zeroptzero

In recent years I've purchased a few new vehicles. I'd say the last four vehicles have come home with stripped license plate plugs - the plastic inserts that license plate screws bolt into. When I'm on the dealer lot I see all these sales associates running around with hand drills/drivers while mounting customer license plates. I know it's great for a sales person to sell a new car, and they all want to help the customers, plus dealers don't want to pay their mechanics to install license plates when the sales people can do it for free.

But please, just use a damn screw driver to put four bolts into a plastic plug, you don't need an electric drill/driver ! The bolts only need to turn inwards 3-4 turns, an electric drill/driver does that in a fraction of a second and they keep spinning the damn thing until it strips out. You are not drilling into wood or concrete for God's sake, you don't need a renovation tool for this. When I get home to install my plastic license plate protectors the damn bolts are always stripped. The ones on my daily driver were almost falling off as I could spin them in and out with my fingers, easy way to lose a plate or have it stolen. I always have to run to Crappy Tire to buy new plugs or larger bolts for my new vehicles.

That's my rant for today.

darcyw

you are so right. I didn't think about it when the little girl putting the plates on April's 5 with an electric drill.

darcy

haga888

They should just put the clutch/chuck down to 1 instead of setting it to driver.

6013641

That would assume car sales people know anything about cars, thread pitches or electric drills.
They don't hire from the top of the class.

zeroptzero

Perhaps, but I think that may even be too much. You are only drilling into a plastic plug that already has a small pilot hole, the bolt never really bottoms out strong enough to keep a drill back IMO, once it gets to the end the drill it just keeps spinning the bolt and making the hole larger. If they were to stop a couple threads before it bottoms out then it would be safer but they never think that much ahead.

ATNCHN

Sales rep don't often know much about cars

My wife and I were looking at a brand new 2017 Mazda3 on Saturday the past weekend
The sales rep himself doesn't know a crap about the car we're inquiring about

Things he knew:
price, package pricing, current lease/finance rates, official fuel economy numbers, awards achieved by the dealership and manufacturer

Things he didn't know or failed to answer correctly:
G-vectoring control - he kept saying it's the new Mazda stability control. When asked about the actual stability control button, he told me it's a secondary stability control
Torque numbers - He knew about the hp numbers but not the tq numbers. He would have looked smarter if he said he doesn't know rather than telling me horsepower and torque are the same thing.
Package - He knew about the items within the 2 packages as well as the prices, but doesn't know how half of them work

I think I make a better sales rep than the guy who served us.. I can just say about anything based on what I read from car blogs, wikipedia and just off Mazda's website

haga888

That's just pure laziness.