Problems with bad garage and vehicle repairs

RichGold

I have an long running problem with a garage regarding my commercial vehicle which I wondered if anyone had a view/experience on. Please bear with this explanation, as its quite long regarding this protracted problem. To put this in context, I'm a courier on contract and if my van is off the road, I don't earn, then before long I'll lose my work.

Early in march my van was overheating/losing water. I took it to a local garage who had previously done its last 2 services without incident. On the first visit I received a some rad weld, second visit a radiator cap, 3rd visit a new rad. Then with the problem still there I left the van with them and they opted to remove the engine. A new head gasket was fitted. Once the engine was removed (totally unnecessary for a head gasket) I was told I required a new clutch and flywheel, which were replaced with a single mass flywheel, that being the wrong type of flywheel for my vehicle and causing terrible judder at low revs. By now I've spent over £2500 and lost about £1500 in earnings as every time I was obliged to return to them I lost work, with a further £1000 on vehicle hire to keep me on the contracts while the van was left with them. Once the vehicle was returned I still experienced water loss as the water pump had obviously been knocked when the engine was removed, and then experienced starter failure as it starter wasn't meshing with the new flywheel on start up. after must protestation from myself they took the van back in and changed the flywheel for the correct one, this caused more problems for me as now the clutch felt funny and failed within about 20 miles of the garage each time I took it away on 4 different occasions. This caused me to fail to reach a job and subsequently to lose a contract I was working on. In short my vehicle was left with this garage 7 or 8 times over 2 months, each time being returned to me in an un-fixed state, causing me to have to cancel or get cover for the job I was doing due to a breakdown and recovery or take the van back there myself when I should have been working in it. This clutch failure occurred 4 times, each time with the mechanic giving me then van back with the words "I'd drive anywhere in the now, its all done!". Some might say I should have removed the van from them earlier, but after spending all this money with them I was "invested" so to speak.
At this point I removed the van from this garage and took it to a Mercedes dealer, which fixed the clutch failure by replacing the master and slave cylinders (which had already been replaced by the first garage). They were also critical of the work done by the first garage, saying that under no circumstances should an engine have been removed to fix a head gasket, going so far as to say its a job that takes just under 11 hours labour (over 2 working days) and should cost no more than £800 (which I have in writing from them).
The first garage took a week over it and charged me £1400.
Over the 2 month period it was with the first garage It cost me over £6000 in money spent to the garage, lost earnings, and vehicle rental, and that's not counting the distress I was under with effectively losing my job and not really being able to do much about it.
I'm not the kind of person who is usually minded to pursue a claim, and have never looked at doing anything like this before (and hope not to be in a position to do so again) but I feel I didn't receive value for money at all out of this whole deal and if I'm honest would like some recompense for poor work/lost earnings/general inconvenience . If anyone has any experience of a situation such as this, I'd appreciate your comments.

Thanks in advance, Rich.