the rigging creaking?
Today everybody gets to grab the wheel and give it a little tug in the direction of their choice. Hours from now we will know the cumulative result of all those little tugs. The ones that don't go in the direction we favor we can call jerks. Then in a few months when the elected or re-elected officials settle into their positions we have to remember to keep a finger on the wheel ourselves by keeping in touch with the bozos in office. Don't let them forget you until the next time they decide to go looking for your vote.
Parties based on pure ideals seem so...pure. The idealists who form them believe that their selection of simple principles will streamline government into the perfect machine for the perfect society. Let's have a mere handful of laws and almost no taxes! Then we each get to keep most of the money we earn and spend it on whatever we see fit. Sounds good. Okay, which laws?
Oh shit.
Other small parties focus on issues like the environment or social services. But we all know that things like a clean environment, public transportation and everyone's health are Special Interests. Taking care of the planet and each other is a concern for Creeping Socialists and other Big Taxing Bureaucratic Totalitarians. Those people are the Enemies of Liberty.
Hear the rigging creaking?
Today everybody gets to grab the wheel and give it a little tug in the direction of their choice. Hours from now we will know the cumulative result of all those little tugs. The ones that don't go in the direction we favor we can call jerks. Then in a few months when the elected or re-elected officials settle into their positions we have to remember to keep a finger on the wheel ourselves by keeping in touch with the bozos in office. Don't let them forget you until the next time they decide to go looking for your vote.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Yay! It's almost over!
Tomorrow the campaign ads end. It's not all smooth sailing from there. We just won't have to put up with the clutter of signs, the yammer of television and radio advertising and the phone calls.
Hopefully, the various officials in charge of elections across the country will manage to land it cleanly on the first try. Then we get a few days off before the losing side starts campaigning again and the winners have to build their public relations defense.
Hopefully, the various officials in charge of elections across the country will manage to land it cleanly on the first try. Then we get a few days off before the losing side starts campaigning again and the winners have to build their public relations defense.
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