One day after having my 1987 Celica towed to his garage, Phil gave me a call.
“Car’s fixed. You can come get it.”
“Great! How much do I owe you?”
“$50”
“$50?! What was actually wrong with it?”
“I’ll show you when you get here.”
With that, Chris and I drove the 30 minutes to Phil’s to pick it up.
“So what the hell was wrong with it?”
“All it needed was an adjustment of the electrical timing. On this car, you do that by adjusting the distributor cap. It’s pretty easy. Come out here, I’ll show you.”
We went to the garage, lifted the hood, and he showed me that rotating the distributor cap adjusts the timing. That was literally all it needed.
“OK, so what was the dealer trying to do to me? Why was he insistent that the problem was that I needed genuine Toyota parts?”
“Ah, because you gotta understand how the system works.”
He pulled out some giant book with an official-looking Toyota insignia and flipped to somewhere in the middle.
“Look here. The timing belt replacement at a Toyota dealer actually requires two jobs: 1) the mechanical replacement of the timing belt and 2) the adjustment of the electrical timing. But that second part, the electrical timing adjustment, is part of the job labeled as tune-up.”
“Aha! The problem was that I declined the second job. This guy knew that genuine Toyota parts wouldn’t matter a lick (as I suspected, because nobody’s that dumb), but he was trying to tell me (with a wink) that the timing belt job isn’t complete unless and until they also perform the tune-up. The tune-up, although new plugs and wires were not required for my problem here, was code for: we’ll also adjust the electrical timing once we replace the belt so that it runs good.”
“Yes, exactly. Toyota, and all manufacturers, are a bit like chain restaurants in that they want the service departments at the various dealerships to provide the same customer experience no matter which one you take your car to. Plus, they get operations benefits by training all of their technicians and service managers on the same job system.”
“Why wouldn’t the timing belt job automatically include adjusting the electrical timing? That seems kind of slimy.”
“It probably is a little, but if you pay them for the job, they’ll do what they say — you’re car will come out with all new parts and the engine purring like a kitten.”
That was one of a few lessons that this 1987 red Celica taught me about how the service departments in car dealerships work. This one saved me a few bucks, but the next one saved me thousands.
Stay tuned.
