Sooo... Pep Boys Hates me now... hehe

Not really, but a funny story none the less... anyone who read my other thread i wrote yesterday noticed i said my next thing to do was cabin filter, and that the guy at pep boys quoted me $15 bucks to do it, not realizing when i told him my 328 was a 1999, that it was an E36 instead of an E46... so i picked up my filter today and took it by...

told the tech at the counter what i needed done and he verified the price of $15 and said they would take care of it... so for ****s i walked outside the bay door to watch, mentioning to the guy that was doing it, that i had seen some DIY info and that they way to do it was by either removing the glovebox or passenger footwell. so he chose the glovebox... 20 minutes later he asked me how much labor was and i told him $15 bucks, and he said he was afraid he was gonna break something, and that he would take a look at the footwell, and if it was gonna be too much of a pain he would just put things back together and not mess with it.

So he then begins taking off the screws to the footwell and pulls down the plastic, and removes the light and looks up.. i then told him he would have to remove the ductwork for the footwell to gain access to it, and that there were 2 plactic rivots that needed to be removed for the ducts to come off. He then turns around and looks at me, and says he was going to go smoke a cig, and consult his computer on it, and come back and see what he could do... i told him a lot of techs just pull it and break the plastic rivots and just replace them, but he was sure there was a better way... as he got up and walked off i reached down, pulled the ductwork off, turned the knob, opened the access door, and removed the filter in about 1 minute from that point and decided to smoke another cig while waiting on him to get back...


5 minutes later he came back, and after consulting his computer, started saying "oh, its not even down there, its under this hood here.. i said "no its not" and he then said "how much do you wanna bet??" and i told him "$100 bucks right now.."and he smiled all big and proceeded to remove the rubber from around the housing under the windshield... after lifting it up and seeing that a filter wasnt there, i told him to go look by the passenger side door, where i now had the old cabin filter laying on the ground..

he then looked at the filter and picked it up, looked at where i had pulled it from and said" Why do you even come here?" and i told him "in case im not right.. lol " i then told him how the new filter had to be broken in 3 places so it would bend to make it around the turn and up into the holder, which he did, and he then put everything back together.

when he was finished he said "Im never correcting you again, this is the second time i have tried to correct you and you have been right" and was laughing so i handed him a 10 dollar tip and told him "well, i guess you know how to do it now, and i wont **** it up next time if i try to do it and went inside and paid... im just glad they have good humor there...

anyways theres a funny... cabin filter is now changed and OMG if i had to judge the difference it would seem like till i had it changed the controls wouldnt go past 1/4 of full speed till now... finally tried out my "Auto" button with good results for the first time in the last 3 1/2 years i have owned the car... no telling when the filter was last changed... :thumbup:

And no, i didnt make him pay up the $100 for losing the bet...