There are several reasons people take their starter or alternator apart. One is they are usually don't have any money to buy a replacement, can't find one at a salvage and hope they can figure out what's wrong and repair it themselves to save some money. Another is that they want to find out how bad it is and whether it's worth repairing. Some people think that if they disassemble it, it will save them some of the labor expense of having me tear it down. I should also add that some people don't trust the person they will have work on it and don't want to get ripped off by being over-charged for parts they don't need. Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous repair men out there that do rip some people off!
A lot of times customers quickly find out that these newer units are not like the old Delco units that were simple to work on and are too complicated to fix! Whatever the reason, they end up bringing me the mess they have created and want me to fix it. This presents me with several problems. The first is, since they took it apart, I may not know how to put it back together again. This was a real problem the first three or so years I was doing this business. Though this sounds like no big deal, you have no idea the hundreds or even thousands of variations of starters and alternators there are out there!
With my experience now, I can usually figure out how they go together, but there are parts that can be indexed in several different positions, housings that align in different positions and internal parts that can be switched making the unit operate incorrectly. Since I didn't take it apart and mark the positions, I have to guess how it goes back together when I reassemble it and I may have to re-take it apart several times to reposition something to get it to work properly!
Another problem is that they leave some of the parts at home, or worse they loose them! There are some units out there that have small loose parts that the customer doesn't even know are there, that will fall out and they don't even notice them.
Many of the units have complicated construction and if they don't know the 'tricks of the trade' so to speak, the customers will also sometimes damage or break 'beyond repair' some of the components, trying to disassemble or work on the units themselves!
The last thing is that now I can't test the unit, which could help me figure out what's wrong with it. Testing it before hand can help me find defective parts the won't show up otherwise, until I have fixed the other problems, reassembled and tested the unit. This would end up requiring me to disassemble the unit again and replace more parts, sometimes doubling the labor expense!
Instead of saving the customer some of the labor costs, it usually ends up costing them more to repair the unit, than if they had just brought it to me still all together! So, y'all go right ahead and disassemble you units so I can make a lot more money! Cha-ching!
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