Why not doing your own repairs will make you go bankrupt.

I will never buy new because my belief is that is making us one more step towards obsolescence and freedom less. Every time a new vehicle is bought that is one more with the new tech out on the street that is going to make us useless as humans. Its one more vehicle with the equipment “they” want on it not “us”. Navigation, gps tracking your every move, driverless systems as standard equipment. What if they decide in the next model year that all diesels can only have 250hp with auto trans to save fuel and lower emissions. All in the name of safety and carbon footprints of coarse. Would all you guys still want the “new model”? Think about it That is a great way to get everyone to switch to electric over night. Market Electrucks as 500++ hp with infinite torque while the biggest diesel is back down to 250hp 850 ftlbs.

 

I guess you clearly don't understand my view on th thread I made a point of saying this os not a 1 size fits all.. I simply pointed out that a truck sitting does not sit with out a cost
I guess if you feel I 'am picking at you that's your choice
I really don't care

 

A few thoughts if they are worth anything to anyone.

First thing is, an owner who is mechanically incompetent or ignorant should take it to the shop instead.

Second, there are owners who think they are mechanics but who do the work by just taking something apart and slapping it together to make more of a mess by trying to fix a truck than if they would have a shop fix it.

Third, many of the owner-operator trucks I have purchased from banks and repo yards were a mess, the owner was clueless as to how to even change the oil - one had the original filters on the truck that came from the factory according to the dealer we brought it to, the owner just drained the oil and put in fresh stuff. a few I know that I would have to dump money into to get it on the road and a few that was fixed and sold because they were unreliable.

 

Yes the original topic of this thread is mostly correct. It’s much easier to make money if you can do your own work but to me the biggest problem is the lack of competence in most shops and it seems like the bigger the name and the higher the price the worse it is. Funny story from a recent issue that really backs this up
A guy that I did an overhaul for several years ago had a catastrophic failure that I believe was probably caused by injector diluting the oil and or contamination from the shop that replaced said injector and cylinder it destroyed. Any way it was towed back to a shop around here that decided it needed cam followers despite the fact that it had a hole in the block on the other side. It would I guess be remotely possible that one broke and got sent through the other side by the crank but really… so they got the parts and went to install them only to find the radiator water had drained into the oil pan. From what I know this cam follower situation was purely speculative….and no investigation they didn’t even pull the pan to see if anything else was damaged. What they were going to do about the hole in the block that almost certainly broke the oil gallery that supplied the piston coolers…idk
Now I haven’t seen any of this in person because this guy is mad at me for not fixing this under warranty…. it was 3 years and almost 400k miles ago. I guess he figured I would be more apt to cover it if someone else started on it and could tell me where I went wrong lol

 

Maybe I'm of a different mindset but my dad was huge on preventive maintenance. Even when he had a brand new truck parked in the yard he and I would go over it with a fine-toothed comb and a grease gun every Saturday morning. Usually took an hour or 2. Breakdowns were more or less non-existent for him. Just because a truck is brand new or a couple years old doesn't mean you can just put the key in and go. A 10-15 minute pretrip every morning (if it actually gets done) is far from sufficient in keeping on top of things.

 

Please tell me you only have a home phone and no cell phone. It better still have the crank as well with the teller putting in the correct pin so you get connected. Also, I would really be disappointed if you do not have a steam engine

 

And a 78 Buick for the wife to drive.

 

No land line. And yes I do have an old hand crank ma bell phone in my collection of antiques along with a working 1961 Queen Anne Dr. Pepper machine. Wife's great uncle built steam engines as a hobby and did maintenance on the Breckenridge Park mini locomotive at the San Antonio Zoo for decades. We bought all his machining tools and materials so I guess I could build one someday. Lol

 

Wife still has her first car a ‘81 Firebird. 3 engines and 300,000 miles later. She’s so mistreated.

 

Is that her daily driver? Too bad new cars go 300,000 on one engine. They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to