Your worst ever car repair

marlot

We all know that there are good garages, bad garages, and a few (thankfully!) really dire ones. What's the worst repair you've had done to your car?

Mine is probably a mini which needed a new track rod end. When I picked the car up, all seemed fine - I was driving along, the car felt normal, the steering wheel was centred. Until I came to a roundabout and found the car couldn't turn right!!!!! The alighment was so far out that the wheels could go a long way to the left, but only about 5 degrees to the right!

Garage denied that they'd mucked anything up of course "it must have been like that when you brought it in"!

CrazyRatLady_2

I either do all the repairs myself or get my dad to do it (he is a mechanic), but the car I own used to be my mums (parents are divorced) and she once took it to a local garage to repair a rust hole below the drivers door - they just welded a rectangle of metal to it which looks horrendous and is now entirely rusty again as it wasn't primered or anything :S

thefishdude

took my frist car a 1984 rover 213s to kwik fit for rear break show replacement i left it with them went back in time they said was told ermmm not ready come back later anyway tis repair seemed to take about 4 hours i dint know any better and breaks were better. 2 month later had a mot, and it failed on a big hole in floor pan just infront of rear wheels were the examiner sais someone had put a jack through the floor and it looked recent as not fully rusted up. as i had never jacked car uop seems kwik fit did it but kept it quiet

wba31

my father is a mechanic so never had a bad repair job...

rodenal

I once forgot to retighten a hub nut properly after changing a cv joint - 10 miles down the road there was rather alot of vibration...whoops

Limey

The previous owner of my truck had a new radiator fitted just before I bought, allegedly it was done by a 'specialist' garage. Surely a 'specialist' garage would know to put some !!!!!!! antifreeze in the water when they refilled it. I only found out when the temperature dropped below freezing and fortunately the freezing coolant only popped a pipe off rather than destroying something expensive.

kaya

not a repair story as such but did get asked to leave the local mercedes dealers when they quoted me £1500 + vat to supply a turbocharger that i could get 200 yds up the road for £800 inc vat , the car had only done 60,000 miles and the turbocharger wasn't even manufactured by mercedes , talk about rip off merchants, they couldn't get me out of the door fast enough, ill stick to japanese motors in future!

Limey

kaya wrote: »

not a repair story as such but did get asked to leave the local mercedes dealers when they quoted me £1500 + vat to supply a turbocharger that i could get 200 yds up the road for £800 inc vat , the car had only done 60,000 miles and the turbocharger wasn't even manufactured by mercedes , talk about rip off merchants, they couldn't get me out of the door fast enough, ill stick to japanese motors in future!

:laugh: Toyota quoted me about £1500 parts and £1500 labout on my MR2 to do the shocks and brakes after I took it there for a service. Needless to say I declined and did it all myself (with some help from a neighbour) for about £400 (ish), I blame him for getting me hooked on car tweeking. :cool:

rdwarr

Once bought a VW Beetle from a friend. She'd taken it to the same garage for years to get the MOT and it had always passed with flying colours. When I started taking some of the panels off it became apparent that they'd been keeping it on one piece using a combination of newspaper, papier mach! and duct tape. You could even work out what had been done when by the dates on the newspapers.

mkirkby

kaya wrote: »

not a repair story as such but did get asked to leave the local mercedes dealers when they quoted me £1500 + vat to supply a turbocharger that i could get 200 yds up the road for £800 inc vat , the car had only done 60,000 miles and the turbocharger wasn't even manufactured by mercedes , talk about rip off merchants, they couldn't get me out of the door fast enough, ill stick to japanese motors in future!

Indeed, quoted £2500 for a new cylinder head by Veg Vardy Nissan in Leeds. the car was misfiring under acceleration. Asked another garage to do the work (Briggate in Leeds for the record...). 4 hours later they told me the job was done...£120. Turned out it was just an inlet manifold blowing (turbo car).......

......make of that what you will.

Not the worst repair but rather probably the best!

cyclonebri1

Mate had a Lada estate, with a rattling sunroof, he fixed it.

Following week his missus along with mine were on the motorway, the rattle reappeared, she tried to close the thing on the catch when suddenly the whole glass panel flew out and back down the road.

A nano second or 2 later and the pressure popped the rear tailgate glass and that joined the sunroof somewhere up the M18:rotfl::rotfl: