[wind_magic]

Alex, it is things like that which make me wary of letting anyone do mechanical work for me. I will pay a very select few to do work, but I seem to always get burned when I get stuck or in a hurry and use someone I don't know.

Perfect example is this past week. The truck wasn't charging and it was nearly Christmas. Normally I would change an alternator or something like that myself, but it being near Christmas I thought, well ... why not ... this one time I'll not only pay someone to change the alternator for me, I'll pay someone to change the oil too. Talk about luxury! So to make a long story short, I got stranded 150 miles away from home after that job because of some really simple mistakes the mechanic had made. That kind of thing happens all the time, it seems like whenever I have someone else do work when I go back and check it the stuff is never right. And the worst part of it is that it's usually something really simple, not tightening a belt when you are done, not taking the time to set the timing right, forgetting to put oil back into something, forgetting filters, not wiring things up right or at all, etc.

Another example is just a few days ago. I needed a new battery on another vehicle and the kid at the parts store changed it out for me. He puts in the battery and the terminals aren't tight enough to fit it, so, what does he do ? Does he go in and get shims or suggest changing the terminals ? No, of course not, he just tightens it as much as possible and leaves it. I'm standing there watching and I say ... hey, don't you think that's a little loose ? And I reach over and start moving the damn battery cable around on the battery, it just jiggles it's so loose, there's no way it would have even stayed on and I doubt the vehicle would have started with it like that. But this kid couldn't have cared less, he would have let me drive off like that and wouldn't have thought a thing about it. After confronting him about it he went in and got a terminal to change for the really loose one and shimmed the other connection, but he wouldn't have done it if I wasn't standing there giving him crap about it.