youtube.com/car_wizard/the_smart_car_nightmare_why_mechanics_say_no

3 excerpts.

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youtube.com/car_wizard/the_smart_car_nightmare_why_mechanics_say_no · p. 1 · Applies to: 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, #1, ebike

Here we are again with yet another smart car. I love these cars. So many shops won't even work on them or even look at them. This one's got a long list, too. Let's find out what's wrong with it. Let's get started. This is a 2015 smart car, and there are a lot of these on the road. We've been working on tons of them. This customer brought it in with several concerns and quite a list of things to look at. They have approved 90% of everything to get repaired. We're going to go through and show you everything that we found. These cars are pretty good. They're fairly reliable, but unfortunately, as most customers, when they drop off a smart car, they I hear the same thing over and over. I went to this shop. I went to that shop. And all I kept hearing is two words. Hell no. I ain't touching that. I don't even want it in my parking lot. Get that out of here. We're the opposite here at Omega. You could line these things up with 30 of them out the door and I'd be happy. They're easy to work on. The parts are plentiful. They're so easy. It's like a go-kart. And it kind of looks like Mario Kart, Mrs. Wizard. >> It really does being up in the air halfway. >> It's like a banana peel went under. Honestly, they're really cool cars. But just keep in mind underneath this facade is a MercedesBenz. Guess what? So will be the prices for your parts. Mercedes-Benz prices. They're not cheap to fix. They can be more expensive than a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla or something. But if you live in a large city, these things are excellent. You can zoom in and out of town. You can parallel park. You can get into tight spaces. They're really, really good at that. Let's take a look around this smart car. It looks like our Persian cat's face, Mrs. Wizard. >> It really does. It looks kind of like Daisy's face being all flat. >> Yeah. This one's white, obviously, and it has some kind of hub caps on it. They're kind of plastic hub caps with steel wheels. We're going to show you some issues we found with the tires here in a minute. Not a very long trip around, Mrs. Wizard. >> No, this is a very, very short little trip around here, >> but it's not beat up, not damaged or anything. It is missing. Looks like a hub cap on the rear right wheel. Let's go ahead and take a look in the trunk or the engine space. So, a frequent question I get asked, how do I even see the engine on my smart car? Well, it's definitely not up front. There's nothing up there but a radiator and a steering rack. And that's pretty much it. They're in the back underneath the trunk floor. Let me show you. Step one, pop the top glass. Then there's step two. You have to open the tailgate with these little tabs here and that comes down. Then there's a little like a little rubber band. It's almost you just pull up on it and you remove this panel. And underneath there is where our engine is at. And one thing to keep in mind, MercedesBenz approves these oils, not Smart Car. This Smart Car is not the brand. MercedesBenz is the brand here. Okay, so that's how you get to the engine on these. I definitely want to keep pushing the Mercedes-Benz thing because if you're looking to buy one of these, you do need to know and I want you guys to know what you're getting when you buy it. You're getting a Mercedes-Benz. Let's let Mrs. Wizard show you guys around the little interior. It's really small. >> I always love the gauge cluster on these cars. They are so cute. Everything about this car is just cute. But it does say 44,484 miles in here. And so, yep, it's doing good. Look up there. This dash is kind of a fiber dash. It's kind of got a fabric feel to it. Got our airbag there. We've got a little smell good vent there. We've got what my daughter would call the snack shelf right there. Keep that all your snacks nicely laid out there. As we move to our center, we can see we've got our vents on the top and oh, we've got a mustache on the radio. Loving the screaming Sicilian there going on. Okay, as we move down, we can see that it is a automatic transmission. But doesn't this look very much like it could be easily switched to a manual transmission. Yeah, with that little design, it can go either way. We go in front. This is where our cup holders are. As we move back, here is our key location. It is not up by the column. It is actually here in between the seats. And yes, the width of my hand, that is it. Width of my hand is all you get between you and the passenger. So, it is narrow, but it is actually wide enough. The seat is full size. Has no bolster, even though it probably could, cuz this could have fun drifting around corners. So, we get to our door card. You'll see that it has more of that kind of that fibrous material. Zoom in there for you, but also plastic with some silver accents. So, looking nice. Um, there is no back seat. This is a two-seater. and does have a small cargo area where you could probably get maybe four, five, maybe six bags of groceries. Got a very large moonroof which actually does cover most of the entire cab. And as we get back to that steering wheel, love, we

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youtube.com/car_wizard/the_smart_car_nightmare_why_mechanics_say_no · p. 2 · Applies to: 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, #1, ebike

have the smart logo here. So yeah, this interior doesn't look very Mercedes, but that engine in the back behind me, it definitely is. Let's get this up in the air. See if we can see any other Mercedes parts. Wizard scoot back. I can't. I'm already at the end of the car. Just joking, guys. It's really It is a tiny little car. There is a radiator and some hoses and things up here. You definitely want to check for any coolant leaks or anything like that, but obviously there's no engine or transmission or anything up in this area. Nothing like that. We'll check these wheels out. Brakes are about 70% remaining. Struts are not blown. Sway bar links are good. Nothing loose. Brakes are good. Struts are not blown. Sway bar link is not broken or loose. And nothing loose on the wheel. And I'm going to take three steps back. Just three. And we'll be at the engine bay. One, two, three. That's it. There's really not much to show in the middle of the car. There's not much going on. Just a bunch of panels and things. The real business of this car is right here. Everything is packaged at the rear of the car. car. We have this huge beam axle and then we have our little one L threecylinder engine. That's right, just three cylinders. It is a manual transmission, but not manual like you would think. It's similar to a Ferrari F1 transmission or the Lamborghini E-geear or the Audi Artronic, things like that. It has this servo here. There's some electronics that does the shifting and also the clutch for you. And we can see right here we have output shaft seals on the transaxle are leaking pretty bad. We've already let the customer know they've approved that repair. We're also going to be doing a belt. The old one's getting dry rotted and cracked. But you can see the oil change is really easy. There's our huge drain plug. Look how big it is, guys. It's like a 15/16 or a 22 mm or some something huge. Here's our baby little oil filter. And in true Mercedes style, guess what? It needs motor mounts. It seems like that's a thing with BMWs and Mercedes is motor mounts last about 50 to 100,000 miles and they usually start cracking or start sagging. This one has got some severe cracking going on. It's literally tearing in half. I could put my screwdriver all the way in there. So, that is very bad. Danielson checked this over. He checked up top and those motor mounts are cracked as well. So, it's getting all motor mounts getting replaced. We got these output shaft seals. Several other things we're doing, some services, but it has one other issue, and it is tires. Let me show you that. We can see right here, 15th week of 2024, so they're fairly new tires. But here's the thing. There's no such thing as rotating your tires on a smart car. It's just like a Lamborghini. It's staggered or Ferrari, whatever. The tires in the back are quite a bit larger and wider than the front. It has 1755 R15s in the back, but in the front it's different. Let's take a look at that one. These up front are 15560 R-15. You can see they're not as tall and definitely not as wide. They're like little motorcycle tires almost. This is a problem with smart cars is finding the tires. We did let the customer know because Daniel's son was road testing this and it seems kind of squirly and he found out what's wrong. So, we see a 15560 R15 on the passenger front. It should also be the same size on the driver front, but it's not. Let's go take a look. 1755R15, which means that one side's sitting higher than the other in the front, and when you go to steer, it makes it really squirly. It's really strange feeling. Daniel's son was like, "Man, this thing feels weird to drive." I believe the customer just had some trouble locating the correct size tire. On the last Smart Car we had in the shop, we had to wait a week for our local tire shop to get the tires ordered in. They were like, "We can't find any except for this one supplier, and it's going to take a week." So, you just don't show up at a tire store on a smart car and get tires. Keep that in mind. You're probably going to have to special order them and wait for them to show up. Let's get this thing on the ground. So, the tires are special order and they can be kind of a pain to get, but otherwise the rest of the parts are fairly attainable. You just got to keep in mind your average O'Reilly's or Autozone or Napa or Carquest or whoever it is that you use is not just going to stock a bunch of smart car parts. They usually don't stock very many Euro parts. Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover. They don't really stock a bunch of those parts. I actually have a separate supplier that I use. It's basically mail order. I have an app. I go through and click what I need and a

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youtube.com/car_wizard/the_smart_car_nightmare_why_mechanics_say_no · p. 3 · Applies to: 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, #1, ebike

day or two later everything shows up because you're just not going to find these parts locally. You have to keep that in mind when you have one of these cars. We did find quite a list of things that this car needs. One of them being the rear wiper washer and things are not working on this car. The customer does not want to dive in and figure out why or any of that. They said that just skip that one. I'm not even interested in paying for that. But the output shaft seals, the motor mounts, belt, fluid services, a whole slew of things that we're doing. Wipers, these wipers are shot. It's going to be a couple thousand dollar, maybe even more. But it's worth it because who else is going to work on this? The customer drove all this way to get it done. They wanted to be in tip-top shape. Let's get it done is what they said. Nothing on here is majorly wrong, though. I have worked on a ton of smart cars, lots of them, and I have yet to find one coming to the shop that's catastrophically broken. I've actually never had to give the bad news to the customer that this thing is beyond repair or not worth it or the transmission's messed up or the engine shelled out or I've never had to do that. So, are they reliable like a Toyota? No, not even close. But they're not bad either. They're actually fairly reliable if you take care of them and maintain them like this customer is doing. They're getting everything up to snuff, make sure everything's good to go. They are going to be trying to find one of those other tires to get the other side even with the passenger side. But if you take care of them, they can last quite a while. You just have to know going in, you're looking at one of these on the lot, you're interested in buying a smart car, you have to understand it's not a smart car, it's a Mercedes-Benz. So, expect to pay Mercedes-Benz European car prices. The labor rates are going to be higher and you're going to have quite the trouble trying to find someone who will actually take it into their shop. And just like I've mentioned many times in the past, it's so baffling to me that people just refuse to work on these. It's like someone brought a Bugatti Chiron into the shop. Oh god, get that out. I don't want it in here. Guys, they're so easy to work on. It's like a lawn mower. The engine is so tiny. I think I could unbolt it and probably pull it out by hand. It's so little. It kind of reminds me of working on the air cooled beetles of yesterday year. I've worked on several of those, not tons, but they're just so easy to work on. So easy. So, the customer did approve. Like I said, 90% of the repairs. The parts are actually already here. We're going to go ahead and get this thing sorted out. If you got a smart car and you need somebody to work on it, we're happy to do it. Just keep in mind, we are moving here fairly soon to New Mexico. probably in July we're going to be having our grand opening date down there. No, we're not closing the the shop forever. We're not shutting down the YouTube channel either. We are kind of semi-retiring. We're moving down there, downsizing the shop, but the YouTube channel is still going to be going and we're still going to be open for business. So, definitely keep that in mind. So, definitely wanted to get a video out there to you guys who are looking at a smart car or currently own one. You're trying to figure out who can work on it. We can definitely take care of that for you. and some of the things you can think about when you're looking to buy one or if you're looking to get it worked on, what you can expect as far as cost and time frame. So, if you're curious what kind of tools we're going to use to work on this smart car or really any other car in the shop, check our Amazon affiliates link in the description below. A lot of the tools we use every day, tried and true in the shop, are listed for sale there. And if you purchase any of them, we get a small cut and really appreciate it. Make sure to hit the subscribe button and the notification bell on your way out because we have a full schedule which means tons of videos for you guys. Thanks for watching.