Quote:
Originally Posted by pits200
That's why a good mechanic is so damn valuable. I'll give you a quick taste.
Had my acuras timing belt snap 10k miles after it was changed. Since I was traveling for work I didn't have time to do it for myself. I live in Pittsburgh, belt jumped while driving to Jersey for work. What happened was they used an impact wrench on the timing belt tensioner bolt which is only suppose to be 19ft/lbs. The bolt sheared right off as I was driving and actually stayed in the enclosure, obviously valve and engine damage. When tearing the engine apart at an Acura dealership in NJ they pulled out the bolt head that sheared off and it had impact wrench marks all over it.
Acura dealership in NJ where I had the engine rebuilt was suppose to send the heads out to be decked. After getting the car back about 3k miles later, a valve dropped off into the combustion chamber and they admitted that they didn't need to send the heads out and possibly the valves weren't seated properly. After that, got a used engine and had a different acura dealership put in the used engine near my house in Pittsburgh. I thought the install went great, except about 1k miles later my transmission fried and was toast. I go to find, there was about 2quarts of transmission fluid in the car instead of the standard 8. I looked on the invoice and there was no charge for transmission fluid even though during an engine swap the car loses about 5 quarts of fluid. And so I asked about the fluid and how it's $20 a quart why it wasn't on the invoice and they stated they put in fluid and gave me the 5 quarts for free and that's why it didn't show up.
Lets just say after that the car was sold.
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Ah jeez, that sucks. Stories like that are why it's good to be your OWN good mechanic. I got a wall job while on the road coming home from a long ski trip when I was a kid. Alternator went "bad" Xmas eve middle of nowhere. Right next to a town. Limp off the interstate, gas station just closing. Guys does us a "favor" manages to ask us how much money we had. Like morons we tell him. Says he'll get his buddy to open the auto parts place Xmas eve get the part, fixed by morning. We stay overnight at local motel down the road.
Come back xmas day and pay him, Got home and was a little suspicious. No new alternator, same old dirty one. He had cleaned off the top but not underneath. What had happened was it was super cold out, alternator had frozen. He left it in his shop overnight started right up. Ripped us off for every penny we had. This was on an old VW rabbit, early 80's. Alternator never went bad again by the way.
I felt so stupid. Guy just stood there and lied to our faces, took all our money. ON CHRISTMAS! Vowed I'd never get screwed like that again if I could avoid it, started learning how to do stuff myself. I thought I knew stuff before that, clearly wrong.
Sadly in my experience since then techs have gotten dumber as the cars got more complicated, procedures more just swap stuff out til it works again. Lot of room for wall jobs and bill padding. And engine internals have got better, longer lasting, so the people with actual experience building engines and hard parts are fewer.