Integrity Automotive

Location: 81 Hooker Road, Ste. 1, Sequim

Phone: 360-504-2227

Online: www.facebook.com/integrityauto2015

Hours/days: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, Saturday by appointment only

Integrity — according to the dictionary, is “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.” It wasn’t just a catchy name that owners/mechanics Alex Walberg and Evan Stamp settled on for their new business, Integrity Automotive in Carlsborg. It’s part  and parcel of their business philosophy.

The two young entrepreneurs — Stamp is 23 and Walberg is 28 — after having a combined 22 years working as mechanics in other area automotive shops, opened at 81 Hooker Road on March 1 with these objectives in mind: honest work at a fair price with good customer service.

“We wanted to do our own thing because we’ve been friends for 10 years,” Walberg said. “We want to run our shop our way. We’ve both seen good shops and bad shops and we intend to provide good, fair service to the community and have fun doing it. Evan is well-known as a topnotch diagnostics guy. Other shops sometimes call us with questions.”

“First and foremost, it’s our diagnostic abilities. Diagnosing a car properly is an art gone by the wayside,” Stamp said. “There is only a handful of mechanics on the peninsula that can diagnose a car properly without wasting the customer’s time and money.”

“If it doesn’t need it, we’re not going to do it,” Walberg added. “We have one of the most advanced computer scanners there is and we can plug it into about 90 percent of vehicles made.”

The pair offer complete foreign and domestic vehicle repair and they also work on diesel engines.

“A lot of people don’t have a good diesel guy,” Walberg noted.

Because they feel vehicle manufacturers are doing a lackluster job of providing information on how they make their vehicles so mechanics can fix them, Integrity Automotive subscribes to an online service for detailed schematics in order to trace problems not explained by the manufacturer.

The shop’s specialty, they say, rises a notch above repairs to increasing performance and customization.

“If you want your car to go faster, get better fuel mileage and handling or want a custom street rod, we’ll do it,” Walberg said. “If you want it lowered to the ground or raised to the sky, we can do it. We have a reputation for customizing. Recently, we did a $20,000 custom rod.”

“We will do everything from oil changes to engine swaps and transmission work, all the way up to heavy diagnostics,” Stamp said. “The scanner doesn’t tell me how to fix it but where to look.”

Communicating with customers and translating the language of automotives to laymen is one of the challenges, the Sequim natives said.

“It requires a lot of really good communication because the customers don’t have the knowledge of how to describe different noises but between each other, Evan and I understand what each one means — grinding means a specific sound and ticking means another,” Walberg said.

“Another thing I’ve seen is a customer will bring their vehicle in for a specific problem and then rattle off a bunch of other stuff they want to have checked,” Stamp explained. “Some shops will fix the other things but not address the problem they came in for. It’s very important you always address what their original complaint was and repair it first.”

Walberg and Stamp, who have an easy rapport, say the best part of their jobs is the mental stimulation of problem solving with wrenches in their hands.

“At the end of the day, the satisfaction of doing what I love to do and people being happy is all we really want,” Stamp said, “and we get to spend our time doing what we want to do. We didn’t do this to get rich but because we want to be the ones designating how it’s done, to be fair and honest with customers and do the best work for our customers and our community. We want to develop a level of trust with our customers so they know they’re getting their money’s worth every time, all the time.”

Walberg summed up more of their philosophy, saying, “We want people to know what we’re doing and what we’re capable of. We want to get our name out there, to tell people but not to yell it. Word will get around. And finally, we won’t trash other shops because that’s not professional and not the way we want run our business.”