65 years old here. We were the original 'kids' that changed out our car stereos because the original ones sucked. When we say sucked we mean SUCKED. Most all new stuff sounds ok. The stuff then was beyond horrible. But, when we changed our stereos all we needed was power, ground, right and left channel wires for rear speakers(front ones if you were really cool !! 😄). Those were the days of Pioneer Supertuners and 6x9 speakers.... And a little thing we called.... FREEDOM!

I'm a GM guy and that is pretty shitty for a company to quit supporting electronics on a 10 yr old vehicle. I hear it more and more that we live in a "throw away" society and I'm starting to believe it. Great job on going the extra mile like usual to help these folks out. Your locals don't realize how lucky they are to have you and your shop! Hopefully they do! Thanks for taking us along as always!

Eric isn't just a great technician - he stands by a code of honor. SALUTE!

The more I watch you work, the more I thank God for my old school vehicles.

Of all the automotive repair people out there, how many would have pursued this lady's problem to the end like you did? Not many I expect. Perhaps just you. Amazing.

It’s appalling that a 10 year old vehicle would be suggested to be scrapped by the manufacturer because the radio is causing an issue to make it not driveable. Shame on GM. Unfortunately it’s a reflection of the planned obsolescence that is permeating everything today. Kudos to you, Eric, for going the extra mile

Eric, Please allow me to congratulate you for your patience and drive to provide service to your customers that goes above and beyond the norm. Rare to find a mechanic that would spend the time you did in sourcing, installing and programming a discontinued electrical component for an elderly couple. This let them keep their perfectly serviceable (and paid for) auto on the road for far, far less than the cost to junk it and buy another one. You are a wonderful asset to your town.

In the old days we used to fear the mechanic saying it needs a computer. Now it needs a radio is the kiss of death😂. The days of the 100$ Best Buy radio have left us behind

You went above and beyond to verify that diagnosis, that was an amazing test.

GM: "Sure, we can provide you with a radio that works properly. It's attached to a brand new car, and will only cost you about $40,000 more than carrying a portable battery powered radio in your car." Great job going Way above and beyond to help these folks! Keep up the good work!

Going the extra mile for your neighbors is a class act …

It's not only GM, ALL the car companies are in on it. Another form of planned obsolescence. We live in a wicked, greedy world. Your willingness to help is a blessing to your community. We all appreciate you!!

Its just amazing how complicated radio installs can be these days. You did something very few shops would even bother with.

Boy, talk about going above and beyond! That lady is blessed to have S. Main Auto in her vicinity! Good job, Eric. You've got a friend for life!

Hey, some of us watching here are from the dial phone era, and we're standing right here! 😂 Actually, Eric, you went above and beyond to serve these "elderly" folks with their pristine Impala, while GM and almost every other service shop, no longer gives a damn. But, this is just the usual response from South Main Auto.👍

My first 3-4 cars all had AM only radios. The first thing I did was replace them with AM/FM 8 track, then AM/FM cassette. It was a rite of passage growing up in the seventies. That and adding fog lights. We first installed the radio, new and more speakers. That way we could have tunes playing while working on the fog lights. I never had a lot of money so all the cars I got were well used. I would install the radio, lights, clean and wax the car, change oil, lube and write down anything else I needed to do. All done in the driveway or curb in front of the house. Cars are a lot safer than back then. But they are so technically advanced, most young people can't work on them like I did. You showed this so well with the radio issue.

The level of expertise of mechanical, electrical and electronics knowledge is nothing less than incredibly impressive!

I hate new cars. Eric, you are a great man for solving this problem for that couple. Kudos.

Eric, this is the reason I follow you. Any other “mechanic” would have simply said I can’t help you. You went WAY above and beyond for your customer. Kudos.

I would have spliced a toggle switch into that red/violet power line and just lived with that, but you went above and beyond. Crazy how hard it was for you, and it would be practically impossible for somebody without your industry knowledge and connections to pull off.

I didn't need any more reasons to hate GM but the list continues to grow....nice video....

It is almost like car manufactures are purposely trying to screw their customers.

You run one hell of a shop, Mr. O. Not many shops would have put the time and footwork in to finding a replacement radio module.

The amount of dedication to helping these people get their problem fixed is incredible, and shows how much character you have. Bravo 👏

Outstanding Diagnosis!!! There is no one else that was gonna go this far into getting this fixed. You earned your GOLD STAR for the month, and deserve a little extra loving from the wife.

Eric, you are an outstanding person, Tech, neighbor, local grease monkey, what ever these people don't know how lucky they are! What you just did is way above and beyond, You should get some kind of award for what lengths you go to for your customers! And I'm glad to have watched this! You are a good Man Eric O.💯%👍👍👍

Just by the chance that no one has told you today, You're awesome.

JC Whitney??? HOLLY COW that place brings back old memories. I use to go to the original location in downtown Chicago when I was younger….

The "Elderly"? I resemble that remark! You can't hurt our feelings on new tech. We know the phone isn't on the wall anymore, and thankfully we don't have to keep phone numbers in our heads anymore either. I ran into one with a parasitic draw and while I could find the leg with the draw, there was too much aftermarket tinkering done with the wiring to go any further. Fixed the other issue and told the guy "yep, you're right... It's broke and we can't fix that problem." As a geezer, I'm not afraid to tell someone that it is above my pay grade. Could we have found the problem? I think so. Would it be worth the hours? Not on that rig. Thanks Mr O. Love your vids.

Watching these videos makes me want to drive something from the 1960s.

You went to the end of the earth to get this Impala back up to spec. You earned a double gold star. Now go eat some cake and celebrate. Ya-done-good there Mr. O.

Job well done Eric! Not many people would go this far out of their way to help someone in the position your customer was in. Kudos to you sir!

As always you go the extra mile! You are so correct a 10 year old car with 45K and near impossible to repair the radio! Makes you say REALLY GM! As always great diagnostics, commentary, education, and most of all customer service. Thank you Eric.

Saint Eric! The Patron Saint for Lost Automotive Causes...Going the extra mile! Eric... You're a gem!

What a crock o' shit! Even Crutchfield says, "Sorry, lady. No can do." Bless you for going WAY above and beyond to help these folks.

Eric is our man! He fixes GM and gets cars back on the road.

Not JC Whitney but maybe crutchfield. That’s a blast from the past.

Eric, your one in a million. No mechanic around where I live would ever go to that length to diag or even think about fixing that issue. Great to see a true craftsmen who is an expert in his field. Your the man.

Man - you went to such length to fiy a radio where every other shop would have told then to pound sand. Kudos to you and thanks for showing us how it's done - from the technical side but also from the human, social side!

HEY HEY... SIT DOWN UP FRONT! ERIC'S BACK WITH PART 2!👍🏁👏👍🏁👏

This is exactly why I'm spending some time on my '72 Plymouth Valiant. It's a southern car, so no rust at all. New brake system, front end bushings, fresh slant 6 engine and some comfortable seats. The transmission is already awesome. It doesn't need a radio but I guess I could install one. It wouldn't hurt to plug the hole in the dash. And best of all, no electronic parking brake that sets itself without touching the switch. Dealers can't find the problem with the parking brake on my 2016 Mazda so I live with an occasional rear wheel lockup. The parking brake on the Valiant is mechanical. Yep, I'm older and I like this simple stuff.

I truly luv that you answer to a higher power, go the xtra mile to sleep at night, and wake up knowing you're living the best you you can do..rock on brotherman~!

I swore to myself that I wouldn't ever be like my father reminiscing about "the good old days" when cars were simpler. I recognized the benefit computer controlled engine management and growing up in the age of personal computers and the internet it never seemed overly complicated to me. Every new sensor or by-wire control that was added seemed to make cars more reliable, easier to diagnose, easier to repair. I've been able to help dad and his buddies learn the basics of troubleshooting modern vehicles and for the most part they have embraced them. There really is something to be said for being able to start a diagnosis without even getting your hands dirty. But here I am, 40 years old, wising I could buy a brand new car with hydraulic power steering, a manual handbrake, a manual transmission (or at the very least an automatic with a good old fashioned lever to change gears), headlight bulbs I can change myself for a few bucks, brake pads I can change without a specialized scan tool, the list goes on. Instead we have gotten heated seats as a subscription, over-the-air updates, shorted out backup cameras that put the car in limp mode, "lifetime" transmission fluid, spare tire deletes, and radio modules that drain the battery and can't be replaced without an asinine amount of fuckery. I'm starting to find it very frustrating when car reviews and internet keyboard warriors throw shade at companies like Toyota when they don't update their cars for 15 years. Even my own car, A 2017 Subaru STI, was lambasted at the time it was new for being old and outdated, getting shit on for its lack of technology in comparison to competitors, having a drivetrain that went largely unchanged for almost 20 years. Yet, I'm able to fix it myself, Problems and the solutions to them are well documented and most of all it's basic enough that I can still learn a thing or two about fixing it from Dad and his buddies. Same thing likely applies to a brand new 2024 "15 year old" 4-Runner, basic and old isn't always a bad thing, sometimes it's a very very good thing.

GM tech here! Great video! You should see the new 2024 radio updates 😂😂😂 takes you all day

Great job Mr O. I'm sure that your customer appreciates your efforts to help them. Sadly the service that you provide is the exception, and not the norm.

Unfortunately this is the new America throw away everything after 7-10 years. Sad😮 Great skills Mr O

Good Job! What some of your viewers don’t understand is that dealerships work on flat rate. It pays two tenths for one step of a diagnostic scenario and four tenths the next under warranty. I pretty sure the of time you spent on this diagnosis is not really going to meet you any money. When you go into a dealership with a 10 year old car, most of the diagnostic experience for this vehicle has aged out. This causes the dealerships to make estimates that will push you out of consideration for the repair. Manufactures are only required to make parts for vehicle for seven years. Truly a diagnostic that will take this long in a dealership would ,at 140 bucks a an hour, would be prohibitively expensive. You might see a year old car once in awhile but often enough for techs to even remember how to work on them. The diagnostic scanners generally don’t support vehicles that are 10 years old. Don’t get me wrong dealerships are the worst but there are reasons why.

Great diagnoses and repair. Finding a way to repair the car when the manufacture can't or won't. Excellent!

23:00 Sad of GM to do that especially when you consider that outside the salt belt, those cars will be on the road a lot longer than they are in the PRNY.

This video is a great explanation of why I will "Never" own a new vehicle or anything in the last 15 or so years.

Your motto is "if I can do it" I can tell you right now, no way could I have done that....that's pretty good troubleshooting....

Another awesome job. I am one of those older people who miss the simplicity of simple cars. I fantasize about getting my 1963 F100 which I drove in high school and putting it back on the road, just to have a vehicle that I don't need a preflight list to start up on drive. Ignition key, light switch, choke and two knobs you could pull to open a little vent down by your feet. Nothing else. Points, plugs, condenser, rotor, cap and wires, and adjust the valves.... nothing else! Maybe I will miss the heater and AC, but there is something appealing about nothing else to think about.

You are the best. You go way beyond the extra mile. 🎉🎉

435k on my 2002 Tundra. 303K on my 2005 Sequoia. Over half a million on my 1994 Isuzu Trooper. .And this is EXACTLY why I keep them all.

I complement you for doing the right thing when 98% of the shops would have just said I can't help you. At the end of the day you are the highly skilled mechanic because of the difficult repairs you take on and finish. This is true in every field of work. If you only do the easy work and never get out of your comfort zone you become stagnant where you are and just stop learning. I learn a new thing from you every week and continue to do the work in my profession that nobody wants to, can do, or will do. By doing this "crappy work" it leads to a lot of easy work without haggling and long term customers. Thank you for the funny educational videos. Hey it's that guy!!!

Reminded me of a Jeep Wrangler my wife had. A breather gasket on the valve cover split. I went to the Jeep dealer's parts department figuring I would get soaked a bit on the price but it was easier than doing a bunch of research for an after market part. The Jeep parts department guy looked me straight in the eye and told me the part was no longer available and there was no substitute. I told him the year of the jeep (less than 10 years old) and asked if Jeeps solution to the $6 part was for me to buy a new jeep. He said "yep, i guess so". Eric, whatever you are charging for your incredible troubleshooting and repairs...is not enough Sir!

Talk about customer service....very few shop owners would expend this effort to take care of their customer. Well done sir...well done.

Great tenacity to chase down that part to help the old folks out. Great diagnostic too!

You are right about most stuff, but this "If I can do it, you can do it" is flat wrong. NO WAY could I figure out what you just did. Great work!

I think a lot of us older - 75-85 yo - guys still don't think in the modular frame of mind. "Back in the Day", the radio WAS the module that everything else was built into. Now the radio is just a module, in with a group of other modules? All talking over Ethernet, or something like it. Yep, That's progress for ya..😀😀 I really do love these videos. Still learning.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had radios that fitted in to a standard shaped slot in the dash and connected in to stardard connectors so that you could swap it easily and keep it up do date? Oh wait...

You went above and beyond what most shops would have done for that customer. Reminds me of an issue I had with my 2000 Toyota Sienna that had a relatively minor parasitic draw of only around 75 mA, but enough to kill the battery which was 3 years old and the car was driven infrequently. I traced it down to the aftermarket radio the previous owner had installed in the car. Replaced the radio with an original Toyota radio I got off eBay for 40 bucks and all was well. I went back to look at the service records the previous owner had included when they sold the car and they had reported a "hard starting" problem 3 months after they had installed this aftermarket radio. The place they took it to fired off their parts cannon and replace the starter, battery, and a few other parts. Of course, the issue appeared fixed as the new battery was good enough to mask the draw as long as the car was driven frequently. Once the battery gets old and tired, especially if the car is not driven daily, the issue came back for me. What you had to go through to fix the problem tells me that for all these newer cars it will be beyond the capability of most DIY guys.

Well done young man. You always put the customer first before profit! Cars are far too complicated these days. I remember them when a heater was an optional extra!!! Best wishes from The U.K.

Eric, your experience and troubleshooting skills are next to none, but also having the ability to run the camper and provide the level of intricacy is amazing. Thank you!

Eric, you went above and beyond to help those folks. Very impressive diagnosis and repair.

It would have been great if you could have opened up the old radio module to see if these was a bad component visible, or corrosion causing the current draw. Based on the location I'm guessing it wasn't corrosion - my bet is on a bad capacitor on the board conducting all the time - a quick glance with an IR camera probably would have identified the bad component.

Way to go GM. What a joke of a company . Awesome job Eric finding and fixing the problem.

Outstanding service and dedication to solving a problem for a customer. Using your God given talents to the max every day! 👍👍👍

Excellent resolution! I have installed a key switched relay to interrupt the power to the radio when the ignition is shut off. The only lost feature will be the radio staying on after turning the key off until you open a door.

Hi, Mr. O. Thanks for doing a good deed for the old folks. I am an old folk myself, and I appreciate it too. Thanks for sharing! Stay Healthy!

This video reminds me why I keep my 70s and 80s Dodge pickups running. Super simple and no CAN networks to deal with. Also no Infotainment needed, just gauges and a simple aftermarket CD player. It all just works. - Jamie

Eric you are the man it is all about taking care of your customers. The big 3 don't care about anything but the dollar

Thank you for taking care of us older folks God bless you

I had an Impala for about 3 years, purchased when it was one year old. It was LOADED and a very nice car to drive. After multiple electrical issues on different components, I concluded that the electronics were unreliable and traded the car in (for a used Toyota). After owning several GM cars and a truck over the years, the Impala is likely the last. My Toyota has been absolutely problem free for the four years I've owned it and it is now seven years old!

can we find just 21000 more subscribers , that be just great for THE SMA

Top job, i admire your tenacity and willingness to keep your customers happy, especially so for us 'extra mature' one's.

God bless you for taking care of these older folks. I know you would do it for anyone, but going through all you did and not just send them on their way is commendable. You have really banked a lot of Karma points, my man.

You do go above and beyond for your customers great customer service and troubleshooting.

JC Whitney.... Haven't heard that name in a long time! They were the go to for all those aftermarket goodies!! Love all your videos we all learn something new every day🤗

Eric.....JC Whitney? lol... I havent heard that name for quite some time.. You are showing your age. ha. Keep up the great videos....please

I'm so glad my 20 year old Toyota has a double-DIN slot. And the Chinese box I put in seven years ago still works perfectly!

There are very few "shops" that could find the problem as you did. This would be a parts cannon for sure, until the customer's pocket is drained. Pun intended. ;) Great troubleshooting and great work Eric.

Eric, FYI 2004 Chrysler Town and Country, Battery dies overnight, Check the GPS radio. I was getting ready to check it out on a cool morning took a test drive and wanted to play a CD, ejected the one that was in there and it was hot. Moral of this story with this one, feel the face of the radio for heat, should be cold. Hope this helps someone. Unplugged the radio, and bingo. Luckily, had another one lying around. Cheers!

Seems like that is a common problem with the Impala's. I had 2014 LTZ with the same problem. It acted funny and I was not laughing. My last modern day Chevy.

Eric is so thorough I love it. An inspiration for us all to be better people!

I know u went further than most would have . They would have just slapped a aftermarket radio in it and told them it is what it is . Great man great channel

Eric, you have far more patience and regard for your customers than any mechanic near me. I guess that is the difference between small town and big city mechanics. I’m just a face that likely won’t be back. In the city, customer service is a thing of the past.

Back in the 70s, my uncle Jim was into corvettes 53 to 67. He also was a parts manager for a small town chevy dealer. He convinced the owner that he wasn't required to inventory parts 7 years after they were out of production. He then bought the corvette parts at pennies on the dollar. His garage had one whole wall of blue and white boxes. Thanks, Eric!

Wow way to go Mr O the way you went above and beyond to help that couple out. Most shops i know wouldn’t do that

Your one of the best diagnostic mechanics I ever saw 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

That's called taking ownership of the problem and seeing it to the finish. I wish I could get IT at work to do that.

I'd be interested in whether someone like Mr Carleson's Lab or your guy who rebuilds modules could do a component-level fix on that radio.

8:20 A trend setter! It is fun to see how someone else puzzles their way through issues.

You always go the extra mile. Mrs. O I am sure is proud of you. So am I.

My buddy's Gen Z kid looked at a dial phone at our museum one day and asked "how do you text with it?" Good job Mr O, us grayhairs thank you for going the extra mile. Take a carton of Perry's Rocky Road out of petty cash......

Having identified the power supply wire you could have installed an audio kill switch for peanuts. Plus the radio memory battery fails after many years . A replacement might have been a cure for the power draw.

GOOD ON YOU Eric for going the extra mile to help this customer! I'm being very serious and sincere here! Not many will do that. And thanks to the salvage yard that also went the extra mile. Shame on GM for telling them to scrap a perfectly good car just because their radio quit. Things REALLY need to change in the auto industry somehow, it's getting insane! How can these companies 'claim' to be 'green' when you have to keep throwing items out because of electronics that should be able to be repaired.

People in your community are downright fortunate and blessed to have your shop as an option for their vehicle service. I suspect in my case without the knowledge/skills you have, I'd have just gone the route of an interposing relay to shut the radio power off when the vehicle is shut off. This is one of the many reasons I wouldn't own a vehicle any more modern than the early 2000s. Those things push my knowledge to the edge but I can still whip 'em if I need to!

Wow is all i can say to this vid troubleshooting your tail off and good work thankyou sir

They quit supporting the radio because they have a new headquarters building to pay for.I hope those new background flutters don't create a new draw problem.Great job .Congrats for not needing Ivan