Your worst ever car repair

plutoniumpilot

My first car, a D reg Fiesta 1L, starting misfiring whilst driving home from a service, so I pulled over and opened the bonnet and found one of the spark plugs had flown out of the engine although still attached to the ht lead. Screwed it back in and called up the mechanic- he blamed it on the work experience lad. Never did go back to him after that!

mkaibear

marlot wrote: »

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"!

I had a Peugeot 306 (1993/L) diesel and the wiring loom which ran through the door frayed and broke - this knocked out the leccy windows (whilst one of them was part-way down :eek: )

So I took it to a garage and found out that this had happened before - when my parents had had the car they had had this problem, taken it to a Pug main dealer who had replaced the wiring loom at a cost of £800. Only instead of using Peugeot parts like they claimed what they did was replace each wire in turn with a replacement wire. All of which were black.

So the problem was that there were several black wires which weren't attached to another bunch of black wires and none of them had any guidance as to what did what.

And this isn't even the "worst repair ever" - the worst repair ever was what the garage *I* took the Peugeot to did next.

"Ah, mate, we couldn't work out what all the wires did so we just soldered them together at random and hoped it'd work".

...it didn't...

I took it back and complained and they said "you'll need an auto electrician to have a look at it, we can't sort it out for you" - and I naively took their word for it and left. Should, in retrospect, have told them to return the car to the state it was in when I dropped it off.

Oh well.

I loved that car as well. Bah!

Lum

Do repairs you've done yourself count?

Old banger £100 Volvo 460 failed it's MOT on a rear seatbelt, couldn't get a replacement at an acceptable price, so just removed the rear seatbelts, and the rear seats and took it back for a re-test. Passed.

cyclonebri1

Lum wrote: »

Do repairs you've done yourself count?

Old banger £100 Volvo 460 failed it's MOT on a rear seatbelt, couldn't get a replacement at an acceptable price, so just removed the rear seatbelts, and the rear seats and took it back for a re-test. Passed.

Yep, they can only test it "as presented", if it goes in as a 2 seater it gets tested as such.

Mines an eastate car, the rear seats are permanently out, sowith it all folded flat they can't access the seat belt catches.

TrickyWicky

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Yep, they can only test it "as presented", if it goes in as a 2 seater it gets tested as such.

Does that mean you can MOT a car with a dead engine or gearbox then? - would be handy that way as one of ours is dead but needs to go on the road so the vandals will stop attacking it every few months.

I had a garage forgot to fix the oil filter bracket back on.. half way over a major roundabout "Bang, glugluglugglug". Kiwk Fit bodged a shock absorber replacement on my partners car leaving it completely loose and subsequently failing the MOT.. and a friend of mine did a head gasket repair for us without marking up the timing before removing the belt :eek:

atrixblue.-MFR-.

worse repair ive seen is welding to a nissan micra 1994 rear seat balt anchor points, the garage thought the would get away with not removing the carpet inside or at least peel them back from the welding site, the carried on and then all of a sudden there were flames all inside, garage replaced it with a festa mk2 that had done a million miles, and weld patches all over the chassis and engine bay and boot, the lady had it for 4 months before the front lights fell out due to corroded front end car was sold for what ever parts salvagable.

not a poor repair but a pain in the derrier, had the pleasure of changing a gearbox and clutch in ren 5 GT turbo, never again, 8 hours strip down time would of been around 5-6 on a ramp, the fella paid me for strip down, said he'd get the parts, 4 months later and that thing sat outside on my mates drive numerous calls to him to get it or get the parts he didnt got pushed down the drive onto the road, 2 weeks later council collected a ren 5 shell lol there was nothing left but the petrol tank. never did hear from the bloke since the last call to collect it.

mikey72

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

...not a poor repair but a pain in the derrier, had the pleasure of changing a gearbox and clutch in ren 5 GT turbo, never again, 8 hours strip down time would of been around 5-6 on a ramp, the fella paid me for strip down, said he'd get the parts, 4 months later and that thing sat outside on my mates drive numerous calls to him to get it or get the parts he didnt got pushed down the drive onto the road, 2 weeks later council collected a ren 5 shell lol there was nothing left but the petrol tank. never did hear from the bloke since the last call to collect it.

You should have kept it. Sort after car now.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

mikey72 wrote: »

You should have kept it. Sort after car now.

not my fave car i must admit, could have sold back then for around £1200, but then again too much hassle with v5 and alarm deactivation ha thatchem 1 alarm on he kept the fob gave mate the key.

mikey72

I've just bought an 80's renault 5 as a run around.
Manual choke, twin barrel weber carb, handles like it's on rails.
Sadly it's not the turbo though.

cyclonebri1

[QUOTE=TrickyWicky;49593579]Does that mean you can MOT a car with a dead engine or gearbox then? - would be handy that way as one of ours is dead but needs to go on the road so the vandals will stop attacking it every few months.

I had a garage forgot to fix the oil filter bracket back on.. half way over a major roundabout "Bang, glugluglugglug". Kiwk Fit bodged a shock absorber replacement on my partners car leaving it completely loose and subsequently failing the MOT.. and a friend of mine did a head gasket repair for us without marking up the timing before removing the belt :eek:[/QUOTE]

No, 'fraid not there are somethings that are cast in stone, emmisions and brake servo etc as regards the engine.

Kiddy seats fitted in the back are also an interesting quandry for the tester,

Regading the head gasket, it shouldn't be an issue, anyone capable of that job should have a haynes manual at the ready, (or a quick trip to the library), full engine timing details are always shown.