RE: Here's what's going on w/my Scout/Help in the Bay Area?

[Farmer <pharmer@domain.elided>]

<Michael's painful repair story removed for the sake of the children>

Man, you have had some bad luck!  Glad to see you had the persistence to
keep the truck!  Most folks would have sold the vehicle after that,
regardless of the fact that the real problem was a $20 part.

I don't know, but the mechanics in your situation didn't sound competant -
like Tom said, they were experimenting with your money instead of
diagnosing.  And,you don't really need to know about IHs to track a problem
down to a distributor.  You need to be a diagnostian.

My travelall died on the highway about 60 miles from home a few months back.
Rather than pay > $100 to tow it, I took it to a mechanic recommended to me
by a mechanic I respect.  This fellow traced the intermittent problem down
to a loose/corroded bulkhead connection.  He was able to drive it until the
problem occured (within 10 minutes of starting), use his voltimeter to find
the problem, remove the plugs, and replaced the plugs all within 1 hour.  I
owed the guy $47!  He had very little experience with IH, but he walked on
water!

I spoke to a bunch of mechanics about my very low oil pressure in the
Travelall's 392.  They all asked, "how many miles?"; I replied 160k, they
all responded, "it needs to be rebuilt".  But when I asked folks on the
digest, they assured me it didn't.  I finally found an honest mechanic who's
a little more scientific in his methods.  Rather than just assume it needed
a rebuild, he put a mechanical oil pressure guage on the engine - and
discovered that I simply needed a new sender.

I only know of one really competant, very IH-aware mechanic within 60
minutes of here.  He's so busy he told me that he couldn't work on anything
new until May!

Tom Harais wrote:
>The local mechanic I sometimes go to. He charges $73/hour for his time,
>starting with the diagnosis. I am free to take the car after his diagnosis
>and estimate of the costs of repair if I want to go somewhere else or
>tackle the job myself. But, I OWE HIM for his diagnosis time, at the rate
>of $73/hour. It is well worth it. And, I usually just have him do the job.
>He puts the diagnosis time on my bill, if it was a half hour or more. If it
>is less, he recoups on the repair labor.

Wow, that's a huge labor rate.  Is that normal where you live?  Out here
it's about $40 / hour.  I admit that somebody really good is worth paying
the exra bucks for something complicated, but I don't normally see them able
to get charge it!  Sounds like a good method.  When I lived in Detroit you
could find great mechanics.  The one I used was working towards a mechanical
engineering degree in the evenings.

Ken Farmer