You know, after a few years away from the counter, I was getting complacent. Sitting by the pool, sipping on something smooth and mellow, enjoying the sunshine in the summer and reading a good book by the fireplace in the winter. Life after the parts store was being very kind to me. Then 2020 hit. The year where Mr. Murphy of the infamous Murphy’s law decided to throw the kitchen sink and all into a great big pile and set the whole thing ablaze with a blowtorch. I don’t know what deity is pissed off, but this year they are on a mission. Everybody is hurtin’, even your barely-friendly customer relations “expert” that wears a bag over his head. Unfortunately, this time around I can’t regard you with tales from what I’m doing directly. I’m pretty sure the bosses would not like that one bit. But I am dealing with a crowd of folks that I have, over the last few years, left out in my usual rantings and ramblings: the tech advisors on the phone.

You parts guys and gals know that the #1 mantra of the phone is that you “DO NOT TRY TO DIAGNOSE OVER THE PHONE”. It’s life. You just don’t. Nothing good comes out of it for the customer, the company or your hide. But the tech advisor does just that, day in, day out. Phone calls, emails, live chats on the Internet like it’s the year 2000 and you’re in the middle of an AOL chat room. Well, maybe not exactly like that…if you’re the customer and the tech types in, “A/S/L”, you should probably try a new company. But I’ve been interacting with some of these poor souls and they are your kindred spirits. The only saving grace they have is there is no face-to-face interaction, so as a last resort, they can hang up, take the ass-chewing from the boss, and move on.

One group I deal with is involved with remote tuning of cars for customers. Building a startup tune for someone’s car to fire up and baseline off of is pretty easy…answer a few questions about the underhood combination, do some quick math, make sure everything is connected properly and you should hear some thumpity-thump goodness that you can proceed to tweak on. But some of these customers have been watching way too much street racing reality television and 1320Video clips and want that demon tweak that will earn them their meal ticket on the gravy train. There’s names for these tunes. Here’s a few that are actually legit. Some are customer-named, some are from the techs who could not believe what was being asked of them:

11. To The F***ing Moon, Alice! (radical N/A LS)

10. The Kamikaze (nitrous LS)

9. Blitzkrieg Bang (BMW S85 V-10)

8. She’s Gonna Be Pissed… (LS TT)

7. What’s Another PSI? (BB Chev with an 8-71 on alcohol)

6.  Put A Windoooow, In The Wall! (1990s GM LT-1)

5. Big Power, No Whammys! (Subaru EJ with big turbo)

4. The Foie Gras Method (this one was tuned for 58 PSI of boost on a 408 Chrysler. Damn.)

3. Seppuku (Honda K24A1, turbo, E85)

2. Recipe For Piston Soup (big-boost Toyota 1JZ)

1. The Major Tom Tweak (nitrous Ford Coyote)