This topic refers to the repair of vehicles. The situation is that when you require repairs or servicing to your vehicles you normally take it to a trusted repair shop where they do the work. Most of us drivers will have shops that we know and trust. We support these shops. And in an effort to do a good job and keep us as customers these shops do great work for us at reasonable prices. Seems like a system that works well.
Some evil genius working for one of the car companies suddenly had a good idea one day not long ago. It struck him that the car companies were only making money selling cars and most of the repair work was going to independent shops. How could they capture some of that repair work and then make money off of repairs too? The solution was simple -restrict information to the local independent repair shops and design in the need for special tools to do the repairs -tools that were only available to the car companies. So ahead they went.
It wasn't obvious what the plan was at first. But slowly the light turned on as independents approached the car dealerships for information and were told that they couldn't have it or the special tool that was required for the repair.
Lets consider for a moment the history of car repair. The backyard mechanic is a fixture in North America and owners to varying degrees often undertook repairs on their vehicles from minor things like oil changes and new spark plugs to major ground up restorations which took years and brought the car back to better than showroom condition. Suddenly the owner discovered that they were prevented from repairing their own vehicles.
Now folks what do you suppose this is? IT'S BULLSHIT!
The fight is one to beat the evil car companies at their own games. In the USA there is a Right to Repair orgainization which is championing a bill in Congress to make it law that independent shops and owners have the right to repair their own vehicles. In Canada we have a Right to Repair website by the Automotive Industries Association of Canada. They make excellent points and you would do yourself a favor by visiting the website.
Some of you rascals will say "Who cares?" You will be the same jerks who whine and cry when you get a bill for $100 plus GST for a dealership technician to check your vehicle's OBD II error codes when your local shop would do it for much less.
So now is the time to make your voice heard and contact the dude or dudette who represents you in parliament or your local provincial legislature and tell them YOU support the right to repair and ask them what they are doing about it.
In an attempt to goad you on to actually doing something I will even give you the listing of your members of parliament here. Your individual emails won't make any impact but if your MP gets several of them on topic suddenly you start to rattle their chains and good people that they are -they will do something. And they have so many contentious issues to deal with this one is easy! If Buddy the lobbyist for the car company gets their ear and tells them that its a matter of saving jobs for the auto industry they could be talked into doing nothing. However if a few thousand voters contacted them and demanded the right to repair - well -that's a different matter. Buddy just has one vote!
And perhaps this is a time to remind you that the older OBD1 codes are usually displayed by a flashing light for each vehicle and all you need to is find out where yours is and how to activate it. My 1988 caravan told me what was wrong with it simply by counting the blinks! Its not rocket science. In fact you don't even need to take it into the shop or buy a code reader at crappy tire. OBD2 is different and there I believe you do need a code reader to access the error codes in your car's computer. And the meanings of the OBD2 codes are part of the problem with the right to repair issue because the rascals at the car companies won't say what the codes mean. Editor's note thanks to Don B. who advised that OBD2 codes are in fact available on the internet. I confirmed that and here is one site that lists them and there are others too. Don points out that you do still require the ODB2 reader and preferably a scanner. Thanks Don!
THE GREAT PARTS SCAM When you buy your vehicle you have a natural expectation that when you need parts for it you go to the authorized dealer and march up to the parts counter and ask for them. The concept seems simple enough. It is not.
Car companies put out new models every year and that means millions of parts need to be inventoried to service several decades of production. That in turn means a central inventory location and a very powerful computer system to manage it. That in turn means cost. Getting a small part to you from a central warehouse is a very expensive proposition and its difficult if not impossible to make any money doing it. Hence there is no incentive to do it. In fact the incentive is to sell you another car. Now comes the scam.
The car companies are not stupid. Billions of dollars are involved and they hire very smart people to manage those billions. One objective is to make it prohibitively expensive to purchase replacement parts so that you will decide to buy a new vehicle instead. They do this several ways. The price of the parts themselves is very high and they will sell you the entire assembly where possible rather than the part on the assembly that is prone to wear.
As an example I was replacing the bushing on a major rear suspension part on one of my vehicles. The bushing is the only part on trailing arm assembly subject to wear. You can buy them separately at an aftermarket dealer for less than $50. But the dealer would not sell me the bushing and instead only stocked the entire trailing arm which was almost $425 with tax. Unbelievable you say? I thought so too. The car has two of these parts and both need replacing so who in their right mind would pay $850 for the parts and another $800 for the labour to put them into an 18 year old car. The incentive is to scrap the car and buy a new one. In my case I will put it in myself and buy do the repair for approximately $100. Oh and when you take this part out you have access to all the other suspension parts so it would be a good time to renew all the bushings right? So I asked for a master bushing kit. They sell these items in the aftermarket. The dealer doesn't have any. The last thing the dealer wants you to do is renew your entire suspension and have it last another 18 years!
enough of this -lets go back to the index eh!
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