Mechanic Review

It's about time I added my two cents. I responded to TPain's request for an inexpensive, quality shop in his area and Jeff's shop certainly fit the request. I've held off on posting primarily since I wanted to speak with Jeff first. And there is certainly another side to this issue. I won't go into it since that issue is long gone and nothing useful will be gained from digging up old news.

However, this is not the first time I suggested Jeff to anyone. First time that I've heard a complaint. He is a one man shop and Subaru trained having worked for Subaru for 20 or more years at University Subaru. My experience with him is that he's a type A personality and is absolutely anal about any job he does. He's not happy until he feels it's perfect. If we disagree on how far he needs to go, I let him know what I want and can pay for at the time. I can always reschedule follow-up work for an issue that can be put off.

He is difficult to reach sometimes; as a one man shop you don't get much done by answering the phone. I've never had trouble reaching him since I usually wait until evening when I know he's no longer working.

I only know of his strengths with the older Subarus since I haven't owned anything newer than our '99 Forester until recently. He's worked on the Forester, my Impreaza, and both of my Brats. I'm no longer in a position to do all the work needed and Jeff has been able to do repairs that I either can't do or don't want to do myself.

He's not afraid to service "outside the box." I had him convert a JDM hydraulic actuated transmission to a cable actuated gearbox for our '97 Impreza. At first he felt it couldn't be done, but we lined up my JDM tranny with one of his cable trannies and we took measurements until he felt that it could be done. The modified JDM gearbox has been running just fine in my DD/Rallycross Impreza for the last 60K miles.

I could certainly add more but there'd be no point in expanding on this (it's already too long). To TPain, I'm sorry my suggestion did not work out for you.