Why I work on my own car, usually

Taking a car into the Dealer for the first time

This starts as a tale of two indicator lights and leads me through the service department of a national used-car dealership to a sense of justification.

One indicator light we're all reasonably familiar with: Low Oil.
You may recall I just purchased a new/used car this year. I didn't expect it to behave like brand new, but using a quart of oil every 400 miles is a bit excessive, don't you think? But I had resolved myself to keeping an eye on it anyway, rather than complain. Having never dealt with a used-car company, I expected them to give me some lame excuse about "as-is" sales and so forth. But I did buy an extended warranty, anyway. More to the point, when I travelled home to my brother's wedding, I saw the low oil light come on. My fault, I forgot to top everything off before I left. Almost 2 quarts later, the light went off and I went on my merry way.

The other light shows how I've just managed to "get with it" in the '90's: Service Engine Soon.
I've never had this light in any of my cars, so that cold Tuesday morning (after the road-trip) filled me with dread. I pretty much had to take it in to find out what was wrong, and I was curious about the oil thing anyway. Holy shit! $63 just to take it in and find out what the code meant. To top it off, I had to wait a week to take it in, and the light never came back on. Turns out it was "An EGR valve solenoid was sticking" and the part would cost $349 + $93 labor to replace, but they'd be nice enough to credit the $63 "diagnostic" charge to that. Oh, and that $349 was half what a real dealer would charge! But, this being the age of emissions controls and inspections I told them to fix it (they couldn't get the part until after lunch) and I'd get a ride back to work. Once at work, I called around to some parts houses. EGR valve assembly for a '95 Lumina = $189.54! Quick phone call to the service dept. to tell them what they could do with their part, let me tell you!

Oh, and the oil consumption thing. I asked them to have a look to see where the oil was going and mentioned the quart/400 miles thing. I got back that they couldn't find anything and if it was burning that much oil, it'd be smoking like a freight train. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. I've been working on cars for about 20 years now and I know the basic things to look for: dirty engine, puddles on the ground, or smoke out the tail-pipe. And none of these things existed so that's why I asked! And to top it off, they don't really believe me. Seems I have to have them officially monitor the oil consumption. Have a verified (used car dealer name here) mechanic verify the level now and when it gets low, have them check it again. But since I've another road trip coming up, I'll have to save the containers that I've used so they'll know just how much it's used. Bunch of freakin dumbasses. Part of the problem is that I had to talk to the service rep. who would then relay things to the mechanic, and then relay his responses back to me. Well, I'm going to do what they ask since if it is an internal problem, this will be covered by my warranty.