When you thought you heard everything.

A customer comes into service today because they needed a new remote fob for their RLX. It seems that this person tied their remote to some helium balloons to help hold the balloons down. And at road speed the aforementioned balloons were sucked out of the open sunroof along with the remote. Apparently the weight of the remote was enough to keep the balloons from flying too far and when the balloons returned to earth the balloons and remote were promptly run over by another car. Destroying the remote. The fate of the balloons is unknown. BTW, a replacement remote for a RLX retails for $473.97... Really.

Rlx? Doesnt surprise me on the cost. The ford ones arnt cheap and they haven't changed in 20 years...

does that include the price of programming?

Customer comes in today and wanted us to check the oil. As the car was not running well and it was smoking a bit. Ok no problem. Then she said that when ever her mother hears "that noise" they would add a quart. Checked the oil and it was WAY up the dipstick. We processed to take about 3 gallons of oil out of the motor . Car runs much better now. Still don't know what "the noise" was that caused them to keep adding oil.

The noise was the piston skirts hitting the oil in the crankcase.

Get the oil up above that level and the noise goes away.

The sad part is, I'm not kidding. My wife's former co-worker did this.

To his Dodge Stealth turbo....

All could have been avoided if the sunroof were shut.

can't remember the last time the sunroof on my car was opened

N Sperlo wrote: All could have been avoided if the owners weren't complete ignorant morons.

fixed that for you.

did I just log into some weird surreal version of GRM?

was thinkin' what's the chances of that happening

anyway, guess we know now

a $470 bye-bye

At home depot, I had a customer who was an absolute slave to oil capacities and procedures.

His new lawn-boy 20" lawn mower was constantly overfilled with oil. He couldn't possibly explain it. He was religious about putting exactly 30 oz in it every time just like the manual says.

I actually had to print the manual so I could dumb myself down to his level when it came to his oil changes.

So... the manual says that you initially need to put in 30 oz of oil. Then for an oil change to drain the oil, you pull out the dipstick and tilt the mower up on its side to dump it out. Then it says you refill with 26 oz (or full on the dipstick) because of variable residual oil left in it after you dump out the old.

Turns out, three things had happened.... and this is where it gets good.

1). The anal customer didn't read the last instruction. He stopped at the 30 oz part. Every time he was dumping out some oil, then refilling with 30 oz.

2) He was changing his oil once for every time he mowed... about once a week.

3) He showed me HIS owner's manual. Beside the description for how to drain the oil was an IKEA-like drawing that showed a person tipping the mower and a big teardrop of oil falling out of the dipstick tube. The customer had drawn a level line, a plumb line, and then used a protractor to determine that the mower in the drawing was tilted to 77 degrees.

This guy was tilting his mower exactly 77 degrees once a week, getting out a little oil, then refilling with 30 oz.

This guy also has a driver's license.

curtis73 wrote: At home depot, I had a customer who was an absolute slave to oil capacities and procedures. His new lawn-boy 20" lawn mower was constantly overfilled with oil. He couldn't possibly explain it. He was religious about putting exactly 30 oz in it every time just like the manual says. I actually had to print the manual so I could dumb myself down to his level when it came to his oil changes. So... the manual says that you initially need to put in 30 oz of oil. Then for an oil change to drain the oil, you pull out the dipstick and tilt the mower up on its side to dump it out. Then it says you refill with 26 oz (or full on the dipstick) because of variable residual oil left in it after you dump out the old. Turns out, three things had happened.... and this is where it gets good. 1). The anal customer didn't read the last instruction. He stopped at the 30 oz part. Every time he was dumping out some oil, then refilling with 30 oz. 2) He was changing his oil once for every time he mowed... about once a week. 3) He showed me HIS owner's manual. Beside the description for how to drain the oil was an IKEA-like drawing that showed a person tipping the mower and a big teardrop of oil falling out of the dipstick tube. The customer had drawn a level line, a plumb line, and then used a protractor to determine that the mower in the drawing was tilted to 77 degrees. This guy was tilting his mower exactly 77 degrees once a week, getting out a little oil, then refilling with 30 oz. This guy also has a driver's license.

Let us pray that he also doesn't have children...

That last post just winns the here your sign award.

curtis73 wrote: ... The customer had drawn a level line, a plumb line, and then used a protractor to determine that the mower in the drawing was tilted to 77 degrees. This guy was tilting his mower exactly 77 degrees once a week, getting out a little oil, then refilling with 30 oz. This guy also has a driver's license.

Willing to bet he has an engineering degree too. If I had to guess, EE. With that level of over-thinking, very likely a PhD.

Curtis, that's a great story and does not surprise me in the least.

The most overfull engine I saw was a Rodeo where the woman's son replaced the oil filter then dumped 5.5 quarts of synthetic in, not bothering to drain the old oil first. That thing shook like a wet dog. The best part was she had driven it like that for about a week before bringing it by. She then got pissed because we would need to drain the expensive synthetic she had just bought and refill with the proper amount, of course we would have to charge her for this. She accused us of trying to take advantage of her.

I can't count the number of times someone has come in with a remote that 'just quit working' (insert wide eyed innocent look) and the tech comes back with the thing opened up, it's full of water and laundry soap. I've also seen them full of salt water and have been told they should be under warranty because the sealing wasn't better.

peter wrote: Willing to bet he has an engineering degree too. If I had to guess, EE. With that level of over-thinking, very likely a PhD.

Was thinking this.

Highly educated engineers can be the most brilliant yet stupid people you'll ever meet. Like any savant, they should be given free reign in their field of expertise, but carefully and gently guide them through every other aspect of daily life.

I've only encountered one massively overfull engine, a V6 Cougar. The engine bay looked like a refinery lifted the hood and threw up in it. The engine was something like two gallons overfull.

Well, see, the engine leaked oil constantly, so the owner would just add oil every now and then.

After draining the oil to the correct oil level, thoroughly degreasing the engine and engine bay and the floor of the car, as well as changing the fouled spark plugs, we ran it for an hour or so and drove it around a bit and rechecked. Not a single oil leak. The thing was only leaking because it was overfull to begin with.

i used to rent a house from a friend (not a good idea, by the way), and sometimes i'd do work on his cars to pay rent.. he had a 97 Olds Aurora that had a pretty bad valve cover leak and a broken dipstick... his method of "fixing" it was to add a quart of oil every time he got gas- and he's not one of those normal people that fills up his daily drivers, he puts in $10 or $15 at a time... when he brought it over to have me fix the valve cover and the alternator that the leak had taken out, he told me to change the oil, too.. when i pulled the drain plug, the oil shot out almost perfectly straight and landed on the floor about 3 feet back from the engine... i quickly stuck the drain plug back in, but not before there was a huge black oil slick all over my garage... i devised a way to catch the oil, and filled up all 3 of my drain pans to the point of almost over flowing... each drain pan held 5.5 quarts.. so once you add in the 1/2 quart of oil in the filter and the 2 or 3 quarts that shot all over the floor, there was nearly 20 quarts of oil in that thing and it still somehow ran.. i fixed everything and got a junkyard dipstick for it- not only did it run better and get better mileage, but it also stopped leaking oil and killing alternators...

I guess its just too damned hard to figure out which is the oil dipstick and which isn't.

peter wrote:

curtis73 wrote: ... The customer had drawn a level line, a plumb line, and then used a protractor to determine that the mower in the drawing was tilted to 77 degrees. This guy was tilting his mower exactly 77 degrees once a week, getting out a little oil, then refilling with 30 oz. This guy also has a driver's license.

Willing to bet he has an engineering degree too. If I had to guess, EE. With that level of over-thinking, very likely a PhD.

When I have to go to the local Raytheon plant to work on someone's car, if they're an engineer there is an 80% chance they will be a micro managing, finicky pain in the ass that has no practical knowledge of what I do but insists on having an opinion on what I'm doing.

The savant remark is spot on, brilliant with what they do but unable to admit they don't know something.