Taking Charge of Your Automotive Repairs and Servicing: Save Time and Money Without Doing It Yourself

By Christopher M. Wickham and Robert Bauman

Old Classic cars and Tools layed out with auto parts

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 15, 2000
• ISBN: 9781475902372

Christopher M. Wickham

Robert Bauman is a Retired Navy Helicopter Technician and Trained automotive service advisor and technician. Christopher Wickham is an extremely experienced automotive technician with the ambition to help others to save.

Book preview

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Conclusions

About the Author

Glossary

Results may vary, they depend primarily on your abilities to understand your owners manual and your perserverence in the pursuit of your goal. This book in no way guarantees results or promotes conduct that is illegal or immature in nature. We do not recommend any illicit behavior which may cause harm to others or damage to another vehicle or property. This book was written with the thought of teaching you some techniques to save time and money, not to promote violence. We also do not promote cheating companies out of monies earned through legal business practices. We ask that you read this book and your owners manual carefully and when used together the information in both will serve you wisely.

Dedication

We would like to dedicate this book to our loved ones who have stood by us and helped us through these times of our first writings. They did not always agree with our humor, but what the heck, they still love us. To Tammy, who has guided us through the professional side of things and to the Queen, Andrea, for ’etting Chris come out at night. Long Live the Queen!!!!!

Foreword

In this day of high priced automobiles, the last thing we need to do is spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on the repairs and servicing needed to keep them on the road. People seem to waste entirely too much time waiting on repairs, which do not address their problems. Worse yet, money on servicing they do not need or want at that time. Why does this happen? Because people in general are not trained to describe their problem accurately or even know enough to ask the service writer to look at what it is they are having a problem with. Even still, most people do not know that they may be able to take a ride with a shop foreman, the technician or even the service manager themselves. This may help to show them the problem you are having with your vehicle so that it does not go undetected. These trained personnel may even know a better way to describe the problem to the service writer. In drivers education classes they taught us how to handle a car and check the oil and tires and maybe even how to change a flat tire but, is that really enough? How do we save ourselves from the people who say that they are going to take care of our cars and instead just tend to line their wallets with our hard earned money?

Through our book we intend to give the average person the knowledge it takes to assist them in getting the job done right the first time with the least amount of money. No, we are not training you to work on your car nor are we training you to be knowledgeable technicians or service writers. We are just showing you some techniques to approach the problem of repairs and servicing with a more educated advantage that most people do not possess. It has been our experiences that have driven us to help others through our writings and we really wanted to have some fun doing this. We have also inserted pages between each chapter for you to take notes as to your previous experience, (good or bad), to list steps to avoid the previous experience and some pages in which to describe your latest experiences based on what we have told you. So, if you are interested in saving money and getting your repairs and servicing done right the first time around please, read on and enjoy. There is no way of ensuring the job will be done right the first time every time, but, this will help to even the odds.

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this time to acknowledge Mr. Thomas Wuchovich, who, through his professional wisdom and kindness he has dedicated his time and knowledge in the editing of our book. A great man and outstanding writer for AAA Magazine and close personal friend of Bobs’ fiancé. Thank you Tom for all your help. This has been fun and Tammy says Hi!

I would also like to thank Mr. Guy Kelnhopher, author of Life After Liberation from Wake Island, for his time in proofreading our first project. A wonderful man and dedicated Marine throughout his life. Thank you Guy and may God always bless you and your wonderful family.

Introduction

As an experienced service adviser and trained technician, along with my partner with his 18 plus years of experience as a factory trained service technician, we have witnessed the travesties listed in the foreword. It has been our experiences that have driven us to help unsuspecting consumers to become aware of their mistakes in dealing with the automotive repair industry.