Ask Logan
My name is Logan. I come from a family of Gearheads! I’ve been around cars my whole life. My Abuelo (Grandpa) has a mechanic shop in Orlando. I go there to help from time to time when they are really busy and need an extra hand. We fix cars from Orlando and far regions like Winter Park, Dr. Phillips, Lake Nona, Oviedo, and Windermere just to name a few. (I’m kinda short so everything seems far to me) When I am at the shop I get all kinds of questions so I told Abuelo to set up a page for me to answer them (I don’t speak too well yet so I prefer writing). Don’t forget that some answers are my humble opinion based on over 20 years Abuelo has working on cars.
Here are a few of the questions and the answers I came up with:*
Q. Does my Volkswagen or Audi have timing chain or belt?
A. Well, your car could have both. Some engines like the 1.8T have a belt in the front and a small chain in the back to run the camshafts. The belt in the front must be changed at times. If you don’t change it and it breaks, well, you kinda bought an engine. Just ask my uncle Alex. This was how he got his first car; the previous owner kept waiting and the belt broke. Oh, boy that was bad! The head had to be removed and valves were bent. It took a long time and money to fix.
Q. What service does my BMW need?
Q. Why you charge so much for alignments?
A. Good question. If you are familiar with our promise of “Dealer Quality Service at a Friendly Price” you will understand after I explain. I see the guys doing the alignment and taking a long time. I said to Abuelo, “they are not priced well and they take too long!” He smiled and explained; “There are two kinds of alignments: fast, cheap, and bad or slow, fair, and good.” While our technicians take their time, they are adjusting something called caster, camber, and toe in the front and rear wheels. I see them pull out all kinds of weird tools and do what it takes until they give a thumb up! (I guess that’s good). Abuelo told me of some places that do something called “toe and go.” This is bad. They just get the steering wheel straight and give the car back. I asked him, what’s wrong with that? He said that after a while the tires wear badly and the customer ends up buying new tires earlier. He showed me some papers that were so cool. The papers have numbers in read that indicate the measurements of the car prior to being fixed and green numbers that indicate the new measurements afterwards. He also said to tell you to look at our alignment page to understand what he meant.