A Day At Jiffy Lube

[Brian R.]

Today I went to a local Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed in my wife's car. While I was there, they said they could change my transmission fluid and flush my radiator (Toyota 45K recommendations).

I figured that it would be a time saver to do it while I was there on the weekend rather than screw around with this during the week at my local mechanic and have to drive her car to work and drop it off, pick it up afterward, etc. So, I said OK, change the transmission fluid and flush the engine coolant.

I should have known something was going to happen when the guy installing my oil filter had to be shown that you have to apply oil to the filter gasket.

The transmission fluid replacement went OK. To change the transmission fluid, they have a cool machine that has a visible movable piston in a vertical cylinder. The piston is initially at the bottom of the cylinder with new fluid above it filling the cylinder. There are two lines connected to either ends of the cylinder. The bottom line is connected to the transmission line that feeds the transmission cooler. The line connected to the upper end of the cylinder is connected to the return connection on the transmission. The engine is run and the transmission pumps the old fluid into the cylinder and the piston is displaced upward and pushes the new fluid into the transmission through the return line. After about 15 min, the fluid comes out of the transmission clean and red and it's done. (The wonders of modern technology).

While this was going on, the guy in the next bay needed his car pushed out of the bay backwards for a reason I didn't determine. The Jiffy Lube guy at the steering wheel held the car door open and was looking backward while the car was pushed through the narrow opening in the rear of the bay. (Do you see where this is going?). The owner of the car was in the parking lot behind the car and started yelling "WATCH THE DOOR, WATCH THE DOOR" to no avail. CRUNCH and the car door was history. He started yelling that he was going on vacation the next day and I guess that got sorted out between him and the manager. I gave him my name and phone number as a witness and lost interest in that source of amusement.

Meanwhile, the Lexus in the next bay was getting its tires rotated with a neat lift that raises the entire car far enough off the ground that the tires can be removed and replaced and the guy in the pit can still work on the oil change. There are four large rubber blocks placed between the lift and the car at the four corners of the lift. After the car was finished, one of the guys drove the car off the lift without remembering to remove the large rubber blocks. The car bounced high enough to bottom out the suspension hard (twice, he kept going after the first one). That was kind of exciting.

Then, they went about flushing my cooling system. For this, they have another machine that provides a reservoir of fresh coolant and a couple of hoses to connect to the radiator return hose (top) and the upper radiator hose connection. The car is again idled and the old coolant is pumped out of the engine and into a tank and new coolant is sucked out of the machine and into the radiator. (This had promise). The guy who connected it to my car was mumbling something about hating this old machine and only liked the new (broken) machine.

I decided at this point that it would be prudent to monitor the temperature gauge in the car while this process proceeded. Sure enough, bubbles started rising into the new coolant reservoir and the enging started overheating. I shut if off and took stock of the situation. Sure enough, he had connected the output hose of the machine to the output connection of the engine and viceversa. Once I showed his the error of his ways, he reversed the connections and it actually went well after that.

After the process was completed and the coolant lines were disconnected from my car, he was ready to start working on another car when I asked him if it would be advisable to start the car and check the coolant level in the radiator. He thought it over and another guy talked him into it before he had time to think about it too much. When the engine started, they put another quart or two of coolant into the radiator and finally got the coolant to where I felt comfortable driving away.

After I left, I felt I would have been pressing my luck to return to there and get the sticker with my next oil change mileage that they forgot.

I think I was lucky to have escaped with my life.

[ToyotaTech1]

I work for a Toyota dealer that is right off the service road of a main hwy. On either direction of the hwy there are 2 jiffy lubes both within a 3 mile distance from us. I cannot tell you what crazy stuff I have seen come in from them. Just last week we had a 03 tacoma come in. He had gone to jiffy lube to get his trans/diff drained and filled. Well its a 4x4 when they tightened the plug on his transfer case the cracked it I guess and let him go. next day the car gets towed into us and the whole casing around the plug was cracked. cost them $2k for a case and labor. I too have seen older 4Runners come in where they just had there coolant flushed and ends up blowing there headgaskets due to very low coolant level. I cannot tell you how many motors I have done for them due to loose drain plugs, loose oil filters or not enough oil. I did a motor 2 weeks ago on a "04 TUNDRA" the guy who changed the oil did not reset his gun I guess they take close to 7 qts of oil well it had about 2 I guess he did something with 5 qts before well anyway it trashed out the complete motor/heads there was casting all over the place. I guess I really cant complain about them eventhough there work sucks it keeps us busy .