can you believe this shit?

This happened about 40 miles from where I live. Not shocked at all.

Posted by jeepdave This happened about 40 miles from where I live. Not shocked at all.

me neither, surprisingly.
what balls, though? I mean its one thing to run the car through the gears and bring it back, but to savagely beat the piss out of it, break the clutch and then CHARGE the customer for the clutch your lackeys fried???? Damn.

The mechanics you hear in that video ought to never work in a shop again. 1% gives the rest of us a bad name.

That's disgusting. Now I'm curious as to what made him bug the car but good on him for doing it. Poor guy.

Funny story... Back in 2001, I had bought a 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier coupe from Hometown (Ross) Chevrolet. I had purchased an extended warranty through their shop to alay the finance company (the car had 83,000 miles on it). Anyways, a few months after I bought the car, the head gasket began to seep. With the 2.2L OHV engine, they seep around the dowel pins on the engine block deck. I scheduled the car for the work and had them service the transmission and change the coolant. I figured it couldn't hurt even though the the 3T40E was a bulletproof transaxle (it used to be called the TH125). Anyways I go to pick the car up and the guy that had taken it for a test run comes back and tells me that for an automatic Cavalier, the car didn't run too bad and seemed pretty quick.

to this day, i've always wondered what he meant... and no I wonder what he did. LOL

I bought a brand new 2000 Cavalier. It had trim on only one side. Took me a while to figure that out. And the drivers side mirror fell off. It fell. Off. It fell the fuck off. Apparently I made the mistake of adjusting it. Anyway, it developed a rather loud tick at around 15k. Gas mileage went to shit. And the gages started doing odd things. Like telling me I'm going 50 mph at a red light. Any who I took it in to be warranted on a Friday after work. I had another car, as always, and they said they would take a look. It had just turned over 15k btw. And this was in February. I decide to stop in on Monday morning instead of that evening to check on the damned thing. I actually parked next to my car without noticing it. Why? Well it was no longer dark green. It was roadsalt white. We don't get snow that often. I went inside and the service manager is soooo happy I came by and promised he would have it ready by that evening. I ask him where it was as I wanted to grab a cd out of the radio. He told me I wasn't allowed in the shop and he would have a tech grab it. He motions one over tells em to grab a cd from the green Cavaliers says it's in the glove box. First red flag. Guy goes out the way I came in. Second red flag. I walk that way while the manager is babbling about something, I dunno as i had stopped listening. Saw the tech walk right to the roadsalt encrusted car. . Fucking. Flipped. Then he gave this line about trying to replicate the problem by taking the car on a trip that weekend. To Illinois. Long story short, free oil changes, free tires, and 1500 bucks in my pocket. A dollar for every additional mile. But they still didn't fix the fucking problems with it.

I really, really, really hate bad mechanics who don't respect other peoples' vehicles, regardless of what they drive. I'm afraid this kind of crap is pretty common.

I should add, one of the reasons I became a technician was when I was 16 or 17, my '85 Daytona broke its timing belt at idle. Towed it to a shop I had trusted before, he did the belt, cash transaction, end of story. The car smelled like cigarettes after.

A few days later, I noticed the car felt progressively sloppier when I was shifting gears. Popped the hood and found 2 engine mount bolts missing so the mount was literally just resting on the frame rail, and this extra movement had subsequently yanked a few vacuum hoses away from where they should be. No biggie, drove it home gently, found a couple bolts... called the mechanic to let him know he left my engine loose. "Oh, I didn't do the work on it." and he hung up. Nice.

The real kicker was when I was cleaning my car a couple days later and removed the ashtray to clean around it and it had butts in it- in a car that had NEVER been smoked in. That's when I really lost it on this fucker.

Things like this make me tempted to leave a gumcam running while the car is serviced.

This is why I don't take my vehicles to chain shops when I can't fix it myself. The dude who does the work on my cars owns the shop, so if he loses a customer, it's money out of his pocket. He's even allowed me to supply the parts on occasion (trans cooler lines for 99 Wontstart, er, Windstar).

Posted by bandi I should add, one of the reasons I became a technician was when I was 16 or 17, my '85 Daytona broke its timing belt at idle. Towed it to a shop I had trusted before, he did the belt, cash transaction, end of story. The car smelled like cigarettes after. A few days later, I noticed the car felt progressively sloppier when I was shifting gears. Popped the hood and found 2 engine mount bolts missing so the mount was literally just resting on the frame rail, and this extra movement had subsequently yanked a few vacuum hoses away from where they should be. No biggie, drove it home gently, found a couple bolts... called the mechanic to let him know he left my engine loose. "Oh, I didn't do the work on it." and he hung up. Nice. The real kicker was when I was cleaning my car a couple days later and removed the ashtray to clean around it and it had butts in it- in a car that had NEVER been smoked in. That's when I really lost it on this fucker.

That Sucks, Good thing the engine did't fall out of it.

There's a lot of reasons I'm really happy I met bandi - this being one of them. I'm so glad I don't need to take my car to someone I don't have 100% faith in anymore. The VW dealership used to be good back home, but when they moved and a large chunk of their service crew left, they started to really suck.

The last time someone else serviced my vehicle was in December 2009, and I got my Jetta back with an engine light code (they were just supposed to check my alternator etc to see why I'm getting the generator light at random). I had to go back up north that weekend with a car that couldn't accelerate properly. It wasn't a lot of fun driving in northern Ontario on dark, snowy roads with a car that barely gets past 60 and then barely past 80. I was in school all week so the next weekend I drove home again to take it back to VW. They call me and I come in and they tell me it's code whatever...could be the turbo, could be something in the vacuum lines, but they don't really know. Okay. That's not useful but whatever.

Went home, popped the hood, removed the engine cover and there is a hose laying beside the vac reservoir. Put it back together, figure there's no way they'd miss something that obvious.

Never got that error again, and the car has worked properly again ever since.

It's not a horror story by any means - but something that obvious should not have been missed by a mechanic saying it could be an error in the vac lines...shouldn't you have checked the obvious ones?

Luckily they didn't charge me for the diagnostic and I met bandi a few months later

Bandi, she only loves you for your tools.

i lost the clutch in my 91 Cavalier RS after getting stuck in a mammoth snowdrift. Started to slip in 5th gea. The shop my brother worked at couldn't get to it for a week so I took it to another local shop. They had it done in a day and I picked the car up. As soon as I started i knew something was badly wrong with it. The clutch before pushed easy and wasn't that hard. With the new clutch in it, it took a war-throw with your foot. On top of that, it was really grabby and the transmission had a new whine I didn't care for. Once I got the car rolling, shifting it was hard. I address my concerns to the guy that worked on the car/owned the shop. He tells me that my transmission was probably going anyway... funny, didn't seem to be anything wrong with it before.

So predictably, the clutch AND transmission fail. It locked up in second gear. I had to get in the back seat and kick the shifter into neutral, then roll it down the hill to the shop my brother worked at. It sat for a couple of days and then they got to it, my brother taking the transaxle out. What he found was both funny and enough to boil the blood. The clutch disc was in backwards. Keep in mind, all you folks that have never changed a clutch, that when you pull the kit out of the box, there is a decal on the clutch disc that says "FLYWHEEL SIDE" and "TRANSMISSION SIDE" for easy installation. Uh huh. Later that day, one of the guys that was friends with my brother and knew the shop where the clutch had been done was laughing going, "yeah, walt drove the transmission bolts in with an impact" huh huh huh. So, by putting the clutch in backwards, not only did the clutch fail, but it took the transmission with it. So I bought clutch #2 from NAPA and transaxle #2 from Jerry Brown's Used Auto Parts in Castleton Corners VT. The transmission was out of an 89 but a quick swap of the speedo drive put is in business. Put those in. A month later, the front input bearing on the gearset (right behind the input shaft inside the transaxle) seizes, shattering the transmission case and spraying two or so quarts of GM Sychromesh all over the clutch ruining it. The salvage yard warrantied the transmission (which I thought was pretty damn cool), but the clutch and labor (which I thought sucked). So, Clutch #3 and transmission #3. And away we went.


Those lasted until 2000 when I killed the clutch... i was moving at over 110mph heading into a corner on Tennessee Route 30. I downshifted a gear too many, the transmission shifted on the worn out engine mounts and in the process all the little fingers on the pressure plate sheared. Clutch #4 was the very last one.



what does suck is my brother now works where I do... i no longer have access to a full GM shop.

When I first got my S4 I brought it to a shop to change an axle, when I arrived to pick it up, the mechanic said IS IT CHIPPED? ....no why...? WOW THATS FAST FOR A STOCK S4....

I went to go home in the car and the gas light was on....
needless to say I never went back

Haha... I did have a customer when I was an apprentice with a Taurus SHO- I was on a very conservative road test in it and drove past the owner while she was out on a walk. She yelled "YOU NEED TO DRIVE IT HARDER THAN THAT!"

She was a cool customer. And always brought me cookies.

I used to wrench on tractors for a living. You want to talk about some anal customers. They would be on both extremes of the spectrum. The actual Farmers were usually cool. They understand that with farm equipment it has to be operated like they do to T/S correctly and if they flog the crap out of it you need to as well. Now the homeowner with 3 acres that thinks he needs a tractor is a different matter. Leaning over your shoulder the whole time ( I ran a service truck), deliberately damaging other components after the repair has been completed to get free parts replaced and on and on. Horse people were just as bad as the homeowners. Never treated a customers machinery badly unless it was necessary to troubleshoot though. Don't see the point of it unless the complaint only occurs when your at wide open throttle with a plow to far in the ground

Anyone remember the story about the shop in Montreal that wrote off the kids lambo?
the entire scenario was fun to follow

Or the Aston Martin that got nabbed on the Gardiner Expwy in Toronto doing 50 over (Instant impound and license suspension for 10 days in Ontario) that was being driven by a tech?