Norcal Spotted and BS Thread

How much you looking for?

 

Here is the correct spot!

ProTech Auto
3245 Elkhorn Blvd #11, North Highlands, CA 95660

 

search for Toyota drive cycle you may find other answers but this link looked helpful. It’s a bit of trial and error but both warm and cold cycles may be needed.
https://www.monkeywrenchracing.com/toyota-emissions-readiness-procedure/

 

My auto surgeon in roseville. Have heard nothing but great things. I made an appointment and were honest from the beginning. They would not even align it because i had too much play. Any other shop woulda done what firestone did on my civic. @Speedo uses them too

 

Today is already dumb as hell. My vacation next week can't come soon enough. Pretty sure my boss just quit...oof.

 

It's super hit or miss with Firestone. I had them trained up at the one in San Rafael to do my "weird" alignments with my SPC's but then that shop closed. It's a real bummer because their techs were super cool and would let me hang out in the shop with them to make sure I got what I wanted. Now I've got the one up in Santa Rosa trained up. It took them two tries, and one pissed off tech, but they fortunately have one really good tech there who actually gets what we're trying to do and will listen. They did try to give me grief about the lifetime alignments being only for periodic checks and not for really having to adjust things. I said, well that's not what was sold to me and there's nothing in the contract that says anything to that effect, and since they messed up my last alignment so badly they needed to fix it so I could actually drive my truck. They ended up being cool about it, but it definitely takes some persuasion and some may flat out refuse to do it because it's not worth their time.

I also learned from the manager that all the techs there are contractors and they get paid hourly by the franchise. They make more if the job comes in under the time the job SHOULD take, and less if it's over. It's such a corporate production mentality that they don't want to take jobs that aren't sure to make them money. I've gotten my moneys worth out of the lifetime alignments now too, but it's always a battle. I might go back again, but it sure would be nice to have a shop that just listens to what I want and doesn't worry so much about what the computer says.

 

I was thinking 600

 

It sounds like the techs are paid flat rate and not hourly. I can tell you that both pay scales have advantages and disadvantages. But if the book rate for a job is 30 minutes and you can do it in 15, you win and the shop wins. If it takes you 38 minutes, you work for free those eight minutes.

Hourly employees are paid from the time the clock in until the clock out.

Ive had techs refuse work because it will take them longer than allowed. The reality is, it takes time to learn. I also have had Techs who just know how things work and how to get the job done without compromise and through their own efficiency-they almost always meet their numbers and earn bonuses. Not always, especially when assigned diagnostic work.

If you pay by the hour, efficiency usually goes down which is bad for the shop.

Anyway, those are the two basic ways a
Shop pays. There are variations for sure. And in California at least, there’s a push away from flat rate and toward hourly because of the way minimum wage is calculated.

 

As I recall they were paid hourly per job, not a clock in clock out type of deal. I'm sure they had a base rate just for being in the building too. The rate was a higher rate if they came in under the scheduled time for a job, and a lower rate for the time over the scheduled time. So they wanted to get as many jobs in under time as they could to maximize pay for the day. I may not be remembering it correctly, but that's what it was in my head. My head is a weird place by the time Friday comes around though

 

Yeah, for sure.

I had a good tech at the Winchester location in Campbell but he left for a dealership job that paid a lot more.

I also had an incident at another location where I got an alignment and then went on a 2 week trip to Baja.

About 8 days into the trip the truck was cornering poorly.
I'd turn the wheel left and the truck would go straight for a half second and then turn.
My friend behind me radioed that my passenger wheel didn't look right.
We were near our campsite for the night in San Juanico in Scorpion Bay so we kept going.
Upon inspection the front passenger side cam alignment nut was gone. The bolt was only there because the skid plate kept if from completely backing out. The rearward cam alignment nut was on it's way to being gone as well. The driver side were torqued to about 45 foot pounds. Spec is, I think, 104 foot pounds. The wheel had a about 2 inches of play in either direction. It was super loose.

In short they didn't just forget to torque the cam alignment nuts they didn't even tighten them.

I'm partially to blame for not double checking their work. I do that every time now and before long trips.

The nearest toyota dealership was in La Paz 300 miles south. The next one was in San Diego 700 miles north. It was a holiday in Mexico and the parts department at the La Paz dealer was closed and a sales guy we spoke with said he doubted they had that part.

So, we drove around for most the day and ended up getting 2 nuts that fit the bolt. We used one as a locking nut. It took us 200 miles of driving to get those bolts.
And I was on day 7 of 10 days of nearly non stop lower intestinal distress. I had the shits every 20-45 minutes. It was bad.

When we got the truck back together the alignment was so bad we had to rotate the tires after 300 miles at our hotel in San Quentin (The Old Mill, cool place, check it out). The front tires were shot and nearly bald. By the time we got to San Diego the tires we rotated from the rear were nearly bald.

I'd contacted a local firestone in San Diego who agreed to put the replacement cam alignment bolt on and do an alignment.

When I got back home the shop that did the work paid for the bolt and gave me 3 free tires. I still feel I should have gotten more (like all four tires) for the trouble but that's what they were willing to do.

 

Kinda like a bonus for doing quick work.

 

Holy shit, that's an epic right there! I love that you say it's your fault for not checking their work. Lol.

We camped on the beach in San Quentin one year on spring break a long ass time ago. I ate the best fish tacos of my life in that town. We picked up a dude walking along the beach carrying a machete and a bucket (probably for harvesting shell fish but it's more fun to leave that part out of the story) and drove him to his house in a small community on the beach. He invited us to stay for a meal in his one room wooden hut. Unbelievably nice people down there. Alternatively he may have wanted to kill us and eat us for dinner. We thanked him but headed back north.

 

Lol...that's totally how it is!

 

#whitclawbeatssilverbullet

 

There are a couple of ways incentives are used. Efficiency and proficiency are two measures. Efficiency is the flat rate hours billed divided by the tech's available hours. Proficiency is the billed hours divided by the number of hours in a day-it's slight different measure in that one is based on the number of hours the shop is open and the other is the number of hours worked. The standard is around 110%.

Again, there are a handful of ways to pay so take my examples as just examples.

 

That's my buddies truck, but I don't think he's active on here.

 

Made a thread for my new patches if you guys want to order one!

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/adventure-legends-patch-10.687006/

 

Yep,you found me.