KNOWING your mechanic

Killian's best friend's dad is a mechanic by training and trade. He's only 34, but his body is just wrecked from all those years of working on cars, so he made a career switch. Unfortunately, he was laid off and had to go back to mechanic work...which he really seems to enjoy, but it's painful for him physically.

So...our power steering has been leaking for ages. We knew that eventually it would need to be fixed, but were just making do with checking it every other day and refilling. Well, the whole thing just "blew" on Sunday. We called Erick, who was already willing to fix it for us and he just was able to come out today.

He not only fixed the problem we knew about, but one we didn't. Notified me of a problem with our new tire so that we didn't get screwed out of our warranty, told me which shop in town is actually honest (ONLY ONE!!!) and told me things to watch out for when I go to get the car serviced and things to look for and ask when buying a new car. He's a GREAT guy. It feels AWESOME to KNOW that my vehicle has been fixed properly, I wasn't screwed and I have a wonderful resource for any questions that might come up in the future, even if Erick doesn't want to work on cars once he find another non-mechanic job.

It's depressing to know that the entire car repair industry is frought with crooks and is set up to encourage short-cutting in favor of honest, complete repairs. I had no idea that many/most after-market parts are crap. Erick won't even use a lot of them because they're of such poor quality. Erick told me that a big part of why he gave up his chosen career was that he had such a difficult time finding an employer that wasn't screwing either him or his customers. That's BAD.

So, I guess I'm saying that, if you have a kid who is mechanically inclined and you've raised him or her right, car repair wouldn't be a bad idea. There is a huge shortage of truly good mechanics out there!!