Anybody getting tired of South Main Auto?

Joined
Jan 1, 2018
Messages
1,195
Location
San Antonio, TX
He's a real good mechanic, but he's getting more and more prideful and arrogant with every passing video. All the success has swelled his head up.
 
Well, at least there's still Scotty Kilmer
27.gif
 
Originally Posted by das_peikko
He's a real good mechanic, but he's getting more and more prideful and arrogant with every passing video. All the success has swelled his head up.

I don't see it. I still enjoy his channel. Besides being a good mechanic he seems like a regular guy, somebody you'd like to have a beer with after work. And I enjoy his interactions with his family.

He goes a little (a lot) over my head with his electronic diagnosis, but that is my problem not his. I don't know how many more brake jobs I can watch though.
Watching him struggle with rust makes me appreciate living in the south. How do you guys in the rust belt put up with scrapping otherwise serviceable cars/trucks every few years because of rust?
 
Nope, not tired at all. When you do the same thing day in and day out you probably want to be a little different each time to keep the audience entertained. I think that's exactly what he was doing with his Brake Caliper Cover video. He's just trying to come off as amusing. Some people see it, some don't.

I still enjoy the channel, makes me think working on my salt-free southern cars isn't all that bad.

Also, if it was going to his head, he would have left on the superchat function of the livestreams he does. Someone that won't take money because he's afraid he won't be able to provide anything for it suffers not from swollen head syndrome in my book.
 
Last edited:
Why would anyone watch these guys all the time anyways? I watch their videos initially to ascertain if they know what their talking about and if they have anything related to the vehicles I own. SMA is certainly a very good channel and he has some good vids on Grand Caravans. But after that I stop and only use their vidoes as a resource if I need it.
 
Originally Posted by KrisZ
Why would anyone watch these guys all the time anyways? I watch their videos initially to ascertain if they know what their talking about and if they have anything related to the vehicles I own. SMA is certainly a very good channel and he has some good vids on Grand Caravans. But after that I stop and only use their vidoes as a resource if I need it.

Hard to explain. I prefer certain YT creators over mass market media, not on any political or financial reason, just the way my brain has become wired over the last 10+ years.
 
Never heard of it/him. So no, I'm not tired of it/him, and don't care one way or the other.
 
Last edited:
i watch all the time. the brake vids are kinda nothing, but the diagnosis and problem solving in engine and electronics is worth the watch. he has close to 300k subs so he is making bank. maybe more than working at his shop.
 
Great guy. Not a fan of promoting the use of brake clean "like water", but that's mostly because I know that stuff is profoundly bad for those occupationally exposed to anything but trivial levels of it. He has been getting a lot better recently on using safety equipment and requiring it for "the girls". Its too bad that his level of skill, integrity and "doing a proper job" isn't replicated everywhere. My beef with some Youtubers that do repair videos is that they start out relatively simply, using procedures and tools that are cheap and accessible to all, and within a few years, they're trivializing steps left and right, using whiz-bang specialized/proprietary tools, and lifts. I don't think SMA has really deviated from the initial format, which is nice. Contrast with, say, "Ericthecarguy" who puts on a dramatically different show today, than he did 5 years ago.
 
The interesting vids are the ones he takes in from other shops that have fired the parts cannon all over the car after failing to tryagnose the problem. After finding the problem it either turns to be something simple or much more expensive that's unrelated to the parts being thrown at.

Good ones are no-start and misfire vids. Plugs and a prayer can only get you so far.
 
Originally Posted by jhs914
Originally Posted by das_peikko
He's a real good mechanic, but he's getting more and more prideful and arrogant with every passing video. All the success has swelled his head up.

I don't see it. I still enjoy his channel. Besides being a good mechanic he seems like a regular guy, somebody you'd like to have a beer with after work. And I enjoy his interactions with his family.

He goes a little (a lot) over my head with his electronic diagnosis, but that is my problem not his. I don't know how many more brake jobs I can watch though.
Watching him struggle with rust makes me appreciate living in the south. How do you guys in the rust belt put up with scrapping otherwise serviceable cars/trucks every few years because of rust?


Most of us in the rust belt don't scrap out cars every few years. I have a 22 year old Honda civic that we bought from new and my wife uses almost every day. It does have some rust, but I spray it every year. Cars only rust out badly if people are clueless and don't wash as well as rustproof their rides.

I've seen cars up here that are 20 plus years old and are in very good shape due to rustproofing.
 
Originally Posted by KrisZ
Why would anyone watch these guys all the time anyways? I watch their videos initially to ascertain if they know what their talking about and if they have anything related to the vehicles I own. SMA is certainly a very good channel and he has some good vids on Grand Caravans. But after that I stop and only use their vidoes as a resource if I need it.


In the evening sometimes I'll watch some youtube videos, and Eric is entertaining. But I don't binge watch car repairs--certainly not going to sit down and watch 2-3 hours of one repair after another.

Originally Posted by bubbatime
How many break jobs can you watch?

At work I spy people on breaks all the freakin' time and wonder how the heck they get anything done. Certainly not going to watch videos of that!


Originally Posted by Kibitoshin
The interesting vids are the ones he takes in from other shops that have fired the parts cannon all over the car after failing to tryagnose the problem. After finding the problem it either turns to be something simple or much more expensive that's unrelated to the parts being thrown at.

Good ones are no-start and misfire vids. Plugs and a prayer can only get you so far.

There was a video his recently where the customer had thrown a bunch of parts at a car using "tri-nogstics", and he was going to try to use "diagnostics" to fix it. I liked that one, although I'll be first to admit, trinogistics makes sense when the parts are cheap and the failure mode indicates it.
 
I have notifications for his channel turned on so that I see what is the latest videos he posts and if it interests me I watch, if not then I don't. I like the weird problems that he diagnoses in his videos that takes a lot of troubleshooting to figure out. I occasionally will tune in for his What's Up Wednesdays in one tab while I'm surfing on another.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top