Almost killed by negligent garage work

s_b

paddedjohn wrote: »

If the locking nut hasnt been tightned up then this could cause a knocking noise when turning, or possibly the fitter who did the tracking has backed just one track rod end off instead of sharing the adjustment between both sides leaving the track rod end hanging on literally by a thread.
(JUST TO ADD, IVE NEVER SEEN A RACK DAMAGED BY HEATING THE LOCK NUT BEFORE)

have you ever seen the rubber covering on a balljoint start to bubble as the heat transfers down to the balljoint and the grease starts cooking and trying to escape then?
if you go to hammymans post he says that if you use calor heating to warm a track rod end up it will take some time to get to cherry red so by capillary action this heat will travel and cause effect

s_b

all classic cases of poor or more likely no maintainance,you hear knocking in all the examples shown long before you get failure
if you read the op he says he is deaf and so failed to hear the noises coming from his steering
these are all reasons why the new 2 year mot possibly due to hit the streets in january 2012 should not be approved by government


remember this thread is about failed steering after a tracking was done and heat was used to unseize components

pendulum

endorfin wrote: »

NO work involving the steering was carried out. I mentioned the slight uneven tyre wear and he inspected the car on the lift, checked the track rod ends, bushes, steering etc and found nothing out of the ordinary.

So your brother's garage did do work on the steering then. Inspection work. It is possible he did something whilst investigating the problem.

endorfin wrote: »

It had recently been to a Citroen specialist for new spheres & the steering was checked over at the same time when new hydraulic fluid was put in and no problems were found.

Here is yet another garage that has done work on the steering recently.

You say "I'm not on this forum asking if anyone thinks the 2 are linked, I believe they are. I'm asking where I stand legally." but where you stand legally depends on whether they are linked. You ask why the onus should be on you to prove the last garage were at fault, but this is obvious, why should the last garage pay if the problem happens to be wear and tear or something weakened by a previous garage?

paddedjohn

s_b wrote: »

have you ever seen the rubber covering on a balljoint start to bubble as the heat transfers down to the balljoint and the grease starts cooking and trying to escape then?
If you go to hammymans post he says that if you use calor heating to warm a track rod end up it will take some time to get to cherry red so by capillary action this heat will travel and cause effect

no i havn't, and ive never worked in a garage that has used a blow torch to heat siezed nuts, very amateur if they cant even use oxy/acetylene

s_b

no i havn't, and ive never worked in a garage that has used a blow torch to heat siezed nuts, very amateur if they cant even use oxy/acetylene

i agree,thing is as we get more health and safety conscious insurance companies dont like oxy/aceteline,mine are in an anexe at work with extra long baggings,even the fire brigade tell me if we ever have a fire they aint coming in:eek: seeing as i have oxy aceteline,propane,argon on the premises (all safe i might add but all potential bombs)it going to be a big unn if she blows:rotfl::rotfl:

Kilty_2

s_b wrote: »

i agree,thing is as we get more health and safety conscious insurance companies dont like oxy/aceteline,mine are in an anexe at work with extra long baggings,even the fire brigade tell me if we ever have a fire they aint coming in:eek: seeing as i have oxy aceteline,propane,argon on the premises (all safe i might add but all potential bombs)it going to be a big unn if she blows:rotfl::rotfl:

:eek:

mikey72

paddedjohn wrote: »

no i havn't, and ive never worked in a garage that has used a blow torch to heat siezed nuts, very amateur if they cant even use oxy/acetylene

H&S again.
You can use a MAPP blowtorch instead, it gets hot enough to compete with oxy acetylene.

Homersimpson

endorfin wrote: »

I got it off the carriageway and tested it when stationary, rotating the steering wheel would turn the wheels but it feels it needs more rotations than it used to/QUOTE]

Can I throw in my 2 pennys worth, the OP has stated that the steering now takes more rotations that it used to. IMHO this points to a fault in the rack/box rather than the trackrod end.

As this is a Citreon with "Spheres" then it will have Citroens own very complicated (but very good) hydraulic system. I've never worked on a modern Citreon but I seem to remember that there is something odd about how the power assistance to the rack worked on old Citreons like the DS.

I think the OP needs to have an independant report carried out which will give one of the following outcomes:-

Failed track rod end
Broken rack end
Failed rack/hydraulic system
Track rod end and rack end seperated (most garages don't check how much thread is in the T.R.E when they adjust and i've taken some off that were literaly hanging by a thread).
Something unrelated broken on the suspension like a ball joint or even a factured crossmember

Once you have the report then you can go back to the garage.

Again IMHO the problem is proving that the fault was caused by the garage that did the tracking rather than by someone else who worked on the car recently or years back. I would suspect that if its a large chain of garages and there is some evidence to point to them they will do something to protect their reputation (what little they have left in some cases).

For the record with the arguing above I have had loads of TRE lock nuts heated up on cars for tracking but if you do it carefully its not a problem. If you have some knuckle dragger doing it as ever then its going to be a problem!

Hammyman

s_b wrote: »

have you ever seen the rubber covering on a balljoint start to bubble as the heat transfers down to the balljoint and the grease starts cooking and trying to escape then?

Grasping at straws. Won't kill a ball joint in anything under a few months.

if you go to hammymans post he says that if you use calor heating to warm a track rod end up it will take some time to get to cherry red so by capillary action this heat will travel and cause effect

And what do you think happens when you use oxy-aceteline? Have you ever done basic physics?

s_b

update coming in a fortnight