Larsen Repair Again Hits A Home Run

I feel like explaining, once again, why we insist on taking our vehicles to Larsen Repair in Iona to get work done on them.

You've read here earlier about the brake trouble we had on our Toyota pickup over the weekend, and our interactions with yet another Rexburg-area auto repair shop. To recap: They had the truck in their shop for two hours and "Couldn't find anything wrong," but wanted to charge us $400 for new brake pads, turning of the rotors and other ancillary repairs, on top of the $88 they were already charging us for the time spent "diagnosing" the problem.

We demurred, and took the truck -- which was drivable, but evidently only just -- the 26 miles to Iona. Kevin -- in an act of derring-do the others evidently didn't try since they could not "find" the problem -- actually drove the truck around and, for a while, couldn't find the problem either. Then as he was pulling the truck back onto their lot, the brakes locked. He quickly jacked the truck up where it was and found that the master cylinder -- a part the other mechanics didn't mention in their promises of exploratory surgery -- was faulty. We'll get a new one put in tomorrow, for about $200.

So, on the one hand, we had a mechanic who wanted to charge us nearly $500 to guess at the problem. On the other, we had a mechanic who actually drove the truck around until the problem duplicated itself and can fix it for $200. Is it any wonder we keep going back? Oh, and the brake pads and rotors the Rexburg guys wanted to replace and turn, respectively? Kevin says they're just fine.

Kevin and Greg keep singlehandedly repairing the reputation of mechanics everywhere, and we're now 0 for 3 in Rexburg-area mechanics. That's not a good average.