Garage Issues

fivetide

Splott wrote: »

He kind of has a point. You paid them to fit a part you supplied and they did that. If you wanted a more in depth diagnosis you should've gone for the job that cost a mere £200 more that would've saved you a lot of money.

Worse it was £600 labour + £500 parts supplied and another £90 for the headskim so £1190 all in or just £110 cheaper and a lot more grief.

As said, eBay, spares or repair. It's just not worth chucking money at.

molerat

This sort of job is "fix it yourself or scrap it" on a car of that age and value.

EdGasket

vaio wrote: »

They are telling lies....no way can they swap out a piston for £250 especially as just the gasket set cost you twice that and thats before you consider the oil leak & water loss. My guess is they messed up the head gasket and are now trying to get more money out of you to finance the next stage of their learning curve

I think you really have two choices.....

write car & cash off

recover car, get independent report & sue them

Which is best depends on how angry you are and how much you value the car.

Pragmatic solution might be to threaten the inspection in the hope that it frightens them into a refund

I second that. How can a piston possibly be £250 when it involves all the work you just had done (about £1200) being done again plus more?

sikersh

Thanks for all of your replies.

The car was diagnosed 90% headgasket failure by previous garage. I don't blame them for mis-diagnosis (if this is the case) as they only did a sniff test.

I rang the garage (that has my car) today, and it ended up quite heated as they weren't accepting any liability at all. He said he was doing me a favor and that he could only discount me on the labour charges 'if' I chose to have the piston replaced. He would not refund anything.

I told him I've had to buy a new car as its been 2 months since I had it towed back to them, and I can't get to work without it and he said "that's not my fault". I said that if they would have diagnosed the piston before xmas I probably would have had it fixed, but I've had to pay £600 on a deposit for my new car, so I'm skint now and I can't keep throwing money at it.

I kind of presumed the garage would have given the car a good going over when fixing it the first time, they could have turned around and said they don't want to touch it, I never put any pressure on them.

The first time it went the car ran fine just overheated, the second time it went the car broke down and sounded like spanners where literally in the engine! That's what I don't get....

I don't know what to do next to be honest, I want to seek legal advice but spending any money now is just not worth it as I may end up getting nothing back. The garage won't budge and I'm losing patience with the entire thing!

Thanks,

Simon

sikersh

boabster wrote: »

are you sure the problem was not the water pump a very well known problem with those cars , ,i would have had a compression test done on the car ,i would also have had the cam belt changed ,but too tell you the truth i would have sold the car for spares or repair if it were the head gasket,as for the piston too be done for 250 pounds,far too cheap ,my opinion is i think the belt has not been put back on properly ,it costs 250 pounds for a proper cambelt kit ,,you could have bought a car with no probs with all the money you have spent ,,and all parts for that type off car are very expensive , ps find yourself a good mechanic ,your brotheres mate is not very good at all ,,

Everything was replaced, waterpump, thermostat, cambelt and tensioners, headgasket etc.