Keystone Auto Service

Honestly if Deckard cannot fix your car no one can. He is by far one of the best mechanics in the South Bay. I have brought several of my cars o him and he always has an answer and a solution. I wont lie his prices are higher, but thats because sometimes he is the only mechanic that can solve some issues. If no other mechanic can do it bring it to Deckard he will help you out.

I just Called the shop and talked to Sean. Really helpful, explained me all the answers I had ask and seem like a really friendly and genuine guy. Wish I could give him a ⁶⁄₅. Thanks bro.

I went to three different smog places for my porsche cayman before coming here. the first three, no one wanted to touch my car because they were too scared of breaking something. my engine is in the middle of the car so it does take a little bit of extra work to get to it. i called stevens creek porsche and they told me that they use keystone auto about 2 blocks away. so i went directly to them and they were able to do it in less than 30 min. i’ll be going there for my regular maintenance as well.

I’ve come here a couple of times and each time it’s worked out well. What I like about this place is you can call and they will take you in where others either never call back or say that you have to wait. I had a battery that needed installing and the dealer basically said they were too busy so I bought the battery there and brought it to Keystone and they installed it while I was waiting. Then I needed a 30,000 mile service and the dealer gave me a glossy expo of what they would do changing everything out for a bid sum of money only to go to Keystone and get the gist that they only replace what needs replacing. It turned out that everything in my car was not needing replacement so it only cost ¹⁄₃ what the dealer was going to charge me. They also took me in on the same day and did the work in a couple of hours. So overall I’m glad I found this place and plan to do more business with them because they seem to only do work that is needed and they are reasonable on what they do end up doing.

In short, nice and quick service. Deal with fancy cars and kind reception. Packed up my remaining oil like mom. Highly recommended.

This is actually my first review because I never leave reviews. But that’s how awesome these guys are. I saved $ 255 dollars going to them because Volkswagen wanted to charge me an arm and a leg just to repair a head light, they did an awesome job for just $ 45. They are really friendly and honest. If I could give more stars I would. I highly recommend them to anybody who needs to get their car fixed!

Amazing people! Great service. Wish I lived closer so they could be my regular mechanics. They helped me on a Saturday. Took 20 minutes and I was willing to wait. The best place I have asked for to help me. Thank you! Thank you! For being so helpful!

These guys are great, friendly and professional service. I took my 97 Jetta there for broken window regulator and to check the breaks and AC. They did it all for a very reasonable price. Glad I found them here on Unilocal.Looking forward to using them in the future. I highly recommend them.

Awesome service. They resolved a quoted $ 1500 bmw issue (at another place) down to a few hundred with a proper diagnostic. Car runs BEAUTIFULLY now.
These guys are thorough and super professional.

This is an awesome mechanics shop! Deckard and Kim have owned it for thirty years. Deckard does a lot of the car repairs and Kim runs the office.
In my experiences with Deckard over the last nine years, I have found him to always be very honest, knowledgeable and efficient. He not only has state of the art equipment to work on newer model cars he also works on classic cars! He’s always busy so if you’re classic car is down, schedule an appointment. He’s always honest regarding the time frame it will take!
Major repairs are never cheap, however Keystone Auto Service rates are reasonable the bay area.
His other mechanics are the also some of the best around. They are always pleasant and very helpful. I love the way any one of the mechanics in the shop can explain the car issue and the repairs which need to be done or have been done. As a female classic car owner, I find this shop attribute to be golden in value!
So, ladies (and gentlemen) whether it’s just an oil change or a major engine problem Keystone Auto Service is the place to go! I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!
When you go there tell Deckard and Kim you read this review on Unilocal. Tell them Karen sent you!!!

I would have given them negative stars if I could have.
I have a BMW 530i and took it to Keystone for repairs for coolant leak, oil leak and cup holder replacement. After giving me an estimate for the work that needs to be done and the price for the same they actually jacked up the price at the time of pickup, did half of the work and asked me come over the weekend for the other half. Deckkard gave me an estimate before starting the work and I gave a go ahead the office manager Kim jacked up the price without any reason. I have evidence corroborating my side. I am still contemplating taking this to the BBB for an investigation.
This is not the first time they have charged me high price. Another time they did the same thing i.e., they reset the engine oil change flag in the iDrive and charged me $ 20 per signal that they reset. It escaped my initial attention as it had been put under miscellaneous. They will try to swindle money from you whenever they can. Also, after my last visit I have been noticing that there are many other fault signals showing up on my iDrive than when I had initially taken it to them (related to Alternator, etc) which were absolutely not there before I took the car to them.
Please do not take your car to these people. Take your car to people who have honesty, integrity and credibility.

I really really hate to do this because this is just one of the of places you want to like. They are really nice. I have sat in the waiting room and listened to the owner’s wife give really good advice to people on the phone. They are really responsive and work late.
But…
Someone is not competent. My car over heated and I sent it to them. They put in a new radiator. I was so pleased that I had them fix my clutch a week later. Then It started over heating again. I brought it back and they fixed a crack at the end of a hose for free. A few days later it started overheating again and ever since I had the clutch work done it was very difficult to shift into reverse.
So I took it to the dealership. They said «oh my god where did you get this work done?». They recommended a new clutch, They said the cooling system had air in it which should have been bled off. There was also a part that was the wrong part.
Anyway I take what the dealership says with a grain of salt but keystone had two shots at fixing a overheating problem and they blew it. This is not a hard problem.
Clearly someone at keystone is doing very sloppy work.
I recommend skipping them, which is really too bad.

Keystone auto has fix both of my Box Trucks. One had a problem that could not be explained by many mechanics, but Keystone pinpointed the problem and fixed it at a great price.
The second truck, I had a braking issue which I tried having fixed a year ago. That mechanic had me change out my entire brake system. The problem came up again recently and I brought it to Decker and his crew. They fixed it at $ 250! These guys are great and im very thankful of their professionalism and honesty.
I will continue to use Keystone in the future and highly recommend them to others.

These guys are located very close to my home, so after reading the positive reviews here on Unilocal,I took my truck there a few times. I have to agree that they seem honest. Their service is very good, and generally prompt, although sometimes they call later than they said they would. I get the impression that they’re very busy and since they’re a relatively small outfit, they can’t always meet a callback time. I guess being too busy can sometimes be a negative.
Kim always explains what they’re looking at, and what /​why they’re going to do or not do a repair. Sometimes, it seems like too much detail (is that really a problem though?) for a guy like me who knows a little about cars, but not a lot.
I’ve dealt with many auto repair shops over the years, and so often I get the feeling that their main goal is to get as much money from me as possible. That’s not the case here. More than once, they’ve told me that I don’t need to have something done that I was considering having done. How often does that happen at an auto repair shop?
I recommend giving them a try.

I will never ever ever take my car here again. If I could give negative stars I would.
I took my classic car in for a smoke and rattle issue and at first they were very responsive. Calls were returned promptly and information was forthcoming. This lasted about a week.
I authorized initial installation of a new carburetor and one other fix. After that everything went downhill and customer service became non-​existant. They are a small shop and I have another car to drive so I didn’t worry at first but after a few weeks went by I started calling. Every single time I called I was told that the owner was not available to speak to me and could he call me back. Over and over and over.
I had to be a complete pest in order to get a response. It still took weeks of repeated calls. When I finally did talk to Deckard briefly I was told they were «still trying to find the issue» … This went on forever. I would call… they would take a message. I would call again… they would take a message… and I would be avoided unless I was a pest, only to be told «we’re still trying to pinpoint it. could be this. could be that. don’t know… need to check one more thing» I would ask when I could expect a call back after they checked «one more thing», be told a date… that date would come and go… and the whole bullshit circle would start again.
In the end, they tried talking me into buying an entirely new motor for my car.
This was six months after I dropped it off in the first place. Six months.
At that point I was completely fed up and I called and told them I didn’t care that the issue was not fixed. I just wanted my car back. I told them I would be there to pick it up in two days, on Saturday at 2pm. They said that was fine and I was told that they would have it washed and ready for me. Great.
When my boyfriend and I arrived my car was sitting under a tree in the lot *covered in a thick layer of dirt, leaves, twigs and bird shit*. Not only that, the cover to my air cleaner was sitting on the passenger seat.
I was livid. I just wanted my car as far away from these people as possible. I can’t even believe I paid them but I did… and I was told to go outside and someone would pull the car out for me. Since it was stuck behind other vehicles.
We waited several minutes and that never happened.
Finally I walked over to the assistant, whose name I cannot remember, and he was very apologetic and helpful. No one even told him we were waiting. He put the air cleaner cover on for me and actually got out a garden hose and shop towels to try to get some of the dirt off for me. That one star is for him.
Funny how the owners were nowhere in sight.
After they moved it to a spot where I could I get in to drive the car away I could see that there were thick imprints in the dirt from my tires, telling me that the car had not been moved in who knows how long.
Since then as long as I drive the car regularly there is no more issue. Thank god I didn’t agree to a whole new engine for what turned out to be nothing imperative.
Never again. Never. Worst experience I’ve ever had. I’m angry again just thinking about the whole thing.

Update, Oct 2012. I was one of Keystone’s first Unilocal reviewers, years ago. I gave the business a 5 star rave review. It is gratifying to see that so many customers share my high opinion of Deckard and Kim Pham.
Deckard is the smartest technician I know, and I know quite a few. He is a degreed engineer, a very analytic mind and has a truly phenomenal memory. He is like a car detective, he analyses the evidence and solves the mystery. I too am an engineer and am pretty good at diagnosing and fixing cars, but I am farm league and Deckard is major league. Several times I thought I had diagnosed a problem correctly only to have Deckard diplomatically point out that I had missed or misinterpreted a very subtle clue.
Kim, Deckard’s lovely wife, runs the front office. She is amazingly knowledgeable about cars and has a great batting average for diagnosing complex problems correctly over the phone. She also goes to bat for the customer trying to find good prices on parts. Sure they mark up parts costs, all shops do, but they buy at a discount and if they get a great deal they pass on considerable savings to you. I’ve had Kim save me a lot by shopping around for good deals on parts for older cars. In some cases the savings can be in the hundreds. You can pay e.g. $ 129-​$ 360 for a 90s vintage rebuilt Bosch alternator. Kim knows where to find the low priced high quality ones.
I hesitate to give another rave review for this business as it has become very busy and I worry that they wont find time for me, but somehow they always do. Sometimes they are hard to contact live on the phone, but be patient, they will call you back.
I don’t think there is a better automotive tech on the planet than Deckard. Someday they will have a reality show featuring car repair mysteries. If they do, I will urge Deckard to compete and then bet heavily that he will emerge as the final champion. It’s a pretty safe bet.

I agree with the other reviews. I found Keystone on Unilocal.I had a car shipped cross country and it had an issue with a noise which I suspected was something with the transmission. I dropped it off at Keystone Auto on Saturday morning, and they found the issue and fixed it in the same day, for much less than I had expected it to cost.
It is a bit easy to miss the first time, as it’s in the corner and there’s another auto shop next door, and there’s no huge banner outside, so check out the Unilocal photos and map it before you go.
Great service from a family-​owned business. I will definitely be bringing my car here again for troubleshooting.

Deckard and his team are just great. This is the place that even dealerships with cars they can’t fix. take their car to to get fixed.
From crazy leaks, to haunting electrical ghosts… if they can’t fix it. the car’s probably not going to be fixed by anyone else. He knows what he’s doing… that’s really it.

we having been bringing cars to Decker for years.
He is really good with cars that have electrical problems that no one else can figure out. Two different Jaguars were brought to him with no start issues and he got them both running in one day.
He can be a little pricey but it is always worth it. His wife works the front office and i love to talk with her. She is so pleasant.

We saw the good reviews and decided to take our Jeep Grand Cherokee here. The parking lot is insanely packed! I don’t understand how they get the cars in and out of there it’s so busy.
Our brakes were grinding — our a/​c only worked on high — there were some leaks and our car was making this odd noise when pushing the gas petal and wasn’t accelerating as well as it used to. My boyfriend went inside and told them everything that was going on and they said they would fix it that day — and give us a call in 2 hours with a diagnosis. After a few hours my boyfriend called them to see what was going on — they gave us the diagnosis and the cost of $ 1100+ to fix everything. But it wouldn’t be completed in one day and we could pick it up Monday (dropped it off Friday).
We picked it up Monday late afternoon and everything was working fine. No grinding with the brakes, our a/​c and heater finally worked, and we were actually accelerating easily. It’s been a few weeks and I’ve noticed after driving awhile (more then an hour) our car still does that odd thing when pressing the gas. It just doesn’t seem to GO. It almost feels like the petal resists. I don’t know but that is still not fixed.
Overall a good experience. We’ve had HORRIBLE experiences in the past with the dealership — Stevens Creek Chrysler Jeep Dodge and another small place called Diagnostics Unlimited so we were very hesitant with taking our car to another auto place.