Supposedly Pro-Shops with a bad attitude.

[Ripped]

One wonders how these places survive.

When you are building a modified car, a good amount of innovation and "can-do" attitude is important. Lots and lots of challenges to overcome, along a build.

So here I am at my work location, and I have to get the end of a stainless muffler expanded, so that it will slip-fit the s/s tailpipe. No big deal, I've had it done before.
I stop by a noteworthy local muffler shop (near my work) which always has hot muscle cars, in it, and parked around it. So I call them up, tell them what I want, they sound great over the phone.

Stop in during my coffee break, with the mufflers. Three guys in their shop proceed to be about as negative as they can possibly be, listing off every single possible reason, why I cannot expand the end of the muffler.
I spent 10 minutes standing there, listening to all the reasons, including, why I would want to use stainless steel mufflers??

One would have thought the level of difficulty was like, I was trying to put a gas turbine engine in a volkswagon beetle, if you listened to these three dummies.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, but they wasted 20 minutes of my coffee break today!

I took it to a chain muffler shop on the way back to work, and they charged me $10 for expanding the mufflers

Just goes to show you appearances aren't always what they seem.

[go-fish]

The guys work at a muffler shop not an engineering firm. I would have only needed about a minute of blathering to walk out. Can you or can't you? Thank you, goodbye.
You don't need their theories, just their labor. Some guys think they're automotive engineers because they work the counter at Pep Boys!

No offense to anyone who actually knows their trade.

[parsonsj]

I've gotten the same thing from muffler shops. Usually we get to: I'll try it for you, but no guarantee. Then it works fine. On the other hand, you hate to be in a position where the guy doing the work can ruin your stuff and get to say "I told you so" in one go. So I'm always nervous as they fire up the expander.

I think a lot of their reluctance is due to "inexperienced" guys bringing in cheap polished exhaust tips for expansion. At least that's what a couple of guys have told me.

jp

[Steve68]

You should come to FL, in Orlando, we have a local Discount Tire, all the 20somethings are tire engineers, I've never seen so much "you dont know what your talking about attitude" in a shop, I was told my Fikse striaght out of the box were bent, and my Michelins were dry rotted and why was I going to use those, here's the bad thing one's my next door neighbor, I now call him Coolio,

[Ripped]

Yeah you guys are right,
and I think most of us are okay with that.

They didn't supply the part. They are not responsible, if it breaks or cracks.
Then there are the guys who like to rant and rave about how impossible the task is, and after the rant, they find a way to do the not-so-difficult-job after all..

Yeah, and most of us also put a car on the dyno and sign a waiver.
Breaking a motor is not the same as cracking a piece of stainless ;)

Oh well, I have it done, and hopefully the install will go good tonight.