Universal Automotive Service and Repair

This place has been pretty good to me, because I was knowledgeable about the problem going into the shop.
The first time I went in was due to my exhaust tail pipe rusting off, right near the flange. The workers gave me a quote of $ 60-​$ 70 to replace the flange and gasket. Overall, pretty reasonable.
The second time I went in, I knew I needed to change my brakes because I was hearing squealing from the back tires, and the front tires started making a grinding sound. I bought the material which included brake pads for the front and back, as well as rotors from autozone. Talking to the owner, Frank, this saved me about $ 30. He told me typically he charges for people bringing in their own material, but only charged me $ 12.72 for rags, lubes and whatever, l, which was I wasn’t too pleased to hear. The total came out to about $ 172 for two hours and the random material charge. Since they rotated my tires and checked my suspension, as well, I let it slide.
Overall, I think this place is fair, but you should still do your homework and ask for a quote before they do the work.

I highly recommend bringing your car here. The entire team is very honest and knowledgable. Nick always takes the time to explain what the problem is in detail so that someone with no knowledge of cars understands what they are doing and why. Additionally, they are very reasonable when it comes to cost, way cheaper than a dealership. I fully trust the team with all my car repairs, I have been coming here for a year and will continue to bring my car here.

Horrible! They were bought out by new mgmt a few months ago and won’t honor warranties from the last owner (even though they said they would on the phone and the receipt also says so) The manager told me it would be $ 34.95 to look at a repair that he said they’d cover when I called. Beware of the cons!

A decent hometown auto shop with a connected car wash. Decent service, down to earth guys, etc. Nick will take honest and good care of you. I am a little skeptical about independent auto shops nickel and diming customers. Overall, I think they are a decent auto shop for simple tasks. Pricing is sometimes inconsistent and therefore I bargain a little, produce a coupon, and let them know if they take care of the price for me, I will be a return customer. In recent visits, I was able to bring down the initially inflated quoted price down significantly after producing a coupon and negotiating a better price. Got my car back with a good complete brake job (including pads and new rotors) and hub bearing repair for a pretty good price.

I’ve been here periodically to get my oil changed because I like buying synthetic oil and the filter myself and have the shop do the labor, and I’m not going to pay $ 30+ somewhere else on top of buying my expensive oil.
This place just charges me for labor, but the fishy thing about them is, every time I go back, they seem to be charging me $ 1 more than the last time… :-\ It started at $ 12, and now it’s gone to $ 15. I can’t find any place real close to me that cheaper, so keep going back, and the staff is nice and it’s just an oil change for goodness sake.
However, once, I did make the mistake of taking my car there on a more serious matter. I had just bought a used Altima straight from the owner, and they had my car over night, they ran a bunch of diagnostics on it, and they «guessed» it was the sort of crank shaft sensor… so I paid Univ. Auto $ 65 for their diagnostic fee, and I ended up taking it to Nissan of Sterling Heights to actually get the part replaced. Lo and behold, replacing the crank sensor did nothing and my car was still out cold and my wallet was out cold $ 100! So I went back to Univ. Auto and made them give me a refund on account of their bad diagnosis, which they didn’t really argue.
All in all this place is good if you want simple things done to your car, but I would take your car to the dealership for a more serious matter.