Working on Older Toyota Vehicles

We actually worked on one of these recently!

There are many shops that have a cutoff when it comes to working on older vehicles.  I’ve run into a number of shop owners who, if they have a customer come in with a vehicle that is more than 25 years old, will turn the client away.  This has always been interesting to me as a shop owner.  Yes, parts may be a little harder to come by and it may have to sit on the lot for a couple of days while you wait for those parts, but the vehicles are typically easier to work on than their more recent compatriots whose engines are talked way too tightly into the space between the front wheels.   Usually the tooling required is also rudimentary. 

Many customers who come in with cars this age prefer to work on it themselves, because they can.  They are less likely to be bogged down by modules and sensors.  But the drawback can be that the age of the vehicle means that parts are cemented in place by years of rust and sludge.  Or, the diagnostic equipment can be harder to come by (although in some older vehicles a paper clip may be all that is needed to locate a code to tell the technician in which area the vehicle is experiencing a failure).

I’m proud of my staff because they are really open to working on just about anything that can be fixed safely.  We may turn away vehicles that are too big for our lifts from time to time, but by the same token we’ve worked on customers’ scooters, lawn mowers, snow blowers and RVs.  We do this because we know that if we can help them with these more oddball requests, they are likely to have other, more standard, vehicles at home that they’ll bring to us.

My staff does give me a little flack for this kind of thing, and I don’t blame them.  But when we have a customer give us a stellar review because we helped them when no other shop would, they see the benefit of doing this kind of work.  (To be fair, the lawnmower did come back to bite me because the customer thought we were too expensive!  I bit my tongue on this one and just commended my advisor for making the effort!)

Since the reason for opening my shops in the first place was to help people who needed our assistance, I don’t like to turn anything away if I can.  But, we also have to be a little choosy in our heavy season because sometimes this project can dampen the revenue goals we have.  Still, if customers are willing to work with us on the time, we are willing to work with them on the project.  It’s a partnership that makes sense for us!