You want to look at servicing your car in the same way that you go to the doctor.
You go to a doctor for all of your basic needs, like checkups… kind of a once-over to make sure that you’re healthy and that your body is operating correctly and doing everything it should be doing.
There are certain times a doctor will say, “We need to perform this test or we need to…” which is a diagnostic in order to get to the bottom of the problem. Most of the time, you’ll get a clean bill of health and you’ll move on.
Sometimes they’ll perform a test and say, “We’ve looked you over and everything seems to be okay, but I’m a little concerned about this test result, so I think you should see a specialist.”
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Here with us, the technician who’s working on your car is the specialist. He’s not just a general practitioner that only does oil changes. The mechanic who’s doing your oil change is also a master technician. He’s going to be able to do the oil change, look at the car, touch it and see it and smell it.
It’s funny, but when you are around cars all day long, you learn certain problems smell certain ways. I’ve gotten to where I can walk through a parking lot anywhere and I can tell you which car is leaking antifreeze even if there’s nothing on the ground, because I know how it smells. I can tell if a car’s low on oil by pulling the dipstick and not even checking the oil. I can smell if an engine is getting hot internally, because it has a very distinct smell.
I think about times where I’ve pulled the dipstick on a car and put it up to my nose to smell it, then actually burned the tip of my nose from getting my nose too close to try to get an exact idea of what’s going on. You have to be careful when you’re doing that kind of stuff.
That’s something that a very experienced automotive technician is going to know. He’s going to know what things look like, what they smell like, and how they sound.
A master technician is going to recognize the subtleties of an engine that’s not running perfectly. He can stand next to a vehicle and listen to it, and he’s going to have a pretty good idea of its performance–how it’s running.
That’s gained from experience, and you can’t fake it.
