Car Work Done To Come Out Worse Off ... Where Do I Stand ?

UberSkills

Needing some advice to where i stand here.

Took a car to get MOT from a council certified MOT station.

It failed the MOT on Wednesday with the following. Drop link - Tyre - NS CV Boot and Number plate. I asked the garage how much would be to fix the faults and they gave me a price of £196 that was including the MOT and the retest. I decided to get the work done by them on the Thursday.

Thursday night comes and i am driving home when i hear clicking when i hard lock to the right. I call them up on the friday and tell them this noise was not there on the car before having the work done on it, They tell me to come down while they check it out. Took it for a drive and lifted it up on the ramps and show me the drive shaft bar wobbling and say that i either need a new NS drive shaft or a CV joint and told grit had gotten in the joint and messed it up. This is within 1 day of the MOT. They say this is just a coincidence that it happened within the 1 day of the MOT.

As you can imagine i am not happy at the moment and i am wondering where do i stand in a situation like this ? Do i do a chargeback until they fix the work on the car since they had worked on the NS CV boot and possibly had the shaft off ? Is it illegal to do a chargeback for this ? I am really unsure what to do next.

Any help would be appreciated.

foxy-stoat

I do not think they have broken any laws.

If the CV boot was split and has been for a while then the grease would of exited the joint and you would of worn the joint out while driving it like that.

They could of gotten grit into the joint but it wouldnt of messed it up in a few miles....unless the ball bearings came apart when they changed the boot.

marlot

Changing the boot will have disturbed the joint. It's quite possible there was no noise there before, but it doesn't mean they've been negligent.

AdrianC

The whole point of the boot (or gaiter) is to keep the grease in the joint and the muck out. If it splits, you may be lucky and get away with just a new gaiter - or the damage may be done.

And, yes, disturbing it to replace the gaiter may well have been the final straw. One thing's for sure, it wasn't the cause. Should they have just replaced the joint to start with? Possibly... But the gaiter alone may have been all that was needed.

BTW, if it failed on a tyre, you should be thankful that the MOT was before Mr Plod spotted it, since the legal limit is the same as the MOT limit. They've saved you from three points and a fine. Basic regular checks!

System

Lots of things which have been borderline at the time of the MOT fail not long after as some parts of the MOT put stress on components more than they get to see during regular use. My wife even had a brake hose which had just passed the visual leak inspection part of the MOT blow a hole in itself still during the MOT test when it was put on the rolling road for the brake efficiency test. So up on the ramp the MOT tester had looked at it, it had been put under pressure and looked absolutely fine however it must have been just on the cusp of letting go and did so on the rolling road a few minutes later. Chances are that if it had not had that MOT on that day and just experienced normal regular daily braking it would've continued to work for quite some time.....right up to the point an emergency stop was needed and then it would've failed.

We were just happy it failed on the rolling road brake tester and not as she was driving home.

TheMoonandBack

^
Same thing happened to a Mondeo estate I had a few years ago.
Brake pipe burst on the rollers during MOT. It was a metal one that went over the fuel tank. The pipe looked good on inspection but it had corrosion in the one place where it couldn’t be seen.
Like Tarambor, I was glad it was found.

OP, That’s life when you’re running a car unfortunately. A lot of garages won’t do repairs like CV boots and would just fit full driveshafts or cv joints to save any problems with customers.