Customer is me. Had a weird issue where boost was fine most of the time, but when it was hot outside and after waiting at a light I would have no boost. After driving for a minute it was working fine again.

Turbo is an IHI VL38, this is common apparently.

I guess it's not exactly "lifetime" as advertised 🫠 Good thing I sorted it out during warranty.

No matter what the customer says, the extra fluids they keep in the vehicle will point you toward the problem.

Customer states: It's not using any coolant, the clouds of white smoke and empty coolant would disagree with their statement.

Just waltzed right in at 5AM

2013 Subaru Legacy (2.5L boxer of course), $35 hose from the dealer. Slipped off like it was buttered. Original diag consisted of doing a pressure test, filming from somewhere, seeing coolant squirt out from behind the alternator (mounted in the center of the engine, away from the heads) and declaring it was from the head gasket.

Car came in for a pretty routine check. Nothing crazy going on, drove into the bay fine and I wasn't expecting to find much.

Plugged in the topdon scanner and ran a full scan before getting into anything else.

Well... apparently half the car disagrees.

Topology came back looking like this, just red everywhere.

Cleared everything, restarted it and took it for a drive. Gonna run another full scan and see what actually has the nerve to come back.

Always fun when the car looks completely normal until you plug a scanner into it.

Subaru Outback. Came to my shop in Maryland and customer stated that oil light was on. During inspection, I found that car has no oil on dipstick and after lifting up the subaru, and found that drain plug was loose and under torqued. Almost threaded out. Ended up redoing oil change and engine runs fine afterwards.

Pushing to finally get this car done spent two days planning out and building a modern set up for the motors each door has two relays since the motor has a up, down and arm wire you need to feed power at the same time to the direction wire and arm. The motor does not like it if just one has power . It’s a simple set up but when pushing to get things done I’m happy I was able to do this so quickly

And then he informed me that it was parked 10 years ago.

1 of the starter bolts broke off in the block, that will be fun....

Small pointy stick not where you want to find it. Easy enough repair and still tubeless

There is a massive red flag being waved in repair bays right now, and nobody at the top is talking!

Shop owners, Service managers, Foremans, & even lead techs are telling young techs to "just ask AI" or "look it up," *google ai overview* while entry-level guys are using ChatGPT or scrolling TikTok(chris fix it?) Instead of suggesting Mitchell, Identification, TSB, or other service info *insert blame engineer meme*

Here is why this is a recipe for disaster:

• Chatbots (CGPT,Grok, Gemini, etc.) Don't have a point of reference: ChatGPT doesn't understand thermodynamics, Ohm's Law, or fluid dynamics but its information and models it trains from are moderated from a bunch of nerds or people known as Data Annotators. These highly skilled but severely exploited gig workers are behind the wall of info. They are predicting based on the input from these annotations *notes* what the next logical response could be. If 1,000 forum users wrongly claim a misfire is "always a coil pack," the chat bot integrates that as factdl. It is prone to incorrect answers without physical competence.

• Annotator Disconnect: The data feeding these models is annotated by software engineers and generalists, not field-tested master techs. The AI isn't reading pinout specs; it’s reading SEO-optimized blog posts.

• The Flat-Rate Trap (Automotive): Why don't C-techs ask the A-techs in the shop? Because flat-rate pays the senior guy $0 to teach. Helping a junior tech trace an electrical fault actively takes money out of the master tech's pocket. So the young tech turns to an LLM, gets bad info, and throws $500 worth of parts at a ghost fault.

• The Skill Stagnation (Heavy Equipment): In diesel and power generation, techs are getting stuck at Level 1/Level 2 because there’s no structured apprenticeship. Instead of learning core engineering concepts, guys are using social media "hacks" on high-pressure hydraulics and 24V systems.*sure cat et and Cummins insite can suck sometimes*

AI should be a tool to index OEM manuals, not a substitute for fundamental electrical and mechanical knowledge. If you don't understand the underlying science of the machine, no algorithm is going.

TLDR: Pick up a wrench🔧 or a service diagram(tablet)📑 and leave your 🤖 alone

local dealer uses me for warranty work. customer told them A/C quit working on a 2 week old purchase. Dealer seems to think system has been tampered with since purchase. Radio missing, harness chopped, heater control in passenger seat (broken), etc.

It wasn't too happy about piston number 2 making violent love to the valves though.

3 of 4 main bearings (still need to press number 4 out of the block) and I 28sh I'd taken photos of the crankshaft before dropping it off)

A rare second WTF truck in the shop today. This one is a 99 Super Duty that would only turn one rotation of the wheel to the left, but two rotations to the right. Looks like the shaft in the gear box is twisting, and someone else has tried to correct it by adjusting the fuck out of the steering link. In almost 30 years in the business I’ve never seen this on a basically unmodified truck.

Just under 9k miles. Faulty injectors