Car Repairs

Racey40

Please forgive me if I have chosen the wrong category. I wondered if anyone could help. My car has gone to be repaired after a spark plug sheared off in the Head. We are going to need a new Head as the spark plug was cross threaded and the garage (Main Dealer) think they wont be able to get the spark plug out without damaging the Head. We have asked for the old one back but have been told that (Regarding the old head of course your can have this however there is a core charge of £300+vat if you wanted to keep it.)
Is this normal as we already own the faulty part and are paying for a new one plus the labour to have it fitted. 
Many thanks 

shaun_from_Africa

You are paying for a new one (possibly it's a reconditioned unit) but you will be paying a reduced rate as you will basically be trading in your old cylinder head in part exchange.
It is a fairly common practice. Here's a couple of places I found online:

As long as the old cylinder head is returned after the fitting of the service exchange head no surcharge is levied irrespective of the condition of the old cylinder head. This return policy is a FREE collection service at no cost to yourself.

Please note that all heads are sold on an exchange basis.

JamoLew

Who cross threaded the spark plug would be my question

Racey40

shaun_from_Africa said:

You are paying for a new one (possibly it's a reconditioned unit) but you will be paying a reduced rate as you will basically be trading in your old cylinder head in par exchange.
It is a fairly common practice. Here's a couple of places I found online:

As long as the old cylinder head is returned after the fitting of the service exchange head no surcharge is levied irrespective of the condition of the old cylinder head. This return policy is a FREE collection service at no cost to yourself.

Please note that all heads are sold on an exchange basis.

So even though I am having a brand new Head fitted that would still be classed as an exchange?

facade

Pretty normal, if expensive, but I don't think the core charge should be subject to VAT, VAT will have been paid on the original part surely?.

A dealer can't be bothered repairing, and won't want to waste the time waiting for a machine shop to  repair it, so they simply get you to pay for an already repaired one, and send yours back for repair.

They get a refund for the "core charge" which is what the head is worth if it can be repaired- usually they don't get this back if it can't.

A small skilled garage might repair yours, or get yours repaired and refit it, because they will move the car off the ramp, and keep the parts safe until it comes back.

EdGasketTheSecond

Why can't the old head be helicoiled or similar? I have done that a couple of times successfully. Scotty Kilmer has a youtube video of doing it with head in situ. About 10 minute job.

Racey40

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Why can't the old head be helicoiled or similar? I have done that a couple of times successfully. Scotty Kilmer has a youtube video of doing it with head in situ. About 10 minute job.

Thats why we wanted the old one back so that we could get this done and recover some of the costs

daveyjp

Obvious move is to take the car to an engineer who will repair the old head.

droopsnoot

You could always source and fit your own replacement cylinder header, then you are free to do as you wish with the old one. It might be that the "new" head is only sold on an exchange basis, in which case the only other way would be to buy a used one, with all the required checks of course that it is any good. 

As for helicoiling, it may well just be that the main dealer do not have a policy of doing that. It might be because they don't have the necessary expertise, or it might be because they have done such things in the past and had all sorts of trouble that they would prefer to avoid in the future. Maybe their manufacturer doesn't allow them to repair vehicles in anything other than the factory-recommended manner, which would be "buy a new part and fit it".

fred246

You are better just servicing your own cars from new to stop this sort of silliness.

molerat

Racey40 said:

shaun_from_Africa said:

You are paying for a new one (possibly it's a reconditioned unit) but you will be paying a reduced rate as you will basically be trading in your old cylinder head in par exchange.
It is a fairly common practice. Here's a couple of places I found online:

As long as the old cylinder head is returned after the fitting of the service exchange head no surcharge is levied irrespective of the condition of the old cylinder head. This return policy is a FREE collection service at no cost to yourself.

Please note that all heads are sold on an exchange basis.

So even though I am having a brand new Head fitted that would still be classed as an exchange?

Who said you will be getting a "brand new" item ?  A main dealer will be getting it through their service exchange system, it may or may not be brand new depending on what they have in stock, and your old head will go back into the system to be refurbished to "as new" condition.  Likely the faulty hole will be built up, re-drilled and re threaded.