Repair Shops

When motorists' pocketbooks are light, Bob Little's wallet bulges. The Culver City auto mechanic is busier than ever — booked solid, he said, for a week at a time — as Americans hold on to their cars longer, making repairs that in better times might have spurred a new vehicle purchase. "We are busier than a son of a gun, and it's stressful as all hell," Little said as he leaned out the window of his wood-paneled office in the Ed Little Auto Service Inc. repair garage, named after his father.

If you need to take your car in for repairs, California laws and services can help keep you from getting ripped off. In some cases, the state will even send an inspector to check the work. Here are five things to know: •License: Before going to a repair shop, check whether it has a valid license. Go online to the Bureau of Automotive Repair website at http://www.bar.ca.gov and click on Verify a License in the Search and Look Up Tools under the General Information tab or call (800)

Maurice Irving Glad, the owner of 22 Midas auto repair shops, agreed Monday to pay $1.8 million to settle allegations from the California attorney general's office that his shops charged some customers hundreds of dollars for repairs they didn't need. "For years, Glad ran a bait-and-switch scam, in which he deceptively lured customers into his Midas shops with cheap brake specials, then charged them hundreds of dollars more for unnecessary repairs," Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a statement announcing the settlement.

For a recent episode of the TV series "Modern Family," Raul Ojeda crafted a pair of shoes covered in red sequins for actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson. His character, Mitchell, shows off the shoes for a "Wizard of Oz"-themed birthday party he throws for his partner, Cam. A decade ago, Raul Ojeda was working as a shoe shiner. Now the 29-year-old is leaving his own footprint in Hollywood, supplying custom-made shoes to stars such as Steve Carell and Sally Field. Ojeda is the owner of Los Angeles-based Willie's Shoe Service, a shoe repair shop that has been providing footwear to the entertainment industry since 1956, when Willebaldo "Willie" Rivera opened a small business across from Paramount Pictures on Melrose Avenue.

Santa Fe Railway has announced that it is recalling 96 employees at its rail car repair shops in Topeka and 67 employees at its locomotive repair shops in San Bernardino, effective Jan. 2. Bob Gehrt, a Santa Fe spokesman in Chicago, said the workers are being recalled in Topeka to restart the company's heavy car repair program, mainly repairing jumbo covered hopper cars used to transport grain. He said those workers were furloughed last April.

Against the recommendations of the Planning Commission and city staff, the City Council has rejected an ordinance that would have set stricter standards of appearance for service stations and auto repair shops. The proposal was defeated when the council deadlocked in a 3-3 vote. Councilman Miguel Pulido, whose family owns Ace Muffler Shop in Santa Ana, abstained. The new standards would have affected new businesses or existing businesses planning extensive remodeling.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed fines of more than $1 million against 109 muffler and car repair shops today for installing improper emission-control devices on automobiles. The EPA said the shops installed cheaper, less effective "two-way" catalytic converters on automobiles rather than the "three-way" converters required under federal laws to reduce air pollution.

Whatever happened to the marcasite stone in your exquisite Victorian necklace? Missing in action? What about your grandfather's pocket watch? Stuck in a drawer when it quit ticking? There are people who specialize in making everything all right again. Look for jewelry repair shops that protect your valuables: * Insurance protection: A full-amount replacement value in case of fire, theft or any other type of damage. * Satisfaction: If not satisfied, work should be redone at no extra charge.

Thirty people have been arrested in an investigation of auto repair shops and wrecking yards that bought stolen car parts from undercover officers, Los Angeles police said Thursday. The arrests, made Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 14 such businesses, including nine in the San Fernando Valley, culminated a six-week undercover investigation, Lt. Frank A. Piersol said. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property, a felony, Piersol said. The investigation involved more than 100 officers, including members of the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the state Department of Motor Vehicles, the state Department of Consumer Affairs, the National Auto Theft Bureau and five suburban police departments--Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, San Fernando and Simi Valley.

Many advances in automotive engineering are turning out to be burdens in car repair shops, according to a national survey of mechanics' attitudes about cars and repairs. In that light, the quality of new cars has declined rather than improved, according to the survey conducted this year by HBM-Kramer Research, a marketing research firm based in Boston. HBM-Kramer's controversial study was commissioned by Arrow Automotive Industries Inc., a major auto parts remanufacturer in Framingham, Mass.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Credit cards — At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has halted a telemarketing campaign that allegedly sold bogus credit cards and drained money from victims' bank accounts. Operating as Platinum Trust Card and Express Platinum Card, the businesses offered credit cards with a limit of up to $9,500 for an advance fee of $99 and a monthly charge of $19. The company said the cards could be used at any business that accepted Visa or MasterCard, but they actually could be used only at an online store the business promoted.

When motorists' pocketbooks are light, Bob Little's wallet bulges. The Culver City auto mechanic is busier than ever — booked solid, he said, for a week at a time — as Americans hold on to their cars longer, making repairs that in better times might have spurred a new vehicle purchase. "We are busier than a son of a gun, and it's stressful as all hell," Little said as he leaned out the window of his wood-paneled office in the Ed Little Auto Service Inc. repair garage, named after his father.

In 2008, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a study examining fatal accidents in which a car's air bag should have deployed but didn't. The most common reason wasn't poor manufacturing by automakers. It was that the air bag was simply missing, never replaced after a previous crash. The numbers weren't large, averaging 51 accidents a year nationwide over the five years studied. But that doesn't mean there's no cause for concern. Who knows how many more cars are on the road without air bags?

Jose Gomora runs an auto repair shop in Sherman Oaks. Even if you didn't know that, it'd be easy enough to find out if you were an auto club member and did a search on AAA's website for an approved shop in the Los Angeles area. Gomora Auto Service bears the auto club's seal of approval, one of about 640 repair shops in Southern California (and more than 8,000 nationwide) "that meet and maintain high professional standards," according to AAA's site. What auto club members aren't told is that Gomora and other shops pay at least $1,000 a year to be listed as a facility approved by the American Automobile Assn.

Jaime Buenrostro was in his kitchen after 6 a.m. Monday when he heard the desperate screams from the auto repair building behind his Boyle Heights home. Several people, who reportedly lived inside the business, were trapped. "It's burning!" they yelled in Spanish. "Help. Help. Get us out of here!" He raced to the Whittier Boulevard shop to find it engulfed in smoke. His wife, Ana, called 911 as he and his son-in-law fought to open a sliding gate on the structure's north end. They doused the gate with water, but it only grew hotter.

An insurance fraud sting targeting auto body repair shops in Orange County ended with the arrest of 53 mechanics Wednesday and Thursday, including Richard Evans, who once appeared on the Speed Channel reality show "Chop Cut Rebuild." Evans owns Huntington Beach Bodyworks. The Orange County district attorney's office conducted 152 covert investigations from January to May in Operation Straight Body, which targeted repair shops that had received consumer complaints over the last three years, authorities said.

It is a lonely beat that Zefferino Lopez pounds, a singular life that other cops might regard as . . . well . . . funny. But if you repair appliances or electronic gizmos, you're not laughing when Lopez walks through the door of your shop. You give him the grudging respect you would a Columbo or a Kojak. Because Lopez is a policeman of sorts.

Japanese Auto Center Inc. is an automobile service center remarkable mostly for its size. Instead of the three or four repair bays that most privately owned auto shops have, Japanese Auto Center boasts 24 bays and a full, on-site auto parts center on 3 1/2 acres in Torrance. Daniel Schrier has owned the company since 1986, when his father, who had owned a restaurant on the property, set him up in business as a 21-year-old.

At a repair shop for airplane propellers near Van Nuys Airport, Keith Hironaka bends over a long metal blade, smoothing its mottled surface and preparing it for inspection. His brother Glenn works a few feet away. Fifteen people depend on Executive Propellers for their jobs, and owner Eissa Shousha figures an additional 60 or so -- wives, children, aging parents -- rely on the salaries he pays and the health insurance he provides. But business is slow, as many owners of small planes have cut back on flying and put off refurbishing their aircraft in the recession.