A Family Legacy - Overhauled S1E15 is now on your favorite podcast app!

Want to be a guest on Overhauled? - https://www.shopdiesellaptops.com/pages/podcast-guests

In this podcast your host Melissa Petersmann (The Diesel Queen) discusses Entrepreneurship, working with dealerships, tool prices, and many more interesting topics in a style that only she can bring - raw and unfiltered. 

Melissa welcomes Brad Champion, 3rd generation mechanic, and business owner.

As always, thank you for watching and listening!

Connect with Brad Champion:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/Champion-auto-truck-and-trailer-repair/100065169151936/?refid=17

Transcript for A Family Legacy - Overhauled S1E15

Melissa:

Hey guys, this is the diesel queen. I have some exciting news for you. This March when you buy a diesel decoder, you will get exclusive access to a question and answer panel with me personally. This is going to be limited to only the people that buy diesel decoders. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to talking to you guys. In addition, you'll also be getting six months of completely free access to the diesel repair platform, which is called the Wikipedia of Truck Repair. And on top of that, you will also be getting a voucher to go to one of our top training classes in the United States. It's an in-person training class. This only lasts through March and it's only available with the people that buy the diesel laptops decoder. Don't wait. Sign up for it. If you've been waiting on buying it or waiting to figure out if you want it or not, March is the month to get it.

Melissa:

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Overhauled with me, the diesel queen. Today I am here with a man named Brad who is a third generation mechanic and he has worked his way up into running his own business now. So please welcome Brad onto the show. And Brad, if you kind of want to give us a little bit of a background on how you got to where you're at.

Brad Champion:

Thanks Melissa. I started helping my grandparents when I was younger. Both of them were diesel mechanics, so I just fell in love with it and then went to trade school, worked for several dealerships, several shops. And after having kids I decided I didn't want my kids to work as hard as I did coming up. So I started my own business. We do onsite service, road service, anything that has to do with the truck we can do.

Melissa:

Do you guys have a shop too or is it just field service?

Brad Champion:

No, we just do field service.

Melissa:

Okay. So something that you and I kind of covered before we started rolling was a point that we brought up was switching over from the dealership world into what kind of would be considered the private industry or the third party industry side of the industry. So for you, you went to a trade school, you worked at dealerships, that's a really common path for everybody. So what challenges did you have trying to start your own business and what challenges do you still face not being in a dealership?

Brad Champion:

One of them was just income, having all the specialty tools, software that you actually need. And then just learning the new stuff. I mean having to run office and where then I'd say I spent most of my time in a shop, not in a office doing paperwork. Now I have to do both.

Melissa:

How is that kind of trying to juggle being a mechanic and being in the office at the same time?

Brad Champion:

It's very difficult. That phone gets on your nerves.

Melissa:

Oh my God, yes.

Brad Champion:

You're trying to [inaudible 00:03:35] when the phone rings.

Melissa:

Yep. Well you can't have big jobs. Right? You can't work on big jobs because you're constantly getting pulled away from that to answer the phone.

Brad Champion:

Right. Most of what we do, we do a lot of service, brake work, lot of road service. That's my main goal is just to get these trucks off the side of the road.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

And right now with the new technology coming out, as an independent, we're falling short in training because we don't-

Melissa:

And why is that? How is that? Can you explain to everybody why you feel like you guys are kind of falling short compared to the rest of the industry?

Brad Champion:

Well, it's hard for me to justify or anybody, any shop, the small independent guy to send somebody to school to learn some of this new stuff. And a lot of independent shops, including myself, why do we want to send somebody to school when they may quit in two weeks? Different shop offers money to come down there. After you've done send them to school and then they just jump ship and go. So you fall far behind and as a business owner, I just can't shut my doors to go learn this stuff. I'm just lucky I have friends that still work at dealerships and other shops that I can pick up a phone and call and say, hey, I got a question.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

[inaudible 00:05:15].

Melissa:

As a dealership mechanic, we got those calls from people like you all the time. And there's some dealerships that are very, very anti phone help. Right? There's some dealerships that are not going to help you if you call them. I always had the mindset of... And for the most part the dealerships I worked at kind of had the same mindset too is if you help these independent people and genuinely help them when they have a big issue, like their engine blows up or they can't figure it out or they need transmission work or something that's major, guess who they're going to fucking take it to, right? They're going to take it to the dealership that actually tried to put in the effort to help them. I've sent wiring diagrams to independent people like you. I've sent hydraulics schematics, I've sent code diagnostic procedures, all kinds of stuff like that to try and help people out. But there's not as I'm sure you know, not all dealerships are like that, especially if you don't have an inside person.

Brad Champion:

No, I'm just lucky at the dealerships I've worked at, I still have friends there that we can still pick up the phone and call.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

And ask questions and they'll get you anything you want. Like you said, some of the dealers will not. They refuse and that hurts us in the long run.

Melissa:

Yep. Well it's hard. It's got to be hard to feel like you have to rely on that. You can't truly... From what I'm gathering from you, you don't feel like you're truly independent from the dealerships because you still rely on having people inside the dealership to help you out.

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah. I mean just because I've fallen behind in the training on the new stuff.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

That's another reason we've stepped back away from doing any major engine work anymore.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

All the tooling's expensive and then the new rebuilding the DD15, I've heard horror stories on and I keep going, why do I want to do that? I can make more money doing quick stuff, quick jobs than I can spending 40 hours building, doing an in frame.

Melissa:

Yeah. Well in frames, I don't know about the trucking industry, but in the equipment industry, well A, most of us don't do in frames because the machines just don't allow it. Right? You can't get to the oil pan and you can't get to everything with the engine still bolted in. That just doesn't happen usually in equipment. But even if you take it to the extent of, you take the engine out and you do an overhaul such like a standard overhaul, right? Nothing fancy. Most of the time you don't touch the cam shaft bushings. Most of the time you're not replacing a cam shaft, things like that. The crank shaft's fine. If you're just doing a standard overhaul, dealerships especially pretty much just completely cut that out. As a professional in a dealership, I've only actually done a professional rebuild in the industry twice in my seven years I was in the industry.

Everything else was a short block or a long block or a complete engine because not only does John Deere... John Deere sets it up like that because dealerships... And I think most shops do this, is the labor is only warrantied for 90 days where you buy a complete engine from John Deere and that's warrantied for two years. So as a customer you're sitting there, well that's worth it. That's worth way more than if I try to trust some Joe Smoe in the fucking shop to rebuild my engine and he fucks it up. In 90 days... If it doesn't fuck up in 90 days I'm fucked, and I'm out of a $75,000 engine again. So the whole falling behind in the training, that's something that I've always pushed people and I've always told people this is as a mechanic you learn something new every day and you are constantly learning.

The industry is constantly changing. We are beyond the point of mechanical fuel, mechanically timed engines and mechanical engines and simple gear transmissions. We are way beyond that, especially the heavy equipment and the trucks and the electronics that go into this and the after treatment is constantly changing and what you've brought up is that you don't have the resources to really keep up with that. So you've had to cut your workload and cut certain things out of your workload because you just simply... Between mechanics not sticking around long enough to make a training worth it and then not being able to go to training yourself, you've kind of almost been forced to cut that down into excluding things like engines and stuff like that.

Brad Champion:

Correct. I mean, I'll still do water pumps, turbos, stuff like that. But if I build a motor or if I hire somebody to help and we build an in frame, it gets out to California and it blows up because of something we did wrong, well that's bankrupt and then so the liability of it now ain't worth it either.

Melissa:

Yeah, well and things go wrong. Right? You can be the best mechanic in the world and fuck something up or have something go wrong. And like you said, in engines especially big engines are like 70, 75 grand for a new engine. So that's another thing that's kept me from trying to start my own heavy equipment shop is because that's what I want to do. I want to do axles and transmissions and engines, but the liability of that is so insane. You fuck up one of those components and then you're bankrupt in the water and shit happens. Right? Especially these John Deere transmissions are so fucking complex. Even the guys that have 20 years of experience working on John Deere tractors tear these transmissions apart, they have the manuals, they have [inaudible 00:11:47]. They have every single resource possible and I've still seen them fuck it up and have to take it back apart.

Brad Champion:

Everybody fucks up every once in a while. It's going to happen. If you do it long enough, you're going to screw something up. You just learn from your mistake.

Melissa:

I've always told people that the only true mistake you make as a mechanic is doing something twice, is making a mistake twice. That is the only true failure and true mistake as a mechanic is doing it twice.

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah. And I have to drill it in my son's head. If you don't feel confident doing it, don't do it.

Melissa:

Yeah. Or find somebody that is confident to help you and guide you.

Brad Champion:

Yeah. Or we'll do it together, you'll learn from it. And then the next one's yours, whichever way you want to do it.

Melissa:

Yeah. Well and I don't know how much of my podcast you watched, but I had my original John Deere service manager on here at the very first dealership I worked at and what he always said is, with these new kids and these new people, you spend about six months kind of learning they're good at and getting a feel for what type of mechanic they are. And then you intentionally give them something that is a little over their head and see how they do and see if they fuck it up, then they learn to fix their fuck up and then you wait a little bit and let them grow a little bit more and then you give them something else that might be a little bit over their head to kind of help that growth of your mechanics out of the beginner mechanic into the level two and the level threes. I don't know how you feel about that.

Brad Champion:

Yeah, I mean I guess I'm doing the same way with my son, but he's 14 but he wants to learn it so if you want to learn it, go for it. [inaudible 00:13:57] something. I'd rather for him to do a wheel seal and screw up on a wheel seal versus an engine.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

And I guess that would be anywhere, I mean, or any entry level tech.

Melissa:

Yeah, well that's a common misconception that a lot of kids have nowadays leaving trade schools because they're in these trade schools and they're rebuilding engines or they're tearing apart engines and they're doing all these major component. I mean I did it in WyoTech. When I went to WyoTech, we tore apart transmissions like the Eden Fuller 18 speeds and shit like that. We tore apart all those transmissions and put them back together and we had engines we tore apart and put back together. And then in Advanced Diesel I actually rebuilt with my team, we rebuilt a C15 Acer out of a fucking 379 Peterbilt. And so you get kind of this high confidence of like I can do this shit. And I think a lot of people, when I entered the industry, I've always been kind of a humble person. Right? I've always been a just give me the work, let me prove myself.

I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's oil changes, I don't care what it is, just give me the work and let me prove myself, let me work. I love these machines, I love what I do, just give me work. But there's some kids that enter this industry that they did these big jobs with obviously the advisement of instructors in these tech schools and then they enter the industry and they're only doing oil changes for the first two months and they're like, what the fuck? It gives them a false conception of what they need to expect. Nobody, no dealership and no private industry, no shop owner is going to give a kid fresh out of fucking college, an engine rebuild or any kind of major engine work or major transmission work. No one's going to do that.

You have to earn that. And there's a lot of kids nowadays that don't want to take those steps in between the learning curve and the learning process in between oil changes and batteries and pre-delivery inspections and stuff like that to engine rebuilds, transmission rebuilds, axle rebuilds, shit like that. They don't want to take those in between learning steps. And to me it's frustrating to work with those kids.

Brad Champion:

Well, they come into a shop with a big head fresh out of school. I know it all.

Melissa:

Yep.

Brad Champion:

Well you don't know it all. You learn something different every day.

Melissa:

Yep. One year of trade school is not going to... I think it's more helpful than just throwing yourself into the industry without the training at all. But it's not going to replace the years it takes to learn a lot of this shit. It's not a replacement for the years of experience.

Brad Champion:

And I tell some of them, they'll come in, well I can do this and I can do that. Okay, you have the tools to do it. Well no I'd have to borrow them. Then why am I going to put you on that job if you don't have the tools to do that job?

Melissa:

Well, especially in the private industry. You don't have a big giant tool area full of dealership provided tools.

Brad Champion:

No. And tools have gotten dad gum outrageous.

Melissa:

Oh my god. Yeah. And it's not even just Snap On. It's all of them. Like Maaco and Cornwell and Mac, they are all equally as expensive as Snap On. So you can't fucking escape it. It's not even just Snap On. It makes me laugh because guys on TikTok, they're always doing the [inaudible 00:17:40] Snap On kind of jokes all the time that mechanics make jokes on Snap On all the time. Right? That's like the age old fucking joke of getting screwed over by Snap On because of the prices of the tools and it's not just Snap On. Toolboxes and Maaco are the exact same price as a fucking Snap On. And every now and then you'll come across things of like I bought my Cornwell three quarter inch impact. I bought a Cornwell one for a three quarter inch drive air impact and that was $550.

But if I would've bought the IR one on that tool truck, which was the nicer one because Cornwell sells IR, right? If I would've bought the IR one, that would've been just the exact same price as a Snap On three quarter inch drive. So it's like, I don't know, it's ridiculous. I tell my boyfriend all the time, dude, I got $150,000 worth of fucking tools sitting in that shop out there. And that's not even joking because I've got fucking four toolboxes, I got two toolboxes, two carts and then they're all full. They're all full of shit.

Brad Champion:

Me and my son was on vacation and I called my Snap On man. I said hey I want to buy that box you got on the truck the other day. They said okay and I'm on vacation and when we got back and my son seen it, I said, yep, that's your college education sitting there. I mean it's like no way. I said, yep, that's 10 grand sitting right there.

Melissa:

Yep. I got lucky. The first toolbox I ever bought was... In WyoTech, they give you a 50% off Snap On tools deal and then you get a truck loan based on your credit and all that shit. And so I got a loan through Snap On through WyoTech for I think it was like $6,800, half off Snap On tools, which I mean I got a double bay Snap On toolbox that was black, with basic black [inaudible 00:20:00] toolbox. And then I got a bunch of hand wrenches and sockets and ratchets and a couple... I think I got my half inch drive impact, air impact that time around. I bought a couple. I actually used that to buy my set of big three quarter inch drive sockets, shallow sockets, impact sockets, all kinds of stuff like that. And it took me three years to pay that off and the only reason I got it paid off in three years is because I had a family tragedy that had a payout and I used it to pay off the rest of my debt.

So then when I went to go get another toolbox because had outgrown that toolbox, had the double bay toolbox and then I got a cart like my little green tool cart and then that filled up pretty fucking fast and I was out of space and I needed a bigger toolbox and I just happened to find a Maaco guy that had a Snap On toolbox that was a trade-in and he only wanted $3,800 for it. It was a triple bay, that big red and black one I have, that's the one I bought off Maaco for $3,800 which I ended up trading in my other toolbox. So it was like my toolbox and then like $1,600 worth of cash and that's the only reason guys, I have a fucking triple bay Snap On toolbox. That is the only reason. It is not worth... I don't fucking understand the point of spending 15 grand on a brand new triple bay toolbox. I just don't get it. I mean I get it right because it's pretty and it's nice and it's new but it's not about the toolbox, it's about the tools that are in it.

Brad Champion:

Yeah, I tell kids all the time, don't worry about buying a toolbox. Go to Sears, Craftsman, Lowe's, Harbor Freight, buy a cheap box, invest money in your tools. Because you [inaudible 00:21:55] do the work. [inaudible 00:21:58]. I used old cheap toolbox up until a year ago and the thinking I thought about was I've been doing this 27 years. I'm going to own a nice toolbox before I retire.

Melissa:

Well at that point it's not necessarily about I'm going to either spend my money on a toolbox or I'm going to spend my money on tools I need. You already have the tools you need. I just watch a lot of kids nowadays that they're like, oh well I have the most basic set of tools possible, but I'm going to go and buy a $10,000 toolbox and I'm going to fill up two drawers of that. Right? With tools. It's like bro, that $10,000 that you just spent on that toolbox could have gotten you so many tools that you need. So many tools that you need. And obviously these are kids that are just starting in the industry. I understand wanting to have a nice box and the Snap On boxes really do. The name brand boxes are so much nicer. I've worked with a lot of people that have off-brand tool boxes and it's just they roll nice.

The drawers are nice. If they break, the Snap On man fixes it for free. I love my snap on boxes. I really do. I love them. But I would never trade a toolbox and spend money on a toolbox if I needed tools. Right? The only reason I have a big triple base Snap On toolbox is because it was cheap as fuck and I needed more storage space and I managed to get away with getting this for $1,600. That's a pretty damn good fucking deal for a triple bay toolbox even not name brand. That's the only reason I did.

Brad Champion:

Yeah, I mean kids need to be worried about when they come into this buying tools, not big fancy boxes. That'll come.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

If you're going to do this, buy you tools, invest your time and money in tools, that way you've got it. You don't have to rely on borrowing from somebody else. I come from a dealership life where if you borrowed somebody's tool more than twice, you better own it because you ain't getting it next time.

Melissa:

That's a rule that almost all like senior mechanics have. If you borrow my more than once or more than twice, you better fucking be buying that motherfucker.

Brad Champion:

But I know guys in other shops that they work out of each other's box.

Melissa:

That's fucking ridiculous.

Brad Champion:

I can't do deal with that. Uh-uh.

Melissa:

I understand helping people, right? I understand helping people or sometimes people need to borrow shit. It's a team environment. You work as a team but you've got to fucking invest your own into your own shit because if you leave that shop, what are you going to do? Tell your next boss. Oh well I just worked out of everybody else's toolbox. I have a story of a girl that one of my friends knows that started in a shop with no tools and was just working out of other people's toolboxes. This was a John Deere dealership, started in a John Deere dealership straight out of trade school. Made no effort to even buy a basic set of tools. She just worked out of everybody else's toolbox and she thought that was fucking acceptable. She didn't make any effort to try to buy her own box and John Deere sells boxes. You can buy boxes from John Deere dealerships that are decent.

She made no effort to buy her own toolboxes, no effort to buy her own tools at all. She just thought it was completely acceptable to work out of everybody's toolboxes and that is just fucking not okay. It's not okay. You need to be as independent as you possibly can be. Even though you're in a shock with other mechanics, you need to be as independent as you can be.

Brad Champion:

Exactly. And that's even my son, he goes out. He'll go to Harbor Freight and buy something if he needs it. He wants to work on his own truck. He's restoring a truck and he's buying his own tools to do it because he don't want to get in my toolbox or get in the tool truck to get what he's got to have.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

And when he gets older, he's going to have a nice little set up. It might be cheap Harbor Freight, some of that stuff's good. I buy it to go on my service truck because I'd rather lose it than I would a $40 Snap On wrench.

Melissa:

Yep. All of my jumbo wrenches, my big jumbo wrenches, I have a set of angled wrenches and a set just normal closed end and open-end wrenches. All of my jumbo wrenches are Pittsburgh. Those jumbo sets you buy from Harbor Freight because I think I have angled Snap On angle wrenches up to an inch and five sixteens and then everything else is Pittsburgh and then I have standard wrenches Snap On up to inch and a quarter and then everything else is Pittsburgh because my Pittsburgh wrenches have never fucking let me down as jumbo wrenches because they're used for hydraulics. Right? That's what you use them for most of the time. And half the time that shit's so tight that you're sitting there hammering on it, right, to try and break the fitting loose and stuff like that. I don't want to do that. At that point, if you have that big of a Snap On wrench, that's a $200 wrench.

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah. All day.

Melissa:

Fuck that. I ain't doing that. I know some guys that are super proud of their whole giant wrench set that's Snap On. It's like, bro, I get wanting to have nice tools. I cannot use... As a mechanic, I am spoiled and I spoiled myself. I cannot use anything other than Snap On pliers. Every other set of pliers fucking is maddening to me. It just fucking pisses me off. I have Mac ones that I fucking hate, that I thought I wanted and it turns out I did not. And I love Snap On flank drive plus wrench hand wrenches and their angle wrenches are patented so you cannot find another set of angle wrenches with those same angle degrees. There's certain things that I will only buy name brand, but then there's a lot of other shit that you don't need name brand. I've worked with mechanics that have all fucking sets of Pittsburgh shit, and you listen over there and you listen to their ratchet and it's got three teeth in it.

You listen to it and you're like, bro, how are you not mad? How is this not maddening? But I mean it's also back to the reality that you don't need an 8,000 toothed wrench or ratchet to get a job done.

Brad Champion:

Exactly. Hell, I cut wrenches up all the time and I'd rather cut a Harbor Freight wrench up than I would a nice Snap On.

Melissa:

I have a whole set of Harbor Freight, those long ones, those extra long wrenches. I have a whole set of those for specifically for that reason for cutting them up.

Brad Champion:

Bending and cutting.

Melissa:

Well sometimes you have to. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Yeah. And every now and then I find certain tools that [inaudible 00:29:19] skid steer pumps. They have the pot. I don't know if you ever worked on a skid steer, but they got a hydraulic pump stack that bolts onto the back of the engine and then a little hydraulic pump that's bolted to the hydrostatic pump stack and to get the hydrostatic pump stack on it's got two bolts that are 18 millimeter that bolted to the flywheel. And I don't know what the fuck happens when you run that machine, but those things are tighter than a motherfucker, and you can't get on the... If you're facing, I guess kind of backwards, if you're facing the engine in the middle of it, the fucking right hand side bolt, you can't get to it. You cannot get anything on that except for them half moon wrenches.

So I bought specifically a half moon wrench set from Snap On or Maaco. Half moon wrench set that I can sit there and I put it on that bolt and it's so tight I have to take my long pry bar and pry it to break it loose. And then you have to pry it to tighten it because you can't get a wobble socket in there. You can't get a normal wrench in there. You can get an 18 millimeter wrench in there, but not real great. The open end kind of doesn't fit that great, so it just fucking ends up browning it off. So that's kind of my rule is with specialty tools like that and name brand is if it really actually makes a difference in your job, then get it. But if it's not actually going to make that big of a difference, then probably not worth it.

Brad Champion:

That's like specialty tools at these dealerships. The independent guy. We got to make that stuff.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

And that's the reason we buy the cheap stuff so we can make it.

Melissa:

Yep. Yeah, dealerships get... I mean we have obviously... I mean you still make tools. When I worked at that first [inaudible 00:31:18] shop I worked at, we had an 870, which is an 87 metric ton excavator that had a bucket cylinder that needed resealed and the nut on that motherfucker was this big for the piston nut and we did not have. We had the hydraulic torque bench, we had all that shit, but we did not have a fucking socket big enough for that. And I actually made a socket with flat stock, like thick ass fucking flat stock and I welded a fucking socket for this motherfucker, and we welded that. We welded that, and we welded a plate onto it with a little cutout that we could hook the hydraulic cylinder, pin the hydraulic cylinder to it. I mean, we made that. We're a dealership. We are a John Deere dealership and we had to make that, which that is my pride and joy because that was literally 25,000 psi we had to torque that thing too and it held.

So I was super proud of that because I don't claim to be a welder by any means. I know how to weld, but I don't claim to be some phenomenal fucking welder. But you got to be innovative. Right. And I'm sure in the private world you guys got to be even more innovative obviously than the dealerships.

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah. We just can't run back here and get what specialty tool we need.

Melissa:

Yep. Do you guys make your own seal installers and shit like that?

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah. Like a wooden hammer [inaudible 00:32:53]. We've used it to put rear main seals and which when I worked for Cummins, I bought all my specialty tools just so I would have.., Because you'd go back there to the back room a lot of times they wasn't there.

Melissa:

And then you got to hunt down every fucking tool bench in the shop trying to find who has it.

Brad Champion:

Yes.

Melissa:

It's annoying.

Brad Champion:

After doing that, I just started buying everything I need. Even now on the DD15's, DD13's you got the fuel line. They make a socket to take those out. You can use a crow's foot to get them out, but I figure, well I got on Amazon one day, they're 10 bucks.

Melissa:

Fucking worth it.

Brad Champion:

Spend the $10 for the specialty tool and be done with it.

Melissa:

Yep, yep. That's worth it for sure. There's a couple... I've bought a couple of John Deere specialty tools. They have this little seal puller slide hammer, which is like, it's just a little slide hammer that's this big and it's got a little end on it that you can hook a self-tapping screw into and if you have the room to use that, it works fucking amazing for seals, for pulling seals out. I fucking love that thing. I bought that thing and then I bought the 13 five camshaft timing tools, which are the camshaft pin and the crank shaft pin. And then because that's actually an overhead cam engine and then the little tiny, they have these little teeny, teeny tiny feeler gauges specifically for adjusting valves on that. And I bought that set because I got really fucking tired of the same thing.

I'd go back in the tool room to try and find... We have 10 sets of these motherfuckers and they're nowhere, nowhere to be found. No one knows where they are. So I just finally got tired of it and bought my own set. I've got an injector on those old 6076 engines with the big fucking nozzles. I think it's 6076, but they got the big nozzles with the big multi-sided fucking 12 point head on it. And I bought the tool for that. But as a dealership it's kind of, I don't know. Those tools are fucking expensive too even for a dealership mechanic are freaking pricey.

Brad Champion:

Exactly. That's the reason again, we fall short. We don't have the luxury of all that stuff.

Melissa:

Yeah. Well, I've even run into, with my Cummins truck that I have, my second gen, I went ahead and I bit the bullet and I bought the front main seal and seal installer tools for that and I bought the cam shaft gear or the fuel pump gear removal tool and those weren't that expensive honestly. Those really weren't that bad. But I just went ahead and bit the bullet and did it because I got really tired of... I did the same thing. I would use makeshift shit to try and do a front main seal or sit there with the fucking rubber mallet trying to get the gear to come off the front of the fuel pump and I finally just bought those tools and I think the fuel pump tool was like $7, worth it. Completely worth it.

Brad Champion:

Especially if you don't-

Melissa:

It's just a plate and two bolts that pulls the fucking gear off. It's fucking completely worth it.

Brad Champion:

Especially if you're going to use it more than once.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Brad Champion:

I go ahead and get it.

Melissa:

Which I have two of those trucks and we all know the infamous VP44, so obviously I'm going to be using that more than once.

Brad Champion:

Oh yeah.

Melissa:

I mean I got my own opinion on the VP44. I personally think if you have a low pressure fuel system that is adequate, you'll probably will never have an issue. But I mean, shit I had that truck, that maroon truck I have that has 380 some thousand miles on it and I didn't put a new fuel pump on it until, I don't know, 5,000 miles ago. And actually it didn't fix my problem. Granted, I wanted an upgraded one, so that's part of the reason why I did it, because there was some performance things I wanted at the same time, but the original fuel pump was actually good, but I had an air dog fuel system on that for years. So I think that would... Cummins shortfall is not the VP44. The VP44 in my opinion is not the problem. It is their shit fucking low pressure fuel pump that is a problem with those trucks. [inaudible 00:37:53] the world. It's like, nah, nah.

I mean that's cool and all. It's cool to say you have a [inaudible 00:37:58] pump, but I really, really like being able to fucking spend 10 minutes and plug a tuner into mine and have 180 horsepower. That's pretty cool. I'm a mechanic and I love building shit, but if it's easier, why the fuck not? It's literally the same power. It's like the same... You can get the same shit.

Brad Champion:

Work smarter, not harder.

Melissa:

Exactly. The only reason why people love the 12 valves so much is because you can swap it into anything because it's a fucking mechanical engine. Other people are always like, oh, why don't you 12 valves swap things, 12 valves swap. It's like, yeah, I love the 12 valve and all, but the only reason you want a 12 valve swap the world is because it's fucking easy. Go swap something that's harder. It's easy to swap a mechanical engine into a fucking seventies pickup truck. Right? That's not that fucking hard. All the gauges are already mechanical. Everything's already mechanical. There's no controllers that you have to fucking have talking to each other. It's fucking easy.

Brad Champion:

That's the reason everybody's doing it.

Melissa:

Exactly. That's why I always tell people, I'm like, dude, the only reason everybody's 12 valve swapping everything is because it's fucking easy. I love 12 valves. I like Cummins engines. I've seen some pretty sick 12 valve swapped old Fords and Chevys and stuff like that, but it's like, man, you could almost do the exact same thing with a fucking 24 valve. It would just be a little bit harder. But they're standalone engines, so as long as you could get electronic gauges and shit, it would probably work. But I've thought about that a lot. I'm not going to go into my whole fucking spew about 12 and 24 valve trucks because I'm going to have a lot of people hate me. I'm going to have the 12 valve guys cancel culturing me right now.

Brad Champion:

It'll be all right.

Melissa:

But well, if there's any... I don't know if there's anything else you want to try to cover or anything else you want to talk about. We can wrap this up. I think we covered things pretty good on the whole dealership versus private industry and switching over to the private industry and the struggles with that and the training, and I think that's something that I don't think we've covered yet. So good. I don't know if there's anything else you want to cover while we're here.

Brad Champion:

I'm good if you're good.

Melissa:

All right. Well thank you for being a part of the podcast. I don't know if you would like to share with everybody how they could get ahold of you, your business or social media or whatever you want to do. If not, that's fine. We can just end it. I'm supposed to ask anyways.

Brad Champion:

They can look me up on Facebook Champion Auto Truck and Trailer Repair, or they can message me on Facebook and I can respond back to them.

Melissa:

I'd just like to give people a chance, especially when you own your own business, right? share it with everybody. Well, thank you for being on here and I appreciate your time.

Brad Champion:

Thanks for having me.