Auto Repair Photos: How We Show You What Your Vehicle Needs

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to photos of a worn brake pad, a leaky oil pan or a broken strut on your vehicle, we say it's worth even more.We know how much it helps our clients to see pictures of what we're telling them about their vehicles. That's why we regularly take photos and then email or text them to our clients.

Why Is All That Rust on My Brake Rotor?

Imagine us calling and saying, "You need rear brakes because your rotors are rusted." You may or may not know what brake rotors look like, and you're less likely to know if yours are rusting through. But now imagine we emailed you a photo first (see the image of rusted brake rotors at the top of this post!), and you're looking at it while we're on the phone with you. It's much easier to grasp the need, right?Or imagine if you have an oil leak. Depending on how severe it is, you may receive a photo of the tiniest stream of oil on your oil pan, or you may see an oil pan covered in nothing but oil. You can gauge the urgency for yourself. In a case like this, we can take post-repair pictures, too. This would enable you to see that we repaired the leak and cleaned the engine compartment up for you.

Photos Can Show the Complexity of Vehicle Troubleshooting

Having that visual representation also helps you to understand the repair you're paying for. For example, we recently had a 2010 Ford F-250 truck in the shop for a no-start issue. Typically, when a vehicle doesn't start, it's because of an issue with the battery, starter or alternator. That wasn't the case with this truck, and the client had to approve diagnostic time for us to dig further.We ultimately found the problem: There was a broken wire in the wiring harness under the driver's side sill plate on the door. Our technician had to disassemble that whole thing to find and repair the problem. Being able to document that with photos helped the client understand the lengths we had to go to in order to solve the problem.We typically take it upon ourselves to snap photos on your behalf. But if you have a specific request or want to be sure we take a few snapshots, all you have to do is ask!Photo Caption: We were able to share the photo above with the owner of a 2015 Mazda 6. She could easily see that the brake pads were only riding on about half of the brake rotor. (That's where the rotor is shiny.) The pads were not applying in the areas where the rust had built up, reducing the effectiveness of the rear brakes and making the front brakes word harder.