The Good Mechanic is a mobile car maintenance and repair service in Miami, Florida that specializes on BMW and MINI vehicles.
06/06/2022
Help your mechanic help you!
Finding out that your vehicle needs work can be nerve recking especially with inflation soaring this days. However, beating around the bushes when you contact a mechanic is often not going to save you money, on the contrary, it might be more expensive.
I get it! One calls a mechanic hoping for the best, an easy and not expensive fix perhaps. When you call, make sure to be honest with the mechanic and provide as many details as possible that describe the vehicle's current condition and the events leading to the shown symptoms. This is going to help the technician narrow down the possibilities and save diagnostic and repair time which in turn will save you money.
About a moth ago I received a call for a no start engine. I asked the owner about the events leading to the no start and if anything in particular had happened. The owner very confidently explained that the vehicle would crank but it would not start. He had driven the car the night before and the next morning it did not want to start. I got on my van and drove to my costumer's home and started my diagnostic. Checked for codes, checked for spark, fuel delivery, and possible intake obstructions, the basics. The vehicle had spark, was delivering fuel to the cylinders, and clear paths in the intake. So I ran a bunch other tests and still was not able to determine why the vehicle would not start. After some time, I was ready to give up when the owner asked if I could do a compression test. This instantly sparked my mind so I asked if the vehicle had overheated and if so I wouldn't have been too bad since I was seeing the coolant level was all the way up. My customer looked at me and explained that the car had overheated to the point where it was smoking and ran out of all coolant which he had refilled all the way up. Puzzled was my look! Had he mentioned this when we first spoke, I could have just run a compression test and would've found out that only cylinder 1 had the correct compression. All the other 7 cylinders were busted. The compression test alone would have taken much much less time and money spent.
