LONG - a reminder of why I hate putting my car in the shop

[KatWoman]

NOTE: This is not intended to flame on anyone in the industry, but just speaking my mind about my own personal experiences

I would really love know what the minimum intelligence level, if any, required to be a mechanic is.....seriously.

I HATE taking my car in for service, however there are a few things Alex and I haven't learned or don't have the proper tools and equipment for. I had to apologize up n down to Marvin for putting him into the hands of evil.

Saturday I took the car in to get a coolant flush since that it needed to be done from when we did the HG jobbie 2 weeks ago and to get the remaining crap out of the system. My regular service writer wasn't in but he had set me up with a different guy to see. So after an hour he finds me in the waiting area and asks me to come out back with him to my car. My first thought of course is @#$% because they know we did our own work and I was preparing myself for them to tell me we botched up the the HG or something. He says that the guy doing my flush thinks my water pump is bad and its making a lot of noise. Then the flush guy says my water pump squealed while the coolant was being taken out of the system and there is a rattling noise coming from the area where the timing belt cover is. It sounded like a light knocking noise which I did hear it earlier in the week. I told them the water pump was brand new and the gear on it spun just fine when we checked it before installling it. They said they could warranty the part but the labor to put it in would be close to $300. I decided to take the car home and have Alex look at it and go from there. I already shelled out $102 for the flush as it was.

Fast forward to the afternoon....met up with Nick Riley (the guy who set my timing and knows Neon motors) for a few minutes to have him listen to it. He said the pump should not have squealed..it is only a gear inside that spins....and if the car did squeal they had to have been running my car dry (now I really wanna kick someones ass). So afterward we decide to take my car home and take of the AC/PS belts. I do know my AC compressor (possibly the AC clutch) is having some problems so I was hoping that was the knocking noise. Nope. So after a few min of swearing and having a beer Alex and I run out to Autozone to go pick up the 3-jaw puller to so we can rip apart the right side of the motor and see what's going on. By now we are both pissed because we did not plan on spending another weekend on a broken car, but you do what you gotta do and get over it

After the belt removal determined that wasn't the problem, Alex plugged one ear with an ear plug, then took a large tube (knda like oxygen tubing but a bit bigger) and had me start the car (which then we heard a loud clattering noise as it turned over and started) and used his makeshift "stethoscope" to pin point the general area of the noise. It got louder since the belts werent on to make more noise. We pinned it down to an area not quite at the water pump itself. Alex suspected maybe a bolt to the water pump came loose. Time to tear down a bit. The motor mount was removed (oh and we discovered my front motor mount is shot while we were at it ) When the side motor mount is out you can see a bit into the area where the timing belt is. So before going any further Alex said to start the car again. I did and we watched the timing belt for a min, nothing going on and....................no knocking noise. ????

Alex put the motor mount back on. One of the bolts on it feels like it spins freely like its threads are stripped. Well after trying a little further it does decide to tighten down. It just takes a year. So Alex put it on tight as it would go. Start the car again. No rattles, no knocking, nothing....except the little ticking noises the motor makes anyways.

Had I not known better or didn't have Alex in my life or know people like Nick, I would have wasted ALOT of money over a part that wasn;t even the problem to begin with So good thing this is not the case.

This is not the first time they have made such a screwy diagnosis.

This is also the same dept. who told me my car has wheel hop, the intake sucks in more air than the engine is capable of, and that my suspension may be causing my car to lurch at take off.....when the problem REALLY ended up being the torque converter in the tranny was shot. Another time my car was throwing codes left and right, lurching at freeway speeds, and randomly not starting. Their diagnostics couldn't pick up what was wrong...I had it done three times. They tried selling me a new computer each time. That's $500 right there that if it was not the problem I would be ass out that amount. After further research, I found out that a bad speed sensor causes these problems. So I went out and spent $50 on a new sensor. And guess what? All those problems stopped. And I would not have been able to get a refund on the computer since they do not take back electronic items. I can name off a few other items that they said was wrong and we found out otherwise.

What really pisses me off is that EVERY TIME I go in for a routine service they find a $300-700 problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. They also look at me and speak to me like I am some doofnard that just says "ok" and solves all my mechanical problems by whipping out the credit card.

Also not only is misdiagnosis a problem, but so is taking short cuts. Have a nice look at this picture. After I had my accident 4 years ago, I kept blowing my cooling fan fuse. Obviously something is wrong somewhere when you keep blowing fuses. They "fixed" it and said everything was fine now..........well I dont find hardwiring a broken fuse as an acceptable solution to the problem. Yes, this is really what they did.




And the saddest of all this.........I have been to many dealers and shops in town and this particular dealer I go to is STILL the least of all evils


The only 2 things this dealer has going for it that I go there to do SOME business is that MY regular service writer is cool and the parts dept guys rock and give me discounts on parts. So there is a silver lining in the cloud, but I just can't stand having my car go back into the cespool of automotive sin..oops I mean the service bays

[Sean]

they sound like the type of people that think that just because your a girl the only thing you care about your car is what colour it is. It's kinda sad how much mechanics rip people off and get away with it.

[grimmy]

hola gato-mujer
what shaop is this that you are talking about?
sounds a little like a dealership.

[KatWoman]

Originally posted by grimmy
hola gato-mujer
what shaop is this that you are talking about?
sounds a little like a dealership.

Believe it or not this is a Phoenix-area 5-star Dodge dealer. And a large one at that. Yeah I would expect my above story to happen at Jubuliant Joe's Fairly Honest Car Sales & Service but no, this happened with one of the big guys Smaller shops = more evil.

[Takeshi_Nakazato]

Small Shops aren't always evil. The shop down the street from my house has the nicest people working there. Father and Son business and after going there 3 times, our car is better than ever after coming out.

I can just show up and ask him to check a sound right in front and he will tell me what's wrong and tell me how to fix it myself because usually it's not that bad and he's not the kind of person to lie to you for money.

Maybe it's just this shop, but haven't had a problem yet on my mom's car. We'll see when I get my Hachi on the road though

[Oz]

at all your probs, Kat! Seem to happen every other week. I'm interested to know if you'll be buying Dodge again...

:ylsuper that you got it fixed.

[Dustin_S]

don't get me started on dealers. Another Five-star dodge dealer "fixed" my stealth recently by putting in new lash adjusters- at 1100 dollars. A vast overshoot price-wise, but after all the SHIT i've put up with from independent mechanics (two of which are no longer in the county) I just said "Furk it" and told the dealer to plate my engine in gold if they had too, just fix the damn thing. BIG mistake.
All of the sudden, my engine block needs replaced, because it's cracked, my head is warping, I have two spun bearings, and a bad rod/piston.

Now, all of this seems possible with my car. it has a HORRIBLE staying fixed record. but one thing- the entire engine has about 1500 miles on it. I'm so pissed off. The car is still at the dealer, has been for about 2 months. I don't have the money to pay to get it released so it can spend another year in dad's garage, but dad and mom flat out refuse to pay for it. I expect they'll be selling it soon.

I hate people.
not just mechanics. not just people from France, or Iraq. I hate people. period.

[Shortbus]

Originally posted by Takeshi_Nakazato
Small Shops aren't always evil. The shop down the street from my house has the nicest people working there. Father and Son business and after going there 3 times, our car is better than ever after coming out.

I can just show up and ask him to check a sound right in front and he will tell me what's wrong and tell me how to fix it myself because usually it's not that bad and he's not the kind of person to lie to you for money.

Maybe it's just this shop, but haven't had a problem yet on my mom's car. We'll see when I get my Hachi on the road though

What dealer? Kat Grubb?

I am curious I know a lot of ppl up here.

[crab]

From a technical viewpoint, hardwiring a FUSE is VERY DANGEROUS and kinda DEFEATS the PURPOSE of the FUSE. If you car (touch wood) blows up or catches fire or something as a result then you have a pretty good case to present to the judge against these shops.

[boingo82]

http://cartalk.cars.com/About/Garage/mechan-x/find.html

Find a new mechanic above.

Also, call Dodge corporate. I can almost guarantee they don't want you to spread this all over the internet, and will probably be willing to work with you. Furthermore, they have the "authoritah" to make the hobos at that shop behave. Good luck.

[KatWoman]

Performance Dodge, John. My service writer's a great guy (but he wasnt in saturday) and the parts dept guys are cool.....just the techs they have "out back" are who worry me.


As for my problems, the HG was something I knew was going to come up at some point 3 years ago when I got this motor.

Just a little history on my beast:

Ran well for the first 96,000 miles I had it. Wrecked it in a head on collision at 51,000. When the accident happened the line for the tranny fluid that goes into the radiator (where it gets cooled too) broke and I tried driving my car up a driveway (minus fluid) to get it out of the street. I believe that's why it went out a month after I got it out of the shop. At 65,000 I had the headgasket replaced under warranty and had the timing belt done too, BUT the service writer I had back then did me a grave injustice by NOT telling me the water pump should be replaced too. He even tried to discourage me from doing the timing belt! So later on down the road 96K miles, it seized...kaboom.

Now my new motor (400 miles on it when I got it) had been sitting in storage for 2 years before I ended up with it. The friend of mine who had it knew it was gonna sit for a long time so he powerwashed it and for that reason alot of the sensors had blown...or would later on blow down the road. I knew to expect that. So yeah I have replaced just about every sensor by now My speed sensor was the worst problem....a small one but it caused a lot of codes to go off and almost cost me a new PCM had I "listened" to the techs at the dealer :roll:

This teardown we did a few weeks ago was a maintainence repair that I was actually prepared for....for once hehe. The radiator fan relay had died at some point perhaps just before the work. The night I said it overheated then parked it....I have a feeling now that I look back that it was the relay...but since the work needed to be done and I saw the oil n coolant had mixed already, it was a perfect time to get it fixed and everything fell into place.

You have to remember too that almost anytime you swap a motor or do a major teardown, you're gonna have some bugs to work out. We set my timing wrong otherwise I would have been up a week sooner. The guy that came over and correctly set it wasnt available for a week after we first worked on the car. So the extra week of downtime was a small price to pay to avoid major trouble down the road. He also found things that werent tightened down properly....and that turned out to be teh fault of a defective torque wrench, which I got my money back for. As for the motor mounts....they are over 100K miles so yeah time for new ones :flash:

I calculated how much I have actually spent keeping the car running. This does not include routine oil changes/tune ups and fueling. I am talking repairs/maintenence beyond that. In 6 years I have spent roughly $4000...that includes the new motor and the $950 I had to pay for work already performed only to find out I was screwed and 2.5 sets of tires. So I have spent approxiately $667 a year to keep my car on the road. I don't consider that horrible since I did use my car as a delivery vehicle the first 5 years I had it. And the harder you drive a car the more likely something is to break.....especially in AZ where we have the 2 worst conditions you can subject a vehicle to: dust and extreme heat.....hence why alot of manufacturers have their proving grounds out here.

Almost all work done to my car since the new motor went in has been done by me and Alex. The last "major" thing I let the shop do was replace some seals and a filter for my AC...an area we didn;t know how to deal with at the time.

[boingo82]

Originally posted by KatWoman
.......especially in AZ where we have the 2 worst conditions you can subject a vehicle to: dust and extreme heat.....hence why alot of manufacturers have their proving grounds out here....

On the other hand, folks like us have absolutely NO worry about rust!!

*wonders about her G20's longevity, as it's spent its entire life in Las Vegas and St. George, UT*

[grimmy]

hey john do you work at B&B?