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Old 07-12-2013, 07:31 PM   #1
darthalal
Scooby Specialist
 
Member#: 114208
Join Date: May 2006
Chapter/Region: BAIC
Location: EWWW, CA
Vehicle:
2007 MINI Cooper S
Grumpy Old Man Tan (SSM)

Default Successful First Timing Belt Change at Pit Row DIY in Santa Clara

I just moved here to the Bay area for a summer internship and was having some issues with my car (02 WRX) - most notably a cracked radiator that liked to spray coolant all over the place once the car heated up (hooray!), and a timing belt that was way overdue to be changed. I'm a grad student outside of the summer internship so my budget is quite low, and I decided to tackle these problems myself, to save as much money as I could, and also learn - Timing belt replacement is tricky and expensive to get wrong, but too intriguing for me to be able to pay someone else to put one in. My apartment complex here won't let me perform any car maintenance, and I don't know anyone here well enough yet to ask to make a mess in their garage for a weekend so I did some google searching to find an alternative and came across the Pit Row website.

First impressions were great - I emailed them asking for clarification on their pricing and hours, and Dennis, the owner, responded very quickly with an answer to my questions, so I decided to give it a shot. First thing I noticed when I arrived was that the shop was very clean and organized, with a number of lifts arranged in a row on either side of a large warehouse-type building. Each lift station has a large toolbox where each drawer is labeled, and the contents of each drawer were organized into custom foam cutouts for each tool. Fantastic - if I had a garage, I would want it to be this organized. There are compressed air hookups near every lift, and each toolbox has an assortment of hoses and air tools - I didn't use any of these for my repairs, but it's nice to know the option was there. There are also containers to collect used oil, coolant, etc., so you don't have to worry about what to do with what you drain out of your car.

Ran into one or two pesky stuck bolts, and found out they have PB Blaster and other things available for you to use. Later on, I had some issues removing the original hoses from the water pump to remove the pump for replacement; the owner saw I was having an issue and popped them right off for me. I ruined my thermostat gasket when taking the thermostat out of the old pump - I let the owner know what happened and decided to replace the thermostat, too, just to be safe, and a phone call and a few minutes later I had a new t-stat and seal from his distributor - and I was only charged the cost of the parts. Got the new water pump in and replaced all of the pulleys and tensioner for the timing belt, and finally got the new timing belt on and properly positioned - they even had a small telescoping mirror so I could be certain the harder-to-see notches of the belt were in the appropriate places. After I got everything else all put together, I noticed the replacement radiator needed a cap, and my old rad didn't have one (cap is on the upper reservoir above the turbo on the '02's). It was around 7PM on Saturday when I got to this point, so it was too late to have parts delivered, but the owner got in his own car and ran to pick me one up, again only charging me for the cost of the cap... Thanks to this I was able to get everything (plus an oil change and a few random things, like fixing the screws holding my lip up) in about 7 hours. Not bad considering that two of them were spent being too chicken to start the car after I replaced the belt

The owner and his wife were great. I was doing this work during the heat wave we had at the end of last month, and his wife (who works the front desk) always made sure I had a nice cold bottle of water, and Dennis would pop in every once in a while and make sure I wasn't having any issues, and offered advice whenever I had questions. Overall, I had a really great experience here, and as someone who prefers to do the work and maintenance myself, but without a garage or tools here to do so, Pit Row is a no-brainer. I wouldn't hesitate to wrench on my car there in the future!

Blah-blah disclaimer:
I'm not at all affiliated with Pit Row. I just had a great experience there and feel like places that get things right need to be rewarded, rather than what seems to be the current situation where the only publicity I see anyone receive is negative.


tl;dr: If you want to wrench on your car and don't have a place to do it or the tools, Pit Row might be worth looking at.
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