Chaos garage

Many car service places here in Taiwan are not bigger as a private car parking back home and are medium tidy, because the small space disallows chaos, for which many Taiwanese seem to have a bit of a soft spot. In our village close to Taoyuan is a rather big garage and so we brought our Nissan to it for a change of oil. Back home we say: You can recognize a good car repair shop by their tidy and clean tools, but this Taiwan village garage, as good as it surely is, gave me a bit of a shock.


The garage owner seems to be specialized on BMWs, there was an old BMW 3 from the 80s up in the air and getting reconstructed. The old 320 is really a longterm survivor and I guess I can still mostly recite its specs, as they are engraved in my memory from school days when dad had a 525. There was a 2nd 3-series BMW waiting in background somewhere, much like the 318i which I had in the late 80s and early 90s and finally...

... a newish 325i in the front of the garage. All this seemed rather impressive, but what surprised me was the total chaos below the cars and all around me, which was not properly lit by the small camera flash on the first image.

It looked EVERYWHERE like this, only the areas where the cars would come down to the floor are excluded. It was a mixture of garbage (but nothing biological), old boxes and packaging (well, that's garbage), used and new spare parts and ... tools. Everywhere shiny tools among the garbage; however located in a way so you may just be able to grab them before they vanish forever in the junk.

I mean: how can anyone who knows his way round a motor work like this.

Chung Ho: "Gimme that 22 inch socket!"

Assisant Lee Deng: "Yeah, guess I saw it last week next to the fan. The old one from grandma. Let's see..."

Chung Ho: "Quickly! I can't hold the V8 motor block much longer!"

Assistant Lee Deng: "Ups...... wait.... grandma doesn't let go of it [strange noise]"

Sorry, couldn't resist. Cultures are different so he may be a first class mechanic.

At least he was working on a racing Jeep, as he said, which was getting rebuilt. My SUV somehow seemed relieved getting out of there after the oil change...

P.S.: Wife said the 20 minute procedure was a whole inspection, not just an oil change. However he did not connect any motor analyzer to our engine. Wait, did ever somebody do that here?