Somebody walks up to the counter and says, “I think my car needs a tune-up.” Fair enough.
But that one little word can mean completely different things depending on what year your car was built. To understand why this causes some confusion today, we have to look at where the word originally came from.
Back When a Tune-Up Was a Specific Job
When Charlie Bockman opened up in DeKalb County in 1964, a tune-up was about as routine as an oil change. Cars back then ran on a setup that slowly drifted out of adjustment, kind of like a guitar going flat. If your vehicle hit 30,000 miles, odds were good it was tune-up time.
A traditional tune-up involved a handful of parts that worked together to light the fuel and keep the engine running smooth. Every so often, you brought the car in, and somebody literally tuned it back up. A mechanic would swap the spark plugs, replace the points and condenser tucked inside the distributor, set the timing with a special light, and fuss with the carburetor until the engine purred.
Maybe a half hour of honest work, and the car ran noticeably better when you pulled out of the lot. It was predictable, it was scheduled, and every driver understood exactly what they were paying for.
Modern Vehicles Are a Whole Different World
Here’s the funny part. The cars changed completely, but the word didn’t budge.
Somewhere in the 1980s and 90s, computers quietly took over the engine. The points and condenser disappeared. The carburetor got replaced by fuel injection, which a computer manages on its own. Spark plugs got so good that plenty of them now last 100,000 miles. Ignition systems are far more reliable, and most vehicles don’t even have some of the parts that used to be replaced during a traditional tune-up. Basically the whole list of things you used to “tune” either went away or got handled automatically by a sensor.
Why the Word Never Left
People kept saying tune-up. Of course they did. It’s the word their dad used, and his dad before him. It’s comfortable, and it sounds like it means something.
And it does still mean something. It just doesn’t mean what it used to.
So when you come into Bockman’s today and ask for a tune-up, the first thing we want to figure out is pretty simple. Are you just trying to stay on top of maintenance, or is your car running funny and you want it sorted out? Those are two very different roads, and they cost very different amounts of money.
We’ll walk through exactly what those two roads look like in Part Two.
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DeKalb: 112 Industrial Dr. | 815-754-4200
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About the Author
Jon Bockman has owned Bockman’s Auto, Truck and Tire since 1999, continuing what his father Charlie started in DeKalb County in 1964. Named NAPA Shop of the Year (from 18,000+ centers) and voted Best Auto Repair in Daily Chronicle Readers’ Choice 15 times. Two locations, 24 employees, one goal: treat every customer like a neighbor.