Mechanic and car repair

What we work on

Scorpion Auto Tech is an independent repair shop at 2595 Blackwell Street, Unit 112, in Ottawa, ON. Blackwell comes off Sheffield Road, south of the 417, about a kilometre from the Innes Road and Walkley Road exits and a couple of kilometres from the Split, where the 417 and the 174 meet. Eli owns the shop, and Matt and Delaney are the names you will see on the booking page.

The work is cars, SUVs and light trucks, domestic and import. Daily drivers, family vans, work pickups, and the used car someone just bought and wants checked over. Most of what comes in falls into a few groups: something is wrong and needs diagnosing, something is worn and needs replacing, or something is due and needs doing before it turns into the first two.

How a visit works

From the first click to picking up the keys, a visit goes like this.

• Book. The booking page is open around the clock. Pick a service and a time, add the car by scanning the VIN with your phone camera or typing the year, make and model, describe the problem, and attach up to four photos. If nothing on the list fits, choose Other Jobs.
• Drop off. The shop is open Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm, and Saturday from 9am to noon, and the last drop off is 4pm. The customer door is the glass door marked 112, beside the bay door under the red and white sign. There is a waiting room with chairs and a TV if the job is short.
• Diagnose. The car goes on a lift or the alignment rack and gets looked at properly before anything is ordered.
• Call. You get a call with what we found, what it costs, and what can wait.
• Approve. Nothing is replaced until you say yes. If something else turns up partway through, that gets its own call.
• Pick up. You get the car back with an explanation of what was done and anything we noticed that is worth watching.

How pricing works

Labour prices are posted, and they match what the booking page shows. Inspection time is $120 an hour. A drivability or electrical diagnostic is from $150 and includes scanning. A wheel alignment is from $125, a seasonal tire swap on rims is $60, ADAS calibration is from $200, and an Ontario Safety Standards Certificate, now issued electronically through DriveON, is $200. All labour, before tax, parts extra.

Parts depend on the vehicle, so they are quoted once we know exactly what yours needs. The phone call before any work is where you hear the total, parts and labour together. If a repair can reasonably wait a few months, we say so, and you can plan for it.

The equipment in the bays

The shop has two roll up doors and a drive through bay. Two Technolift two post lifts handle brakes, suspension, exhaust and most underbody work. A Daytona four post alignment lift with turn plates sits in front of a camera based alignment and ADAS calibration station, with the target boards on a stand, so an alignment and the camera calibration that often has to follow it happen in the same bay. A tire changer sits next to the alignment lift, and the tools live in a full Matco tool chest along the wall.

Common jobs and where to read more

Each of these has its own page with what we check and what it usually costs:

• Car diagnostics for stalling, hesitation, rough running and faults that come and go
• Check engine light when the light is on or flashing
• Brake repair for grinding, squealing, pulsing or a soft pedal
• Suspension and steering for clunks over bumps and wandering on the highway
• Wheel alignment when the car pulls or the steering wheel sits crooked
• Engine repair for misfires, leaks and overheating
• Ontario safety inspection for buying, selling or plating a used vehicle

Repairs that do not have their own page

Plenty of work falls between the headings. Exhaust leaks and broken hangers, a door handle that snapped in the cold, a heat shield rattling, a CV axle clicking on tight turns, a power steering leak, a seized bleeder, a worn engine mount that thumps when shifting into drive. These are the everyday repairs that keep a car on the road between the bigger jobs.

For anything like that, pick Other Jobs on the booking page and describe it the way you would to a friend. When it happens, how long it has been going on, and anything that makes it better or worse. A photo or a short video of the noise does more than a paragraph. We read the notes before the car comes in, so the diagnosis starts with your description instead of a guess.

Questions