Mark: Hi, it's Mark from Top Local. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. Vancouver's best auto service experience. How many times is it Bernie?
Bernie: It's 23 times
Mark: 23 time winners. Oh my God. 23 time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. And we're talking cars. How are you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing well. I think we must be getting old because we can't even remember how many times it is now.
Mark: Well, it just gets lost in the fog of, you know ... it's an honour and a privilege. My 1 brain cell. That's right. We're going to talk about a 2018 Mercedes C43 AMG. Little hot rod. What was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: So the owner called us, they had their car at the dealer. They had a leaking tire and Mercedes wanted to replace the wheel and they asked, Hey, do you guys have any, you have any options? It's a lot of money for this wheel. What can you do? And I said, absolutely, we can have the wheel repaired. So they towed the vehicle over and we proceeded to work on having the wheel repaired.
Mark: So how does a wheel like this get, have an issue like this?
Bernie: Well, it's very low profile tire on this car, and we're gonna look at pictures in a second. So with these low profile tires, the moment you hit a pothole, it's winter around Vancouver, the roads tend to get bad around this time of year, and it's easy to hit a pothole. And when you do that, the tire just doesn't have any room to compress like you would, if you had a much higher profile tire. So the wheel, you know, sometimes it'll wreck the tire. Other times it'll actually wreck the wheel, it'll crack the wheel because it'll actually hit the edge of the pothole. So this is what happened with this vehicle. It cracked the inside of the rim, not an uncommon issue. We see this on a lot of cars with low profile tires, and it's very repairable.
Mark: So doesn't need to be replaced then, basically?
Bernie: No it doesn't. Mercedes chose, I guess their only option on the menu is replacement, but for us and many other shops, and it's very general practice around the automotive industry, repairing wheels is big business. And just have a look at some pictures here.
So there's our C43. Again, you can see exceptionally low profile tire on this car, nice rim, a lot of money, $1,400 in Canada for this particular wheel. So it's not cheap. Yeah. Each yeah. Each yeah. There's inside of the wheel. And you can see a little, it's not the greatest picture, but you can see a little hairline crack and obviously when this vehicle hit the pothole or whatever happened, it crushed this tire up enough that that would actually hit something and crack the wheel. It's aluminum so it cracks.
So the repair method is basically take the tire off the wheel. They weld it and they weld in a new metal and repair and it's a hundred percent bulletproof. I mean, the one thing I will say on the downside. If you happen to be looking at the inside of the wheel, you will see this repair, but you can't see it from the road and for the cost, which is about, you know, in the two to $250 range in Canada, it's a lot cheaper to fix than buying a new wheel. There's our picture show.
Mark: So is the wheel, as good as new.
Bernie: Yeah. I'd say it absolutely is as good as new other than, you know, this vehicle did a little bit of curb rashing on it. We didn't have that repaired at this point, but that is again, another thing that wheel repair shops can do. They can actually repair wheels that are chewed up by curbs, and they do a nice job. The wheels basically come out looking as good as brand new.
So in this case, the wheel did not look as good as new, but a function absolutely as good as brand new. And I mean, unless you hit another pothole and exactly the same spot that weld will hold really nicely. We've done this many times and we've come across many wheels that have been repaired and they'll work perfectly well.
Mark: So why would the dealer not offer repairing the wheel instead of just only wanting to sell them a new wheel?
Bernie: Well, it could depend on the business model. I mean, ultimately the best repair job is to just replace the wheel with a brand new one. It's more profitable too, since they are in the business of selling parts. They make better money at it. And Mercedes you know, in my opinion, they do lots of great work, but they are a little less caring about people's wallets. They're selling the expensive cars. They don't care quite so much. It's like, well, if you don't want to do it our way, no problem. I've seen a lot of interesting repairs quoted from Mercedes that have been done in the aftermarket for fractions, like you know hundreds of the price of their quotes, because they just want to do the whole full meal deal. Yeah, I think it's partly their business model, partly, maybe some arrogance and partly some liability they're worried about. They just want to make everything perfect and right. You know, it's a high standards kind of car, so I can just kind of see where they come from and it's German, German engineering. So there's a culture around that, and I'm German.
Mark: This is coming from an AMG owner himself.
Bernie: Yeah, that's right. And my background is German too, so I can make fun of it kind of at least I hope.
Mark: So how are these C43 AMGs for reliability?
Bernie: Yeah, so far pretty good. I mean, this is a fairly new car. We haven't run into many issues with them and yeah, it's a nice car and certainly it goes like a rocket, it's like a little rocket sedan. It's pretty cool little vehicle. Good car so far. You know, give it a few more years and we'll see what some of the issues are. Again, it's a Mercedes there's more stuff that always goes wrong and a more complex car. So it'll cost you more than your average fancier Japanese car, I think to fix.
Mark: If you're looking for service for your Mercedes in Vancouver guys to see are Pawlik Automotive, or you going to crack in your wheel. Come and see them. You can reach them at (604) 327-7112 to book your appointment, you have to call and book ahead. Check out the website pawlikautomotive.com. There are literally hundreds of articles and videos on there. We've been doing this for over eight years now. Hundreds of types of cars and types of repairs of all makes and models of vehicles, light trucks. Check out the YouTube channel. Pawlik Auto Repair. We appreciate you watching and leaving us a thumbs up. And of course, thank you for watching and listening to the podcast. We really appreciate it. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thank you, Mark. Thanks for watching.
