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In this insightful episode of Drive Radio, industry pros Justin and Josh tackle the sweeping impact of AI across the auto world—from diagnostics and repair shop efficiency to the complexities of buying and selling cars in today’s fluctuating used car market. The show dives into real dealer perspectives on how AI helps and hinders everything from finding parts to pricing vehicles, with hard-won wisdom on why maintenance records and honest inspections matter more than ever. Lively callers share concerns about the environmental toll of growing data centers and the potential pitfalls of trusting smart tech too much. From winter
SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
There’s no such thing as a stupid question. This is Drive Radio. All of your automotive questions are just one phone call away. 303-477-5600. Drive Radio is made possible by the member shops of Colorado Select Auto Care Centers. To find one near you, go to drive-radio.com. Now, Drive Radio on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s Justin and Josh with Ridgeline Auto Brokers and Legacy Automotive. So today’s question of the day is, which smart feature do you actually like and which ones do you wish we didn’t have? But that kind of caveats into AI and the auto industry. In the car, in the repair, in the sales, into every aspect of it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Those are two things that I never thought would be in the same sentence. Automotive and AI.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, and they’re there.
SPEAKER 04 :
They are there. And you know what? Whether you love the AI or you don’t, it’s not going anywhere.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s here. It’s here to stay. I understand everyone fears that it’s going to take their job. It’s not going to take your job if you use it as a tool.
SPEAKER 11 :
And it’s a tool.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is a tool, and it’s a great tool. We can get so much information right at your fingertips faster than we ever used to be able to. And I think this is great for automotive repair, whether you’re repairing your own car at home or whether a shop is using it. We use it in our shops all the time.
SPEAKER 11 :
We do all the time.
SPEAKER 04 :
How are we using it in our shops?
SPEAKER 11 :
Everything from repair to running through the numbers of what is the shop buying? What does the shop need? It’s able to – well, you know how hard it is to read a spreadsheet. Our minds don’t work that well over pages and pages of data. AI is great at going over data like instantly and seeing little things, summarizing little things that our human brains can do but we’re always too busy or too tired or too whatever to maybe see all that. The main thing is AI learns, too. We need to work on teaching AI. I’ve been working with some models on repairs. I ask it about repairing a car, and it’ll give pretty much a whole diagnostic tree on it. Then at the end, I go back and I go through it with AI and tell it, This is what we found was really wrong. This is how we came to this conclusion. This part of your diagnostic tree worked well, and this part didn’t. And with each time you feed that back to AI, it becomes, I hate to say it, but smarter and can give you better answers for it.
SPEAKER 04 :
So we can absolutely use it as a tool.
SPEAKER 11 :
We can. All kinds of tools on it. And the other thing is like the other day I had a tech – I’m putting timing chains in a Ford, and we couldn’t remember the part number for the tool. And I have all these – they all look the same. The 3.5-liter Ford EcoBoost has three different cam holding kits. They all look the same. They’re just like all one millimeter off. So I typed in the AI, I put the VIN number in and said what it was, and it instantly spit out the right part number. So we just walked over the shelf and grabbed it instead of guessing which of the three boxes, which part numbers it were, going through our databases, which still is multiple pages. AI instantly had it.
SPEAKER 04 :
or having to call a parts guy at the Ford dealer. You didn’t have to make the phone call.
SPEAKER 11 :
No.
SPEAKER 04 :
And sometimes you’re on hold.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right, you’re on hold.
SPEAKER 04 :
Sometimes you don’t get the most intelligent parts guy on the other end of the line. You’re able to get this at your fingertips.
SPEAKER 11 :
And he gave me a picture and where to buy it, like three sources of where to go buy it from.
SPEAKER 04 :
So then maybe you don’t even have to buy it from the dealer.
SPEAKER 11 :
You don’t. No, that’s the thing. And then you could ask it how to use it, and it would give you pointers, too, on how to use it. Bring the engine to TDC and install the cam holder and then move it four more degrees and install the crank holder, all these things. So it just kind of walked you through it.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think I’m excited to see it actually get built into the car.
SPEAKER 18 :
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, wouldn’t that be fantastic if it’s built into the car and the car knows, hey, this is how I’ve been driven. This is what’s gone wrong with me in the past. And it can tell the owner, hey, you might be due for an alternator soon. Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Based on… The way you drive.
SPEAKER 04 :
Or maybe it can even take readings. Maybe it can take volt readings. Instead of us having to do a test… You know, on that alternator, maybe it can constantly do that test and tell you, hey, you got this coming up. I think that can make things faster for, you know, the service industry to be able to repair your car. The diagnostic process is the hardest part of our job.
SPEAKER 11 :
It is.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, a lot of people think when they drop off a car, hey, it’s got a check engine light. I pulled this code. That code tells you exactly what I need to replace in my car. No way.
SPEAKER 11 :
As you always say, you know, it’s the zip code, not the address.
SPEAKER 04 :
Exactly. When we’re repairing a car, we want to know the exact address. We want to know the exact part that we’re putting in your car. A check engine light and a code give us a baseline.
SPEAKER 11 :
They do.
SPEAKER 04 :
And then we still have to go down a diagnostic tree in order to figure out what it is. We get pushback from both the customer and the technician. A lot of times we’re only charging a customer an hour of labor time or two hours of labor time to do something that can take us days.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Which is hard for the customer to understand that we need more expense. Right. and it’s hard for the technician that is not getting paid fairly to have to go down this diagnostic tree, I think AI is going to greatly assist in making this an easier process in fixing everybody’s car.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and think on the maintenance side too. Some of the manufacturers kind of have an algorithm for oil change, but when we can really know how the vehicle’s been driven, like we were talking about transmissions earlier and transmission fluid. If you just drove down I-70 through Kansas at 65 miles an hour all day and without pulling the load and without a headwind, you’re not really working that transmission that hard. But you go up to the Eisenhower Tunnel, you’ve worked that transmission and that fluid the whole time. So it doesn’t matter on the maintenance schedule. It doesn’t know which way you drove. But AI will be able to know how did you drive it because it already gets all the info. It knows the temperature of the fluid. It knows what your altitude is. It knows the loads. It knows the outside temperature. And it will be able to accurately calculate that, hey, you definitely need to do a transmission service on this thing or whatever. No, you can go another 50,000 miles or another, you know, 100,000 miles in this fluid.
SPEAKER 04 :
This could reduce maintenance costs, and it could also reduce future maintenance breakdowns too.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and environmental toll because there’s always, you know, what do we do with the fluid? Do we recycle it, you know? We’re not generating as much waste and all these things.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, the question of the day is, you know, what intelligent features do we like? Do we dislike? A lot of these cars are constantly getting updates. Mm-hmm. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 11 :
How are they talking to… Usually through your cell phone. Most of them have a cell chip anymore in them.
SPEAKER 04 :
It can do updates on the car that way?
SPEAKER 11 :
It can’t do, you know, like PCM. Some manufacturers can, and they’re about to go there, but it’s always doing the infotainment side of it, you know, the screens.
SPEAKER 04 :
So do you think when we buy this car, we’re given, let’s say, Ford. We’re given Ford authorization to collect data off of our car… And if we can collect that information from everybody’s car, can we use this as a benefit?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yep. And you are giving Ford authorization, and that’s why, you know, to go a different route, but, you know, Apple CarPlay is kind of getting kicked out of some cars because that’s the reason they built Apple CarPlay was to learn all the information of where you’re driving, what you’re doing, what your habits are.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s just like your computer.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Your computer says, hey, do you want to tell Microsoft about this fault?
SPEAKER 11 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
And can we opt out of that?
SPEAKER 11 :
On the car side, I don’t know. It’s kind of in the purchase agreement.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s kind of funny that I don’t think we give them authorization for that, which I think you should have to give them authorization for. But I do think it can be used as a tool.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, it can be. Let’s take a little break here, and we’ll come right back.
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s Josh and Justin with Legacy Automotive and Ridgeland Auto Brokers. Let’s go to Jeff in Western Montana. Morning, Jeff.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Good afternoon. Yeah, quick comment on AI. I’m not going to talk so much about the AI itself, but it’s the infrastructure that’s required to run it. All around the country, you’re hearing all sorts of people talking about data centers. And the amount of power these data centers take, I mean, I think it’s Bill Gates or somebody who’s going to open up Three Mile Island, again, the one reactor, to get enough electricity in order to run that particular data center they’re trying to do. And it’s not just, I mean, we have problems with electricity up here in Montana. The main supplier for much of the state is Northwestern. And They’re constantly in battles with the public about rate increases and whether or not to put in more solar panels or windmills. There was a huge kerfuffle over a 375 megawatt natural gas station that they built out in Laurel, Montana, which is just outside of Billings. It was absolutely necessary, but the environmentalists didn’t want it. They said you could just put out like thousands of acres of windmills solar panels, and that’s going to take care of a data center. And the data centers are saying, nope, we don’t want any part of green energy. We need something that’s reliable 24-7, 365. So that’s the one part of it, is where is the power going to come from? And the other part, folks don’t realize this, these data centers require some of them as much energy electricity or as much water as a town of 50,000 people. They go through huge amounts of water. And I know Colorado feels this, Montana does even more, that there’s a saying that in Montana, Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting. And water rights are a huge thing. Where’s all this water going to come from? Texas is already going through that. There’s a lot of people, a lot of farmers down there who are afraid they’re going to lose their irrigation rights to data centers because the data center’s going to require so much water. So this is just a nascent, brand-new industry. It’s just starting up, and it’s going to… create a lot of fights that most folks don’t even understand yet. So I’m kind of agnostic on the use of artificial intelligence. I don’t think it’s the boogeyman that people worry about. I think in current state it lies so much that it’s not reliable. So, you know, when you guys do your diagnoses, I would take those with a grain of salt because it’s only as good, you know, we had the old saying, garbage in, garbage out, and that applies to AI as well. One case where they had George Washington as a black man because it wasn’t politically correct to show him as a white guy. And that sounds ridiculous, but that’s just sort of subtle lies that can creep in and it’s going to cause a problem. So the truthfulness of AI notwithstanding, folks, just be aware that It comes with a cost to nature. It does. It’s going to require more power. Where’s that going to come from? And where’s the water going to come from to cool it? Because some of those computers actually sit in a bath of water.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER 07 :
I worked up in Cheyenne Mountain, and years ago when NORAD first started, the huge computers up there used so much power that… They were water-cooled. They actually had radiators in them and such. Those all came out decades ago. But those sorts of things are coming back, and it’s, you know, data centers, and they take up a whole bunch of land. So there’s a whole bunch of things environmentally associated with them that folks need to be cognizant of.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I was just reading an article yesterday about one they want to build in Wyoming will use more power than the entire state does on the electrical side. So they do take a lot.
SPEAKER 07 :
I can believe that.
SPEAKER 11 :
But, I mean, again, on, like, the diag side, you know, I think us as users of AI, we need to teach it. It will learn. So, you know, like I said, after we go through and do a diag, I go through with AI and say, this was correct, this wasn’t correct, this is what their findings were at the end. To help it learn, to help it not lie or hallucinate or whatever word you want to use for it. So the more time we spend correcting it, showing it the right way, I think it will hopefully learn and give us the correct answers in the end.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I definitely see Jeff’s side of it. You know, I think we have a hard time keeping up with ourselves sometimes.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, we do.
SPEAKER 04 :
So it’s the same way with the batteries on all these EVs. You know, we’ve talked a lot about the EVs today. It’s not sustainable the way that we’re doing it. You know, all these computers are not sustainable the way that we’re doing it either. Sometimes I think, I agree, I think we get ahead of ourselves. I think it is a cost on the environment.
SPEAKER 07 :
And the whole term artificial intelligence is a whole kind of a… rabbit’s nest, what’s rat’s nest, that’s the word, or rat’s nest in itself, because nobody really knows what intelligence is, and I’ve talked to John before on the show, there’s a guy named Ian McGilchrist, a British neuroscientist, and he wrote a book called The Master and His Emissary, and he talks about the two halves of the human brain, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, and I’m not going to go through all the stuff he says, but the Basically, the right side should be the master and the left side needs to be the emissary because the left side is really, really stupid. One of his comments recently is he’s comparing AI to just the left side of the brain. So basically, the old movie, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the Disney show, You had the apprentice who thought he knew everything, so he has a spell to have the broom fetch water, and he doesn’t know how to stop it. And so a potential disaster. And the sorcerer, because he knows what he’s doing, he studied his craft, can stop it very simply. And that’s kind of the way it is with AI, that it thinks it knows more than it does, And it’s not going to tell you when it doesn’t. It’s going to lie to you. And so until science can replicate the right side of the brain, the hemisphere, the master, the AI side, the emissary, is going to be a – it’s going to be dangerous. I’ll just say it that way. You have to watch it all the time because it will – It will lead you down the garden path. So I don’t mean to go into a diatribe about brain chemistry or structure, but AI itself is an artifact of or replicates the left hemisphere very well but not the right. So anyway, that’s about it. That’s all I had to say. That was a great comment, Jeff.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you. Have a good day. But yeah, it is changing everything. Jeff pointed out water usage, electrical usage, where it lives, the environment, and it’s coming into our daily lives.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and we’re using the word tool. We need to use it as a tool. It’s not always going to give you the right answer. And like you said, we pay specific programs that we can constantly feed the information that we’re seeing in order to get better answers out of it. You know, Google answers. We use Google as a tool.
SPEAKER 03 :
We do.
SPEAKER 04 :
Bing. We use Bing as a tool. This is a big advancement of it, but just like everything, it does have its bad sides. Right. And along with that, one thing that I’d like to bring up with it, playing devil’s advocate, is I hate what it does for the car market. At Ridgeline Auto Brokers, obviously, we sell cars. Well, now a customer can go in and say, what should I buy this used car for? Well, in what condition? Kelly Blue Book does not sell cars. NADA does not sell cars. They’re taking information that they’re getting. They’re using AI. They’re using all these search platforms to get that information. And then they’re telling the customer, you need to offer the dealer this price. Sometimes I get such an atrocious number for an offer from a customer because of what they’re finding because of these search platforms. I can’t even buy the car for that. Right. and make it nice. So I, I agree. I think we need to take all of it with a, with a grain of salt.
SPEAKER 11 :
We do. Yeah. I just hope, you know, in the future it will help with that too, as in it can see the car facts and it can see, you know, all this different information on whether this car was serviced, you know, and where the market is. Cause we also know different parts of the country will pay different amounts for different cars. So, you know, hopefully that’ll help its algorithm calculate the value better, but you know, still you put two cars next to each other and, They might be the same value, same mileage, and same age, but they’re vastly different cars.
SPEAKER 04 :
AI doesn’t actually know that car.
SPEAKER 11 :
No.
SPEAKER 04 :
AI can’t sit in that car. They can’t smell the car. They can’t drive the car. They can’t look at it in detail. But they can tell you, hey, you need to pay this price for it or you need to walk away.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, exactly. They don’t know the difference of it.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s funny.
SPEAKER 11 :
It is. And with that, let’s go on a little break.
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SPEAKER 18 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s Justin and Josh with Ridgeline Auto Brokers. So what’s the used car market like now, Justin?
SPEAKER 04 :
Man, I wish you would ask me that question on October 1st. I know. As for used cars, they seem to be pretty stable. We see lots of high and low valleys. You’ll go to the auction one week and things will be cheap. You go back the next week and they’ll be more expensive. But they all seem to have a middle ground. I think the most important thing as a buyer is stop trying to find the cheapest car out there.
SPEAKER 18 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
So if you’re out there and you’re buying the cheapest car, there’s a reason that it’s the cheapest car. So for example, in the price range that we deal with at Ridgeline Auto Brokers, we’re typically in that $5,000 to $20,000 range. Now sometimes we stray away from that. Every now and then we have a $2,000 or $3,000 car. Right now we’ve got a $40,000 Lexus Hybrid. So we do move in that range a little bit. But for the most part, $5,000 to $15,000, $5,000 to $20,000, those cars, when you buy them from the auction, you’ve seen it. If you buy it well, you’ve got a $3,000 spread between wholesale and retail. So not a whole lot of room. First off, even at that number, you’re not making a lot of money. Right. If you fix the car, you’re really not making a lot of money. So as a buyer, if you’re chasing the cheapest price, you’re also chasing a car that has not been reconditioned.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right. Exactly.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think that’s what everyone misses. I had a couple customers this week that wanted $2,000 off of a $12,000 car. That’s not going to happen. Now, that may happen at a bad dealership, at a dealership that doesn’t care, a dealership that sells it as is. There are those dealerships out there that they buy the car from the auction, and there’s two things that they want to do with these cars. The first is they want to make sure the car looks good, right? They do. You know, you want to get the customer in there. The second thing they want to do is make sure it doesn’t make any noises while you drive it. How hard is it to hide a noise?
SPEAKER 11 :
Sometimes it’s pretty easy.
SPEAKER 04 :
We can hide a belt noise.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
We can hide a suspension noise. We can lube up anything to make it quiet enough to sell the car. And you got to be careful. There are dealerships out there that are making them look good, making them sound good. And you’re buying a problem.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Just another reminder that we’ve got the select auto care shops. If you’re looking at a used car, let’s have a pre-inspection done, and let’s do a little research on where you’re buying that car from.
SPEAKER 11 :
What was Burke’s line earlier? Buy the most car you can afford.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 11 :
And I think that’s the thing. Just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean it’s a better deal. You know, we see it all day long. I mean, how many times we have a car that’s $1,000 more than the Subaru that’s on a not so great lot, but it needs $5,000 worth of work. And our cars already had that done to it.
SPEAKER 04 :
It would be cheaper… In the long run. …to buy the nicer car to begin with.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
So another example I was telling you, I went to the dealer’s auto auction of the Rockies.
SPEAKER 10 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 04 :
I found that 2008 Toyota Highlander. Had some miles on it. I can’t remember. Had like 140, 150,000 miles on it. The Carfax had Genos start to finish.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Every maintenance on this car was done at Genos. Well, I’m thinking, hey… I know Geno’s took care of this car. They did. And I know if a customer is going to Geno’s that this thing was properly maintained and the customer did everything that they needed to do to it. Well, everyone at the auction saw the maintenance records on this car too. This vehicle had a $7,000 wholesale. That’s what you’d like to buy this car for. It had a $10,000, $11,000 retail. It did over $10,000 at the auction. Yeah. And then maybe it’s got a couple little things that you need to do to it when you get it back to the dealership. But… I guarantee you that car is going to cost you less in future maintenance and in initial cost. That’s what everyone misses is you’re going to buy a used car, you’re going to have some initial cost. Whether it’s something that needs to be mechanically repaired or maybe it’s just you putting personal preference in it. If you buy an older car and it doesn’t have Apple CarPlay in it, it doesn’t have Bluetooth in it, it doesn’t have some of those things in it, you’ve got to weigh that stuff out. But even though that car is probably going to be priced $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 at whatever used car dealership that it went to, that’s probably the one to buy at the end of the day.
SPEAKER 11 :
It is, and think about that. They did their maintenance, and even at the auction, the guy saw the maintenance was done and paid more than book for a car at the auction, the wholesale auction. So they’re still worth more. A car that’s well-maintained is worth even more at the auction, so.
SPEAKER 04 :
don’t always need to look at price sometimes we need to dig into the history we need to dig into different ownership stuff and we need to have an inspection done on the car by whoever your your shop is just make sure that they’re doing a thorough inspection on the car not just a walk around but get it up go take it for a drive make sure they’re driving that car on their inspection two three hours you know that’s usually what’s going to take to do it right so jiffy lube yeah
SPEAKER 11 :
Take five.
SPEAKER 04 :
Take five? Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Five minutes. You got your inspection done.
SPEAKER 04 :
You got the entire used car inspection done on the vehicle?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, in five minutes.
SPEAKER 04 :
The other thing is trying to buy from a dealer that’s doing a pre-emissions test on the vehicle. Right. Catalytic converters, now that we’re a carb-compliant state. I mean, those things can cost you as much as a powertrain component now.
SPEAKER 11 :
They do. I mean, it’s hard to find a new one just to buy the part that’s less than $1,000. It’s amazing how expensive these things have become.
SPEAKER 04 :
So for anyone that doesn’t know, if you don’t get an emissions test from the dealer, they hand you a coupon. This coupon pays Air Care Colorado, who does the state emissions inspections, pays them to do the emissions test. You have three business days to get this vehicle through emissions. If you go past that three days and the vehicle fails, if that vehicle fails emissions test on day four or day five, you have no legal right to return that vehicle to the dealer. So if you’re buying from a dealership, they give you that coupon, make sure you’re getting it right over to emissions. I would do it right away. And I honestly, I would, I’d probably try to do it cold.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, instead of doing it hot, you know, let’s make sure we’ve actually got a good cat. Cause a cat, if it’s hot, it starts to work better, starts to work a little better. So I’d probably not even get the thing all the way up to temperature. I’d sit out there for a little while and then run it and see, see what you’re really getting for emissions.
SPEAKER 11 :
Very true.
SPEAKER 04 :
And private party, if you’re buying something from a private party, the law is that it has to have an emissions test, a new emissions test in hand. So don’t ever buy a car from a private party that hasn’t been emissions tested.
SPEAKER 11 :
And if you do, first thing I would do if you bought private party, take it to emissions because there is some recourse if it fails emissions.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, you can get your money back. It might be a battle. It might be a little bit of a legal battle, but… You can pull these laws off the Internet. You can print them and give them to the person that’s selling it to you and say, hey, this is Colorado law. Where’s the passing admissions test? I’ll pay you once you put it through, so go test it for me first.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
And it looks like, is Eric ready? Good afternoon, Eric.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, guys. So, yeah, just calling back here. I actually said, you were talking about, you know, making sure that the car is passing emissions and whatnot and getting it checked out. So I actually sent John a video, a YouTube video the other day. A year or so back, he was asking, you know, like what automotive channels we watch on YouTube. Do listeners follow? And there’s a guy that I follow from time to time. He’s out of Florida. It’s called Rain Man Ray Automotive. And His backstory, I don’t know what his original backstory is, but he spent a number of years as a fleet mechanic for a Chevy dealer. And then he worked for a couple of different shops. When I first started following the channel, he was working at a CarQuest Napa-backed shop. And then he struck out on his own here about a little over a year ago. And he was doing a video the other day about this vehicle that they were having an overheating problem. The lady apparently bought it from one of these buy here, pay here places. And it was having a serious overheating problem. And they went through, as they were doing their diagnostics and whatnot, one of the things they found was in the process of this, somebody pulled the cat on it, gutted them, and put them back in thinking that, oh, the cats were bad, and that’s probably why it’s overheating. Because it was having overheating related to exhaust issues. And as he was going through there, he actually initially missed, and on a second check, found that what was actually part of the problem was the vehicle had been rear-ended, improperly repaired… It was an old Chevy Captiva, older Chevy Captiva. And it had been rear-ended, improperly repaired. They basically pulled the bumper cover off, slapped a new bumper cover on, and didn’t fix the frame components. And apparently when the vehicle was rear-ended, it caused the muffler to shift and bent part of the pipe. and that was causing, you know, exhaust restriction that was causing overheating. You know, it was causing all these other problems. Right. And as he pointed out in his video, secondarily to that, they ordered a completely new catalytic converter assembly from the parts store. It showed up. They pulled it out of the box. Well, apparently… parts store, didn’t do a very good job of inspecting a customer return, and somebody had bought the cat assembly, attempted to install it on a vehicle to solve a problem, which apparently it didn’t solve. It didn’t solve, and then they just returned it, ho-hum, and they had screwed it up in the process of trying to use it also. Oh, no, man. So he’s sitting here going, well, I still got to put the cats in here. But we’re going to have to completely redo the entire exhaust assembly on this vehicle to solve this problem. And now I’ve got to go fight with the parts store over parts that they didn’t inspect when they were returned. You know, and yeah, some of these, this is the thing is why, yeah, if you’re buying something from a dealer, from a used car place, you really got to have it checked out. And if they don’t want you to have it checked out, maybe you shouldn’t buy it.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Who knows how well they’re checking stuff out. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s definitely a walk away, walk away situation.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. And a lot of them just don’t check it out.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and this was the thing is this lady had bought this car and I guess she had had it checked by a couple of other places and they were not finding the issue. And he, you know, when you want the video is about 20 minutes long and he Or so. And he went through the whole what they went, you know. And like he said, initially when he was inspecting the vehicle, he missed the collapsed exhaust. He found it on the second inspection when they had it up on a different rack to look at it. But regardless, they still are going to have to do the cats because he can’t even put it back together with the old cats because, well, that’s a violation of federal law.
SPEAKER 10 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 06 :
And, you know, this is, I mean, I’m sure you guys probably see this, but this is probably happening more than we think, and it’s only going to get worse now that the price of a lot of this stuff is skyrocketing.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, along those points, Eric, I know we’ve got to go to break here in a second, but along that point is at our dealership we do basically a pre-purchase inspection on the vehicle. And we give that inspection to the customer completely transparent. Hey, here’s what we found. Here’s the things that we thought were important to fix. Here are things that you might need in the future. And some of these buyers still want to get a third-party opinion on the car. And you know what? We encourage it. And the reason that we encourage it is we are human. And sometimes we miss something. And we have no problem with another set of eyes and hands looking at the vehicle and saying, hey, you guys missed this. Can we do something about it? And absolutely. Say, sorry we missed that. We’re at fault. We’re happy to make that right before you purchase the vehicle.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and it goes to when I called you guys an hour or so back and I brought up If somebody brings you a vehicle as a trade-in and they’ve got an extensive service history on that vehicle, that’s more valuable to you guys even if you’re going to resell it than if I just bring you a car and say, well, yeah, I changed the oil on an occasion.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, absolutely. 100% agree with you.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, because, I mean, it works in my favor trading it in because most likely you’re going to give me more for it because you know you’re going to be able to get more out of it. down the road.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s always a win-win to take care of your car. It’s a win-win. It’s going to last longer. You’re going to get more money out of it in the future when you go to trade it. I 100% agree, Eric. These are great comments.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, guys. We’ve got to go to break.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we’re back. It’s Josh and Justin with Ridge Auto Brokers and Legacy Automotive. So September 1st brought a couple new things to the automotive world. The Colorado Traction Law came into effect.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, kind of recapping how we started the show is we are getting into the winter season.
SPEAKER 11 :
We are. And then the other thing is this is when our fuel starts to change. They start to bring in the winter blend where we have more ethanol in it. So we’re starting to go down there. You know, as we were talking earlier about all the things we need to do with winter coming on, if you’re buying fuel now and then you’re going to store that car, you definitely want to put a fuel stabilizer in there.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m a stable person myself. Is there a problem?
SPEAKER 11 :
The Supercharge from BG also does the trick, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
I actually hadn’t heard of that. I thought I knew my BG products pretty good. I didn’t.
SPEAKER 11 :
John has a couple cars that he lets sit for a long time, and he swears by it.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’ve always put Stable in my motorcycles, dirt bike.
SPEAKER 11 :
Chainsaw.
SPEAKER 04 :
Chainsaw. Lawn mower. Lawn mower. And you have one or two pools come springtime, they all fire right up.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s the way to have it go.
SPEAKER 04 :
So for cars, what do you recommend for everyone with their classic cars? Do you recommend draining the tank, filling it, and putting stabilizer in it?
SPEAKER 11 :
I think fuel stabilizer or supercharge in it, and I think you’re good to go.
SPEAKER 04 :
Drive it, get it through all the lines.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, you want to get it all the way up to the carburetor, into the float bowl of the carburetor. So let it run for a while and let it get all the way through the system. Especially, you know, older cars are not a return system like most, you know, fuel-injected cars, so it’s going to take a little while to get up there.
SPEAKER 04 :
What if we’ve got a car that we haven’t started in several years, then what kind of situation are we in? Do you smell the fuel?
SPEAKER 11 :
I usually smell the fuel and then I drain the tank. Okay. And see what you have for a tank. The problem is with ethanol gas, a lot of times it made the old steel tanks rust. So you end up with a lot of rust in the fuel. The tank itself, so it might need to be dropped. And if it was a steel tank, dropped and taken and cleaned out. And then also the fuel lines. You’re going to want to replace the fuel filter and get good fuel in there.
SPEAKER 04 :
What about keeping condensation out of the tanks? Is that something we’re driving every day?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I mean, a full tank, there’s no room for the condensation. So the fuller the tank, the better off you are for condensation.
SPEAKER 04 :
So not getting down to a quarter.
SPEAKER 11 :
Not running around on a quarter tank all the time. Not helping anything. Just not a good idea anyways because, you know, the fuel pumps are in the tank, and what’s going to happen is that fuel pump, the gasoline cools the fuel pump, and when there’s less fuel in there, the fuel pump runs hotter.
SPEAKER 04 :
And diesel…
SPEAKER 11 :
Diesel, you know, now’s the time where I like to just start pouring the Howls or 911, whichever one you like, into it. And I don’t know. I’m one of those guys that kind of overdoes it when it comes to those.
SPEAKER 04 :
And are we looking for just a de-icer or are we looking for something that’s like a lubricant tube?
SPEAKER 11 :
I think most of them have, you know, an anti-gel and some sort of centane booster or lubricant in it. And that’s the ones I like to do. I mean… I know when I was working in Alaska this time of year, we went to all the equipment and just started – they were in the house. The company was in the house. And we just poured howls into everything that ran on diesel. Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Though they pretty much never got out of winder blend diesel up there anyways. But we were just going through everything and just – pouring it and we didn’t have issues i mean you know we’re talking barrel and dead horse places that are far above the circle that that equipment has to work and it sometimes sits for a few days so we hardly had icing issues with it so well i got a theory and tell me what you think about my theory so on my i’ve got 2019 f-350 six seven
SPEAKER 04 :
I’ve put an entire bottle of 911 in this tank, filled it full, figured this would be the thing to do. And what I was doing, which I think is my mistake, hear me out on this, is I would start it once or twice in the evening, in the middle of the night, thinking maybe I’m getting some of that oxygen. you know, diesel fuel to get recycled into the tank because it does recycle some of it back into the tank.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I think I’m actually making it so the truck is not doing its job. And I think I’m actually icing up the lines by running this. What do you think about that? Because I’ve had this problem two years in a row where I’ve had 911 in it. I did this thing where I started it twice at night and everyone else’s truck, everyone else’s 6.7 is running down the road and mine’s sitting in the driveway.
SPEAKER 11 :
Exactly. And do you think that the howls got circulated through all your lines, or…?
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, I ran it for a long time, and I ran it the day before. So normally I would put the 911 in. I’d go for a 10- or 15-minute drive. So I know it’s in the fuel filters. It’s through all the lines. But I keep having a problem, and I’m wondering if I’m making it so that wherever Ford is keeping those lines warm, if I’m bringing cold fuel into those warm lines and I’m not letting the truck do its job.
SPEAKER 11 :
that and kind of where you live probably the windchill wouldn’t probably do a little bit too yeah like we were talking about earlier with you know the lines going to the windchill squirters so probably same type of thing yeah oh and then i i did have the the cheap fuel thing you did i remember i remember that one yeah
SPEAKER 04 :
Man, that diesel fuel is like $1.89 a gallon. I filled up both trucks with that, and neither one of those trucks ran. So do not buy cheap diesel fuel in the wintertime.
SPEAKER 11 :
You kind of need to have more diesel fuel than water in there, but…
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, we’ll make that mistake again. I’ve learned truck stops. I know I’m paying more for that fuel, but I seem to get better mileage out of it and I don’t seem to have icing or gelling issues if I’m buying from truck stops.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s what I’ve seen. I mean, those guys at the truck stops have to make a living with that fuel. So when they go down, I’m sure that they’re sending some nasty grams back to the truck stop if it’s a fuel-related issue. And it’s getting cycling all the time. I mean, think about trucks are pumping hundreds of gallons into them all the time and all day long. So their fuel pretty much comes out of the refinery and goes right into the tanks to go down the road. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I know we just have a couple minutes left, but I’m wondering if you can explain. You’ve explained this to me before, but I always lose it, and I need you to explain it again. What happens to diesel fuel when it sits? Like in Boulder, we don’t sell a lot of diesel fuel. There’s not a lot of diesels in Boulder. What happens to that fuel when it’s sitting?
SPEAKER 11 :
I mean, just like everything else, you know, when you put different chemicals together, they all like to go back to their normal state, you know, by themselves. And the other thing is, as they sit in the tank, the tanks, even though they’re supposed to be sealed, there’s always contaminants getting in there. The tank’s not being turned over as fast, so you’re just kind of pulling fuel out that’s probably got a lot of water in it, a lot of contaminants. And since it hasn’t been cycled that much, you know, all the additives and everything else, they all want to kind of go back to the little corners. I mean, that’s the same thing we see with ethanol gas is that, you know, the ethanol likes to attract to water because alcohol and water like to attract. So the ethanol kind of gets pulled out of the gasoline. It comes up against the walls of the tank where the water usually is or the condensation. That’s what drags it out. And then it starts to rust the tank.
SPEAKER 04 :
So by some place in there.
SPEAKER 11 :
That and drive. If you’re going to do it and drive, then I think you’re good. But I would always buy from someplace that’s selling a lot of diesel.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, cool. Well, hey, this is a great show. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, KLZ. We appreciate John letting us fill in for him.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and thanks for coming in, Justin.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, that was a good one. Everyone enjoy your weekend. We appreciate you listening.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, thank you guys very much. Have a good weekend.
SPEAKER 03 :
Still haven’t had enough? Go to drive-radio.com, email your questions and comments, download previous programs, and find lots of useful information, including your nearest Colorado Select Auto Care Center. That’s drive-radio.com. Thanks for listening to Drive Radio, sponsored by the member shops of Colorado Select Auto Care Centers. On KLZ 560.
