Putting vegetable oil in your car’s engine is not really a good idea, but we’ve all wondered what would happen if we did. At least I have. Maybe you’ve wondered what would happen to your exhaust pipe and muffler if you slammed your car without making adjustments to the undercarriage. These are the kinds of things that mechanics and shop technicians deal with on a regular basis, and YouTube channel Just Rolled In has compiled the best of 2023’s auto shop woes into a 30-minute long video for our collective enjoyment … or collective cringing.
By the “best” of 2023, what I actually mean is the “worst.” The compilation is a glorious display of what happens when folks neglect the proper care of their cars or fail to enlist the help of qualified mechanics. The full video is worth a watch:
I guess that, in the end, whether these are the best or worst of last year’s “just rolled into the shop” scenarios all depends on your outlook or vantage point.
It’s easy to dismiss many of these owners as negligent, but not everyone might know that vegetable and engine oil have different properties that make them suitable for their respective tasks. And unless you’re daily driving a Suzuki Samurai with a Volkswagen TDI conversion that runs on fry oil, you’re going to want to stick to a quality synthetic when it’s time for an oil change or fluid top up — unless, of course, you want this gob of goo in your oil pan:
That’s one of the less painful sequences to watch in the video, which includes cases of chewed up mechanicals in SUVs that were towed improperly, or cases of transmissions hanging onto a car by little more than the goodwill of physics. Some other intrepid DIYer installed a wiper fluid hose to their battery, creating a weepy mess. And yet another driver complained of a rattling sound in their front door that turned out to be about a pound of almonds in the door card.
It’s light and heavy stuff that goes from benign to baffling to downright terrifying in terms of what could happen out on the road. The refrain in the video is “customer states,” a common phrase on the “justrolledintotheshop” subreddit, where techs share stories of the stuff they come across. Considering the things these mechanics see, it’s no wonder they suspect what we tell them.
