Make sure your car mechanic has several different torque wrenches in his toolbox. If he does not have any torque wrenches, it may be time to find a new technician.
-Mark
I don’t own a tire machine, or a forge, or a mandrel bender, or any of the other specialized tools that shops often pay top dollar for and the average person doesn’t even need to know about. There are two compelling reasons for everyone to find a local shop that’s trustworthy to help maintain their car:
You can’t, and you don’t want to.
Any job that requires tools you don’t have or aren’t worth investing in is worth taking in to a shop. Just make sure the person doing the job knows what you’re looking for and why the car is being brought in, and you’ll do just fine.
For those of you who’d rather just ‘leave it to the pros’, basic regular maintenance can be outsourced to specialists. Oil changes are tedious jobs that very few of us enjoy doing. Taking your car into an oil service shop will save time and will often cost less than doing it yourself. There are people who specialize in changing your oil quickly and efficiently and perform hundreds of oil changes every day. In an ideal world, they’re getting paid to spot problems with your car before they become problems while they change your oil and recommend maintenance. Most of the time, a car owner is impressed and happy to be aware of problems they can plan for (and possibly prevent). It’s a good way for shops to receive repeat business and establish trust, and they lower the price of an oil change considerably (many shops actually lose money on oil changes because of this). It works out well for everyone involved since the shop gets extra work and you get all your routine maintenance taken care of.
The trick to finding the right mechanic is talking to them and asking lots of questions. Ask them to verify how they set their prices (it should be based on a standardized service manual price).
Even if you don’t need their services today, it’s worth having a trustworthy contact at a shop that you can call to solve problems in a timely manner. Just visiting a shop and getting to knew some of the service personnel could tell you a lot in advance.
My beater's better than your Beamer.