My lesson will arrive shortly. First I want to make this clear, I always was a hard worker, I shoveled snow in the winter, mowed lawns in the summer, washed cars, whatever I could do to scrape a few bucks together. I had my first car repair job at 14 years old at a VW only shop. So I was very entrepreneurial and earned money, and liked to spend it on new parts, the keyword here is new.

What was happening was that I kept breaking that poor Mustang transmission every 6 months. Not matter how many upgrades were put in my transmission, it still broke. Broken parts did not count to me. I thought that’s why I had a dad, to pay for broken parts!

It is not hard to do if you use certain youthful tactics such as holding the brake and flooring the gas pedal until the tires would literally spin so hard they would produce white smoke or revving the engine in neutral and popping it in gear so you can get the tire spinning concept going with more “shock” value. Either tactic is a good recipe for needing a rebuilt heavy duty automatic transmission, regularly. We did not have an experienced, quality transmission supplier back then like GotTransmissions.com.

I guess it was the third or fourth time it broke!! My dad had been paying the bill for it, so my thoughts were, ‘what the heck, lets go do it again’. Well this time he said that was it, he knew it was my abusive driving style that was causing these transmission failures, not burnt transmission fluid or “I don’t know why this happened” was causing the failures.

To put it simply, he told me that he was going to pay the shop and drive the car home himself, park it in the garage and leave it there, not to be messed with, until I paid him off.

Wake up call. You want me to pay for the whole thing? Holy cow, this is not as much fun as it was when you paid for it. That was the point he said. You start to pay for your bad judgment with this car and I bet you don’t break it so much. No truer words were ever said. It did not kill my love and desire to go fast. I still loved and played with cars then, as I do today, although not as much now. Never broke a transmission again!!

Well, for me it totally changed the way I drive. I learned real quick to respect my machinery. As I said I always changed the fluids and oils early and was meticulous about care for my car, but now I made driving “the art of going slow” and making my cars last. i did not like to pay for broken stuff.
Anyway, no one can see how ‘cool’ you are when you are going fast. Basically now, “I’m a styler and profiler”.

Incidentally, I worked for ATI for few years, got my chance at rebuilding transmissions a year or so later and took advantage of it. I moved to Florida in 1979, I opened a transmission specialty repair shop a few years later in 1981. We had a great business until I sold it in 2006. Now I can fill you with my vibes on transmissions.

Got a question or comment or some advise, please share it. All legitimate questions wiil be answered.

Take my hint, and read our GotTransmissions.com blog for more good vibes on car care and how not to need to replace your transmission every 6 months!! Enjoy..