More Women Are Beginning to Take Peek Under the Hood
If your eyes glaze over at the sound of grease-monkey lingo and you don’t know an air filter from a spark plug, it may be time to tune up your car knowledge.
Studies show that women are involved in about 80% of all car-buying decisions, yet many of us know little about what’s under the hood or how to repair vehicles.
Clearly, it’s not just a gender thing--there are a lot of clueless men out there who don’t know a head gasket from a distributor. But women seem to suffer most from their ignorance.
“No one is more helpless or a bigger target for ridicule and fraud than the average woman faced with a car that doesn’t run,” said North Hollywood mechanic Karen Valenti. “I used to be afraid to go to mechanics. I would always ask a friend or family member who was male to go with me so hopefully I wouldn’t get ripped off.”
With an estimated 92 million women driving, it’s important they have a working knowledge of how their vehicles operate. The less they know, the bigger the risk of auto breakdowns and of being bamboozled by the unscrupulous operators who tarnish the repair business.
Even simple periodic visual inspections--by women and men--of their vehicles’ tires, belts and hoses could prevent 5 million breakdowns annually, according to the AAA Automotive Repair Network.
“People tend to view today’s cars as maintenance-free, but they are not,” said John Nielson, the network’s director.
While men have generally been more immersed in auto mechanics through the years, relatively few women bother to change their oil or spark plugs.
In 1983, women made up only about 4,000, or 0.5%, of 800,000 auto mechanics in the U.S. But by 1999, the number of female mechanics had grown to 11,700, or 1.4%, of 837,000 mechanics, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington.
Determined to educate women about cars, Valenti, 53, teaches classes and is coauthor of a just-published book, “The Woman’s Fix-It Car Care Book: Secrets Women Should Know About Their Cars” (Chandler House Press).
“Before I started in this business, I knew nothing about cars,” said Valenti, who owns North Hollywood Discount Muffler & Brake. “I thought it was very complicated. But it wasn’t. . . . After going to school and learning on the job, I realized that once I learned the words, the nomenclature, it was no different than learning how to bake a cake.”
She’s not the only female mechanic to attempt to demystify the macho world of transmissions, brake lines and struts.
Ren Volpe, a San Francisco mechanic, wrote “The Lady Mechanic’s Total Car Care for the Clueless: A Manual for Car Owners” (Griffin Trade Paperback, 1998).
Volpe and Valenti advise readers to keep their vehicles maintained and to look for a mechanic the way they would look for a doctor: Get recommendations from friends, relatives or local consumer organizations. Don’t wait until your car or truck dies on the freeway to look for a competent auto shop.
Valenti’s practical, step-by-step guide is enlivened by quips: ‘Something as simple as checking the fluids is a dirty job and you should not be in a chiffon ball gown when you do it.”
One tip to avoid being ripped off: “Always insist before the work begins that you be given all the old parts that are replaced.” The shop could still give you an old part from another vehicle, but at least your demand alerts the garage “that you are aware of such scams and will make them more reluctant to try it.”
Another “famous gimmick,” Valenti said, involves the transmission oil pan and the presence of metal grains or particles on the bottom. If you don’t know that such particles are perfectly normal, she said, a dishonest mechanic could try to scare you into believing you need an expensive transmission job.
Valenti’s book offers clear, easy explanations and instructions that would benefit women and men alike. Though women constitute 75% of her clientele, Valenti said, many men say they chose her shop because they figure they can better trust a female mechanic.
And even men who grew up tinkering with cars find it more difficult to deal with repairs, given the rise of computerization and other complexities in today’s models. For major repairs, even knowledgeable motorists are more dependent than ever on automotive mechanics and technicians.
