Amy’s Garage

by Amy Mattinat

Move it outside!

We technically have 5 bays in my shop - Auto Craftsmen. But we have only been using 3 of them on a regular basis for the last 11 yrs. Bay 1, 2 & 3 are our working bays. Bay 4 was turned into the machine room. It’s full of the tire changing machine, parts washer, spring loader, grinder, computer, etc. But bay 5 has sat empty for 8 months of the year and was used for 2 months in the spring and 2 months in the fall to change tires.

Why would we have a bay, with a lift (that was not cheap) sit idle. Well, no one wanted to work back there. It was noisy, dark, and cluttered.

The compressor lived in the bay, making it uber noisy, and because it didn’t get much use, it was the home to all “stuff” that needed a place to go.

Well, the boys built a fine little insulated house and have successfully moved the compressor outside. They cut a large hole into the shop for air / heat flow in the winter, and will fill it with synthetic oil so it won’t freeze up when the Vermont Winter Temperature dips below zero.

After the compressor was moved outside, the next step was to hoe everything out of of it and clean it up. Next comes some major reorganizing!

Yea Me! I have been moaning about this bay for 11 years, and finally have got everyone in motion to make it good. Yea Team!

I left for a road trip to Rhode Island today, and the bay was completely empty. I’ll be back into the shop on Friday and can’t wait to see it all sparkling clean, neatly organized and being used. Right Boys?

OK, this is not a car… I know that. But this is the maple tree in my front yard, and it is so beautiful I wanted to share it with you.

Please Enjoy!

We had a beautifully taken care of 1980’s Volkswagen Vanagon GL come into my shop Auto Craftsmen the other day. What was remarkable about this old camper van was that it was born and raised in Vermont.

Now for those of you that have never lived in Vermont, you need to understand that vehicles just don’t last a long time in the Green Mountain State. The road crews of VT in their attempt to keep the snow off the roads during the long 6 months of winter dump tons and tons of salt all over our roads. The salty snow clings to the underbodies and sides of our automobiles and rusts the heck out of them. Every vehicle I have ever owned I have lost to ‘Rust!’ The engine would have gladly kept running, but the body of the vehicle was rusting off the bare bones of the frame and it wouldn’t pass the yearly state inspection that takes those old rusty buckets off our

roads.

Well, this van has been truly loved. It’s owner must have given it a bath on a regular basis for the body to be in such fine shape. The van came to the shop for an oil change and a new battery. The battery lives under the passenger seat. The seat flips around slips forward to give access to the battery compartment. Typical Volkswagen. Those Germans love to make working on Volkswagens interesting, amusing… keep you guessing where things live. Oh, and of course you need to have special Volkswagen tools to even think about working on them.

This van has over 300,000 miles on it.

Seriously… 300k. Remarkable! No it’s not the original engine. It was rebuilt by my tech Jim. But it has driven over 300,000 thousand miles of the highways and byways of this country, Canada and Mexico. It’s traveled to every state in this huge country of ours and has been to Alaska and back.

What is so cool about this van is the interior. It is a camper van. Contains a very comfy bed, really cool kitchen set up and the top pops open so you can stand up in it. There is even an awning that connects to the side so you can have a porch to sit under once you have set up camp.

It would be such fun to take this old van on a road trip. Was a treat to see such a fine old van taken care of so well, and enjoyed so much!

Anyone out there have a Vanagon to top this one?

This Saturday my shop Auto Craftsmen, Pleasant Street Auto, Mike Martin’s Auto Repair (all NAPA AutoCare repair shops) + First Class NAPA Auto Parts stores from Waterbury and Morrisville all worked together to put on a Car Care Safety Fair at the Copley Hospital in Morrisville Vermont.

The Hospital was having their 13th annual Health Care Fair and the Hospital and I thought that a Car Care Fair was a perfect match for a Health Care Fair.

Seriously. If your car is not healthy and it has an accident… your body could end up at the hospital.

We had 13 NAPA AutoCare helpers to work the car care safety lanes. It was very easy for the motorists. The motorist would pull up to the first station and two auto technicians would check the tires to see if they had the proper air pressure and make sure all the lights were working. They would check over the windshield wipers to make sure they were working correctly and to make sure they were not worn out.

Then the vehicle would pull up to the second station and two more technicians would open the hood and check the belts, hoses and the fluids. (oil, coolant, brake fluid, transmission fluid, windshield washer fluid). They would hook up a special tool that would tell how well the battery and starting system of the car was working.

All this information was marked down on a special inspection sheet that was given to the driver and explained. Folks were given a free vehicle safety kit and in less then 10 min. the driver had a very clear understanding of how safe their vehicle was driving down the road that day.

Number one problem we found on the vehicles we inspected was that they had incorrect air pressure in the tires. This went for older vehicles and brand new vehicles. Some had too much air in them and some were under inflated.

If you have the wrong air pressure in your tires you are loosing gas mileage (money) and wearing out your tires way quicker then you need to (more money!). Takes just a bit of effort on the part of the motorist to check their air pressure… and if you just don’t want to, then swing by my shop and one of my techs would be glad to come out and make sure your tires have the correct amount of air pressure.

We also found a lot of worn wipers. Windshield wipers are relatively cheap for what they do - keeps the windshield clear of water when it rains so you can see the road. Very important to be able to see where you are going when driving a car.

There were also too many vehicles that needed oil added to the motor and a couple that had too much oil in the engine. Having too much oil is also very bad for your engine.

We checked over 62 cars in less then 3 hours. The crew was very efficient and the motorists were thrilled with the great FREE service advice on their cars.

Big thanks to Bo, Raechal, Mike, Charlie, Gary, Jill, Scott, Marc, Kevin, Chip, Mark and Nina for taking time out of your weekend to make this Car Care Safety Lane so successful!

by Amy Mattinat

Yes, there are Jeeps that Swim!

They drive on the road right into the water and float away being propelled by a propeller!

Back in 1941 during WWII the US Army decided it needed a swimming jeep (known as a SEEP - Sea Jeep) to ferry the big wigs to and from ships off-shore so they could direct the battles. They built about 13,000 of them.

Only…. out in the field they got stuck easily in the mud, and tended to tip over and sink in rough waters. Instead of fixing the problems the US Army gave most of them to Russia. For more history you can to Wikipedia.

Anyways… one of the automotive technicians that works at my shop Auto Craftsmen hangs out with a group of like minded WWII buffs, who enjoy finding old jeeps, tanks, big guns, amphibious jeeps and restoring them. The Crew has been working on this Seep for a while now. The engine had to be rebuilt, various parts hunted down and it was painstakingly put together and painted. Looks Great!

I had the honor of being invited to view the maiden voyage and go for a ride if it didn’t sink.

Last Sunday morning I got a tour of the groups “toys.” They had two buildings filled with thousands of parts & pieces (supplies) and numerous vehicles and big guns. I wanted to ride in them all… but today was all about the baby duck.

I followed the Seep down the road to a small lake. They monkeyed around with it for a while making sure it was “just so” and once they were ready, they jumped in and headed for the water.

Jim is sitting in the passenger seat. He does not like the water much and claims that he sinks like a rock… but he rebuilt the engine and wanted to make sure it was running well.

Some may say these are brave men to take the first ride. When I watch ‘the boys’ do these kind of things I call it “brute strength an ignorance.”

They drove around in a circle for a bit and I could see Jim had that funny look on his face that usually meant “we have a problem here.” He kept looking down and was waving his arms about.

Jim had opened the hatch that led to the transmission area and noticed that we’re taking on water Caption!

If you look closely you will notice that the boat-jeep is leaning a bit to the right.

Those of us on shore watched in amusement as they quickly headed to dry land. When they pulled onto the ramp we noticed a deluge of lake water coming out the bottom of the Seep.

Seems that someone had neglected to put in that last plug. But that did not stop them. They jumped into a pick up, raced back to the shop to bring back the ‘box filled with various sized plugs’.

Of course they found just the right size, plugged up that major hole and jumped into the jeep and drove it back into the lake.

This time there were no problems and it went in and out of the lake all afternoon giving each of us a turn to drive into the water.

Would you jump in the Seep and go driving into the lake?

When I thought I was going to have to rent-a-car to get home from my US Air fandango, I followed my own advice and negotiated a $300.00 one way rental car down to $145.00

The Advice I took?

Skip The 800 Number:

If you call an 800 number your call goes to the rental car hub. The operators are hooked into a centralized computer and just hit the buttons. But, if you call directly to the rental car counter - and there happens to be a surplus of cars on the lot then you can play “Lets Make A Deal!”

And that is exactly what I did. I got online and got the phone number for the rental car counter in the Boston’s Airport. The price for any one way rental cars is painful. I only needed the car for 4 hours worth of driving and they wanted to charge me $300.00 dollars. At this point I was desperate to get home and actually thought about spending this outrageous amount of money so I could lay my head down on my pillow.

But then I remembered the last post I did on rental cars and made a phone call and talked the lad down to $145.00. Lucky for me the flight was canceled and Tracy my Hero got me a direct flight to Burlington and I didn’t have to spend and extra $145.00 or drive 4 hours in Boston’s rush hour traffic!

Have you ever negotiated a better price for a rental car?

by Amy Mattinat

There Are Hero’s Everywhere

I was in Cincinnati for a meeting of independent auto repair shops and was scheduled to fly back to Vermont on a Sunday at 9 am. I was flying from Cinn. to Philly to Burlington. Take off from Cinn. was right on time. The trouble began when we got close to landing in Philadelphia. There were multiple thunderstorms and we circled around the airport waiting for traffic control to find a hole in the storm for us to land.

This pilot really wanted to land the plane in Philly. After flying in circles for over an hour he announced that we had about 20 more min. before we ran out of fuel, but he was certain there would be a break in the storm and we could land. Everyone in the cabin pulled out a time piece and started counting down. When we got to about 10 min. he gave up and headed to Harrisburg to re-fuel.

There was a group sigh of relief when the wheels of the plane touched the ground

They re-fueled the plane right away, and then we sat on the runway going nowhere for 7 hours. YES, seven hours and all they gave us was water and a very small overly sweet cookie that just made me really hunger.

The pilot, staff and passengers were just about to mutiny when Harrisburg finally gave they OK for the plane to pull up to a hanger and let us off. We were given less then 10 min. to buy some food and jump on a bus that drove us to Philadelphia.

If I was not starving and had been thinking clearly, I would have never got on a bus to drive to an airport that was shut down all day with hundreds hundreds of people going nowhere.

When we arrived at the airport we were led to a line that I swear was 1/2 mile long. When I finally got to the counter I was told there were no seats on any airline to Burlington for two days. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

So I booked a flight to Boston, rented a car to Vermont and found a quiet corner to get some sleep along with hundreds of other folks stranded in Philly.

The next morning I washed up in a bathroom, ate breakfast and worked at my makeshift office. How did we ever travel before computers?

At 1:00 pm my flight to Boston was canceled. I was feeling pretty low until I found Tracy! She told me she was the Best of the Best airline customer service representatives in the whole airport, and she was not kidding!

Not sure how she did it, but she got me on a flight to Burlington that night at 9:45 pm and it actually took off and landed on time. Took 38 hours but I finally made it home. Tracy, you are my hero!

Yes, the slab got poured and now we are waiting for “Overhead Doors” to give us an estimate for a insulated roll up door before we can continue our project of moving the compressor.

So, while waiting for the new compressor room to get built, we have moved on to giving the outside of the shop a face lift.

This is a before picture of my shop Auto Craftsmen located in Montpelier, Vermont. Notice how plain and boring the beige and black are. Very easy to drive on by and not even notice.

The beige has been repainted and the black trim is slowly being repainted blue. The rest of the shop was not exactly thrilled with my color choice, but it’s growing on them, and we are getting great feedback from our clients.

The job is still in process. The front window has rotten sills and needs to be replaced and my window box is going to be painted blue, put back up and restocked ASAP.

What do you think about the color blue I chose for the trim?

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last posted. I have been so busy that I just haven’t had any extra time to sit at my computer and write. My business partner needed 2 weeks off to move to a new place of residence, so I was riding solo running our auto repair shop, Auto Craftsmen.

When the cat is away… the mice will play.

• I hired a new employee… that I have wanted for over two months
• I hired an electrician to move one of our electric meter boxes so we could build a room outside of bay 5, where we will put the compressor so bay 5 won’t be so noisy you need to were hearing protection to be in that room. Hopefully soon that bay will actually get used and make us some money!

It have been raining pretty much everyday all summer in VT. So even though it was coming down at a pretty good clip, these boys got the job done in 2 hrs.

by Amy Mattinat

E85

My last post was to shout out the great news that Los Angeles County has approved a ground breaking facility that will revolutionize the Biofuel industry. They are going to be making their E85 out of Grass clippings, wood chips, paper products, and cardboard… and not corn.

Then I got a bunch of questions wondering what the heck was E85 anyways?

E85 is a special alternative fuel that is a blend of 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol. This special blend is used to power Flex Fuel Vehicles. You may have trouble finding a E85 fueling station at this time, because there are only about 1500 in the USA, and none in VT, NH, ME, CT RI or NJ. Seems the North East if lagging behind in the E85 arena.

Flex Fuel Vehicles? OK, so there is not a lot of difference in a Flex Fuel vehicle and a regular gasoline engine vehicle. Mechanically, the only difference is the addition of a fuel sensor that detects the ethanol/gasoline ration and the various parts that had to be upgraded to tolerate the ethanol, which is very corrosive.

Making fuel out of ethanol is not a new idea. Henry ford’s first cars were made to run on ethanol, but gasoline was so plentiful and cheap that it became the fuel of the day.

Flex Fueled vehicles running on E85 don’t really get any better gas mileage then their gasoline counter parts, but the advantages to using E85 versus gasoline are HUGE!

• Ethanol burns cleaner and tests have shown reduction in those nasty harmful hydrocarbon and benzene emissions.
• E85 can help reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) that harmful greenhouse gas that is a major contributor to global warming - and causing Vermont rain all summer - which only lasts 3 months if we are lucky.
• Ethanol is like totally renewable! It may be the hero of the day by helping to reduce our dependency on petroleum fuels.
• Manufacturing ethanol out of scraps will help clean up the environment while providing an alternative to straight gasoline powered engines!

I’ve got my eye on this one and will keep you informed when this becomes our new reality!