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He backed it out of the garage. As he got out of the car he says, "Have you checked the vacuum?" Turns out the transmission is shifted by a vacuum line off the carburetor. I lifted the hood. We both saw it at the same time. A small rubber hose was broken coming out of the carburetor. So he says, "You cut that off clean and reconnect it and it should be all right". So I did, thanked him and drove out getting what I wanted, which was a free analysis, but hell it still didn't shift.
I took it back and say, "It still doesn't shift", none the wiser. Well they say, "Put it over there. We'll have to pull the trans". So I say, "How much?" He says, "About two hundred and fifty". So I say, "It will be probably be cheaper if I pull the trans myself. I'll pull it out and bring it down. Is that OK?" Everybody in the shop had been so friendly. All of sudden no one knows me anymore. Nobody says anything - nobody will look at me. Everyone disappears.
I took it home and the first thing I did was pull the shift lever out from inside the car, since I had to drop the transmission out the bottom. Funny - I looked down into the hole and saw a metal tube pulled out of the transmission. I traced the tube and it fed into the rubber hose that had been broken. So they knew all the time. Not that hard to figure out - broken vacuum hose no shift. They pulled the tube in the pit. That tube was strong metal and didn't come out by itself. I never went back. I never complained. That was the deal. I went down to find out what was wrong for free. And they tried to get a job for nothing.
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