When I worked at the dealership, I often heard service advisers state that independent technicians weren’t trained as well. Or, I’ve seen where dealerships have touted their “factory trained” technicians. Now that I’ve seen both sides of the fence, I know that some of what they said makes sense, but often factory trained can be a disservice.

Dealerships exist to sell new Volkswagens, and then service them throughout there in service periods. But, dealerships also exist to sell parts as I stated in my previous blog Can original parts be bought anywhere other than the dealership?. So, are factory trained technicians better equipped to service your Volkswagen? That really depends on the vehicle, the technician, and the repair.

If the vehicle is extremely new, an independent tech doesn’t have the dealer techline to rely on if there’s something they can’t figure out. Therefore, the dealer tech will have an advantage fixing that vehicle. That being said. VW doesn’t tend to change their designs all that often. For example mechanically the Beetle was very similar for 30 years, the first through third generations of Golf and Jetta were very similarly built as far as the engine and transmissions are concerned and so are the fourth through sixth generations. So in this case I’ll give a slight advantage to the dealer tech, but given that the next generation car won’t be much different, it shouldn’t be too hard for a trained VW specialist to figure out.

The next thing to take into consideration is the repair. Certain components are known to be faulty parts, like the waterpumps they put in the 99 – up four cylinder engines. They are plastic and shatter as early as 40k miles. Still, the factory used them for almost 10 years. The better option is to put a good German made metal impeller pump into the vehicle. They last longer and won’t break as easily. Also, another big problem is ABS module failure on Audis, BMWs, and the VW Passat. If this expensive component goes bad the dealership will attempt to charge you $1000 to fix it rather than sending it off to get rebuilt for $200 with a lifetime warranty. Also, throttle bodies often will through a fault and just need their electronics cleaned, something the dealer will attempt to sell you a $600 throttle body for. So in this case, the independent shop is much cheaper than the dealer.

So, as an independent tech I know a day will come that I become less familiar with the vehicles I’m working on. But, most of my customer’s cars are still at least 5 or 6 years old, and since I worked on the 5th generation VW stuff at the dealer I’m not too worried about it because it’ll be 10 years before that happens. All in all, anybody who works on VW, Audi, and BMW on a daily basis will still be able to work on them for the foreseeable future because they aren’t changing too much.

Danny

A lot of people are skeptical when they call Dub Autowerks or another independent German Auto specialist and get a quote that is 25 – 50% lower than the dealer quoted them. The dealer will often cite “aftermarket parts” and “untrained technicians” as the reason why. There’s some truths and untruths to those two explanations that I often will detail to any potential customers when they call.

Aftermarket parts is a tricky term. At some dealerships it is often described as any part that isn’t bought from the dealership itself. For example, the way the typical parts channel is handled through the dealership is as follows. VW of America buys their spark plugs from NGK. They mark them up, put them in VW official parts boxes, and sell them to their franchise dealership. Now, the franchise dealership marks them up again so they can make money, and they sell them to their front counter or service customers. The way an independent shop does it, is a company like Worldpac, Altrom, or IMC buy the spark plugs directly from NGK and mark them up slightly. But, since these 3 companies are the suppliers for 99% of your independent import shops in US and Canada, they don’t mark them up as much as VW of America would. Then as an independent shop owner we mark them up as we see fit. So the parts are often identical or may only be missing the Audi logos that were cast into them, having them machined off as in the picture below since NTN, the company that manufactures this part doesn’t own the logo rights to Audi.

List price at an independent shop is typically twice to three times the cost of the part. So a spark plug that lists at $16 probably cost me $8. Often, the dealership is paying more for a part at their cost from their parent company than they could get it from Worldpac. The dealership has accounts with these same companies, but the parent companies (VW, Audi, BMW of America) provide their parts department managers with thousands of dollars in bonus money quarterly for hitting their order objectives. This is where a large part of the reason for the dealer costing more comes from. Since there’s much more markup in parts, many repair shops don’t mark their parts up to list in order to stay competitive with other local shops. As a repair shop I want to get customers that love their German car and understand the importance of going to a trained German Auto specialist like at Dub Autowerks. But, I also realize I’m competing with your local do-it-all shops who are not doing a complete job of say replacing everything in the timing belt area or are using inferior parts that are aftermarket. So, many of the shops like Dub Autowerks don’t mark our parts up to list, because your typical bargain hunting Jetta owner doesn’t know the difference and will call from shop to shop, not realizing the difference in price is quality parts.

So, that’s a little bit of information on how the dealership parts experience works. I typically only buy things from the dealer if they aren’t available elsewhere which many interior and body parts aren’t or if I’m in a rush to finish a job to keep a customer happy. Other than that I stay away, today I bought the exact part from a local Napa for 23 dollars less than the local dealer wanted. If you work on your own car and you’re looking for OEM parts at better prices, Dub Autowerks can sell you and ship you them, or if you’re in a pinch there are a few US autopart chains that can get you them. Napa is the exclusive supplier of Altrom, Car Quest is Worldpac’s local chain so if you have either of those near you then you can buy them there but you need to specifically request original parts or they’ll sell you generic parts. Coming up next, are independent technicians really less educated than the dealer technician?

Danny

Yesterday was the 8th annual Cruise for the Cure her in the Seattle area. This cruise/car show features many of the local VW and Audi enthusiasts in a 100 mile drive from a local hotel parking lot to a mountain pass for a 30 minute cool down and back down to a local state park. Every year the organizers pick a charity and all profits from the drive go to that charity. This year was Be the Match, a bone marrow transplant registry in the United States.

In anticipation of making this trek, I’ve been working on the 62 Beetle getting it ready to go. I’d already replaced all the brake lines, shoes, and wheel cylinders, pulled the motor and checked the clutch which had recently been replaced, done a tuneup, set the valves, rebuilt the carb, replaced the cap, rotor, plugs, wires, and replaced the shocks. Still, the night before the cruise it started running poorly and misfiring. I located a loose wire and figured it would be an easy fix in the morning. After fixing the wire it got better but still ran a little poorly. So I ended up forgoing most of the drive and drove straight to the state park which is still about 25 miles.

My son enjoyed the drive, and I got signed up for the marrow registry, so it wasn’t a complete wash. The point is, while I’ve heard many people complain about the complicated nature of new vehicles, it makes them much easier to fix. They practically tell you what’s wrong if you know how to decipher their fault codes, and some of them can even drive themselves. Even as a professional mechanic it’s usually a chore keeping a 20 year old vehicle on the road.

I’m not saying that it’s better to own a brand new vehicle. I’ll be putting up another post soon on why it’s better to own vehicles that are of a certain age range and which vehicles to avoid when buying new cars. Stay tuned.

Danny

Sludge Buildup caused by conventional oil.

One of the things I deal most with at my shop are customers who don’t change their oil frequently enough or don’t see the benefit of using synthetic oil.

This is especially important on vehicles that are high horsepower or turbocharged but synthetic oils will allow your engine to live a longer and healthier life.

Attached is a picture of a 1.8t Audi A4 engine that met its untimely death due to conventional oil. In fact Audi and VW got sued over this and I had the fun of doing many sludge repair jobs under the warranty extension at the dealer. Not one of the vehicles had their oil changed on time and some had switched to synthetic but none had solely used it.

The biggest reason people cite is the cost of the oil change. Usually a synthetic oil change is about a third more expensive, but if you take into account that you can go a couple thousand miles more between oil changes it ends up costing the same in the end.

Another bad side effect of conventional oil is the vapors tend to clog up the breather system and ruin the checkvalves that allow the engine to vent blowby. Once those fail it can even effect the way the transmission shifts and cause it to fail. Often replacing the breather system can be a 300 – 400 dollar repair alone.

So, use a quality synthetic that meets manufacturer specifications like Mobil1 or Castrol Syntec and your car will reliably get you around for years to come.

I’m just getting up and running here and new to the whole blogging thing. I’m a VW and Audi mechanic from near Seattle, Washington. I’ve been in love with VWs since as long as I can remember. I am a former Army Sergeant and I also lived in Germany for a few years. I now own a VW, Audi, BMW, and Porsche repair shop called Dub Autowerks. I’ve decided to share some of my rants with the world to help people enjoy the ownership of German cars. I’ll post from time to time about experiences with customers, how to better maintain your German car, and also some industry secrets and tricks. Stay tuned.

Danny