Good Mechanic in LA?
 

I am looking for a good mechanic in Los Angeles. (preferably around Brentwood) I have a 2000 4Runner, and I'm in the market to upgrade my fuel pump. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks

Do you just want to hear some good brand names for fuel pumps? I'm guessing not, so here's my suggestions.

Being I'm from the opposite coast, I don't know a mechanic in the LA area, but I'm curious what you have in mind ...why do you want/need to upgrade your fuel pump? In my humble opinion, you have a reliable Toyota and the stock pump is hard to beat unless you need more fuel flow. If you actually need more fuel flow you'd have to tell us how much flow you need, or at least what power level you need to support, if you want a recommendation that will actually work.

In my second humble opinion, if you need enough fuel flow to support say up to 500 crank hp, you could hardly find a better in-tank electric fuel pump than a stock pump from a 93-1/2 to 98 Toyota Supra Turbo. Of course you may think I'm biased since I have a '95; now that I've just this week upgraded to a couple hundred more horsepower, I'm simply running two stock Supra pumps good for about 1000hp ...which is less hp than I have ;)

On the radio show Car Talk, they always plug their Mechanics Files database. Not quite as good as a personal recommendation, but might be better than nothing.

I found a good mechanic using the cartalk website. He seemed fair,
diagnosed my problem correctly (Unlike the dealership), and charged me $400 less than what the dealership was going to charge me (and they weren't actually fixing the problem).

Unfortunately for you, my mechanic is in TX, not CA, but I will endorse the cartalk website.

I've had pretty good luck with these people:

Al Grimmett & Sons Automobile Shop
9953 Santa Monica Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
(310) 553-0302

I've always thought that their rates were reasonable and they never seem to find "extra work" like when I take my Toyotas to dealers.

BadNick: Thanks for the suggestions. The reason I am looking to upgrade my fuel pump is becuase I have a dealer installed supercharger on my 2000 4Runner, and I have all the tell-tale signs that my engine is running lean. (pinging being the major one) I plan to get the URD supercharger fuel upgrade kit here: http://www.urdusa.com/product_info.p..._id=1230100017 .

I just need to be sure I have a good mechanic to help me install the kit.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I will look into both the cartalk website as well as Al Grimmett & Sons Automobile Shop.

That underdog kit looks quite nice, the Walbro pump is a good choice, I almost went with Walbos myself.

Not to say that a good, knowledgeable, friendly, honest auto mechanic couldn't do that installation, but if I was doing performance mods like that I'd go to a performance/tuner shop with a known good reputation that could actually install and then put my moded car/truck on a dyno and fine tune the fuel while monitoring exhaust with a wideband O2 sensor.

I completey agree badnick. I'm just not sure where to find one around here :confused: I know there has to be a few performance shops here in LA, so I will just keep searching. Thanks again for the advice everyone