jeepin.jason

Well duh. Should that really come as a surprise to anyone? I was perusing CNBC this morning reading some financial articles (which I never do) regarding the stock market and tech companies when I came across a headline reading, “AutoZone profit up, despite slow down in auto sales“. To be fair the article never actually says that this is contrary to what anyone thought, and in fact it says that “analysts” had actually expected AutoZone to do better than it did for the quarter (it was only off by $0.02 though).

When you think about it it makes total sense. For the time being, people are holding on to their cars longer, so they need to keep them in good shape longer. And with the whole economic downturn hubbub, a lot of folks have less money in their pockets, which means less money to pay shops and mechanics to fix things, which means (maybe) more folks doing the shadetree mechanic thing and working on their vehicles themselves.

Case in point: Me. Now granted, I’ve always been a shadetree mechanic (just look at Jeepin.com!) and have never really liked having other people work on my vehicles, but recently the A/C went out in my XJ. It still ran, just not cold, at all. In lieu of taking it to a shop, I went to, where else? AutoZone. $95 later I had a full manifold gauge kit (reads high and low pressure lines), 2 cans of R134A refrigerant (one with florescent dye, the other with stop-leak), and a UV light kit. In hindsight the $13 UV light kit I bought was complete junk as the LED flashlight quit working after only about an hour of use and I’d have been better off just using the florescent blacklights we bought a few years back for Halloween, but oh well. With the youngest Jeep in our fleet now at the ripe old age of 7, I figured some decent A/C tools would be a worthwhile investment. Oh, and my A/C? Nice and cold now.

Now, if only folks would start spending more on aftermarket upgrades too we’d be doing a whole lot better off! Hmm, maybe that just means I need to get more OEM replacement parts lists on JeepinOutfitters... haha.