Car trouble?

My truck is already 13 years old. She's been very good to me since I've had her (c.a 1996) and for the amount of driving I do and the places I have been, I'd say Nissan designed a damn good engine.

Of course nothing is perfect and the usual preventive routine maintenance is a must.

well, one of the things I DO love about living in Mexico is the incredible low cost of automotive repair. Now, some of you might be thinking "Mexico.err...what If it's not good work? Do these guys even know what they're doing?"
well, you'd be surprised. I mean even in LA when you to go the "dealer" (if you can afford it) most likely your service repair guy or the people working on your car are probably hispanics. That being said, my point is these guys have probably been working on cars their whole life and after doing the job so long you get really good at it. When I talked to these machanincs they really had their "sh*t". Many automotive parts are made here in Mexico too which is why it it's so much cheaper.

I never went to the dealers in LA, but even at those places where you weren't sure if you should take your car there...and you're thinking "omg who much is this going to cost...." yeah, it's like that here but here it's about word of mouth. So, I asked all the guys in the band "where do you take YOUR car?" and so a few places came up. I checked em out and sure enough the result was a great price (even if they charged me a little more for my CA plates) it was still a hell of a deal.

So, bottom line, I had my front and rear brakes done (metallic) for $125 bucks USD equivalent plus a whole mess of electrical problems I was having (nothing major) except one where not enough electrical power was going into the engine to crank the starter (that was annoying) well, I got it all fixed for $50 bucks! I was very happy :-D

also, the art of "negotiating" comes into play here because they'll often set a price and wait to see what your reaction is. Especially if they see out of state and OUT OF COUNTRY license plates. So, negotiating is "the thing" and it's not weird or rude to do it. You end up getting pretty good at it and you get a great price.

Now the only thing that would have made the experience better would have been to have someone like this working on my car!