Mechanics

[rebel]

What happened to the days of a reliable mechanic????

It is nearly 2 months since my car has been off the road.....

By now most of you would know about the ins and outs of my VN and what has been done to it, but coming down to the nitty gritty of it all, replacing one thing after another, and car seems to be sounding worse, lack of time for Garth to be able to check it out, lack of knowledge on my boyfriends behalf, and me not being able to get under the bonnet as I am preggers, we finally all agreed that the best thing to do was take the car to a mechanic, so me rings around to find one that could look at it in this area as it needed to be towed. I find a mechanic, that pretty much gave me 2 possibilities over the phone, told me that its a free diagnosis, and that they have the equipment to test the car. I book it in send it off, a week later, they have replaced the fuel injectors, and fuel regulator. Still no luck on the car. So they ring and tell me that they will be getting an auto sparky to look at it. Garth and I head down to the mechanic, telling them that he is an auto spark and has look at all the possibilities by the symptoms.
2 days later they ring me and tell me they know the problem, I tell them not to do anything I will get back to them. The following day, I go there with a new part _ ECU, they have already gone and replaced the part, and refuse to return it. Plus they charge me for the diagnosis on the car, then when I go to pay and pick it up, they tell me that there is more problems... and they need to fix it before I take the car, I say no... They try and charge me for that too... Now I have the car home and its running like a bag of **** again.... These guys pretty much proved to me why i never like mechanics in the first place

 

[jafo]

just a bunch of assholes by the sound of it.

ok heres one for ya my last car was a valliant cant remember the model but was 1980 anyway my old man owned it before me and took it to profix for a tune up and service.
after dropping it off and taking a cab home he gets phone call saying the car has a number of things wrong with it so he says how much to fix it they say $250 so he says do it .
later gets another phone call saying the car is ready goes down to pick it up and gets the bill $1250 so he questions it as you do and they gave him the runaround and him not being mechanically minded agrees and pays it.
i get home and read the reciept of what they did
new fuel pump
new waterpump
new belts
aircon regas
new plugs
and the list goes on and on
i go and inspect the car and half the stuff they say they did they had not done but as the car was running ok the old man would not chase up on it
but i think thats a bit low just cause my old man is a pensioner they thaught they would just rip him off.
they should be called proripoff not profix.

 

[death-from-above]

Well believe it or not its all legal, a mechanic can do whatever they like to your car and make you pay or not return the car. It dates back to the laws to do with horse and carts and how they would only let you have you cart back after payment to stop people doing runners. Sounds a little far fetched, check it out for yourself. If its anything i hate more than mechanics its bloody politicians, god forbid my child ever wants to become one of those.......

 

[rebel]

I dont know how different the laws are in each state, but I used to live in NSW and have dealt with the Department of Fair Trading in that state, it states there to receive a written quote so there are no suprises, you can look there
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/motorveh...es/repairs.html also in the state that i live in now, Qld Fair Trading also have details in regards to repairs, so I believe that all would be the same in other states
http://www.fairtrading.qld.gov.au/OFT/OFTW...nt&L1=Consumers this is the qld site. I done what they state, to receive a written quote. Which was $132.
But suprise suprise, at the end of the week, after I told them not to do any more work, the bill had gone from $132 to $407, then when I was ready to pay, they told me that the amount was incorrect and changed the price to $420.87. I told them i didnt agree to this amount and it was not the amount on the quote, but they refused to budge, and I wanted my car back. Guess what else, found out the reason the car is worse, is because they were running another ECU with a different MEMCAL to mine, so I put in the reco ECU i got from Repco, with my MEMCAL, yes the car has picked up and the CEL light has gone off, but hello, now my throttle is stuck open.... Wonder why they wanted to change the throttle body.... So more work needs to be done to get my car back to the way she was before Christmas.

 

[jules]

QUOTE (death-from-above @ Feb 20 2004, 07:00 PM) Well believe it or not its all legal, a mechanic can do whatever they like to your car and make you pay or not return the car.
no they can't! seriously if you have asked them to contact you before proceeding with anything other than what was discussed, they must do so.

if they refuse to hand your car back, offer to settle on the originally agreed amount and announce that failure to hand over the keys will bring immediate legal action, through your local small claims court (VCAT in victoria).

i have seen this over and over, it isn't that these mechanics are necessarily dishonest, it's that some of them are just BONE STUPID and can't think out the simple steps of ring-before-you-proceed-with-work.

i avoid going to mechanics like the plague..

oh and as the article said, golden rule: get a written quote!! if they won't give you one, bid them farewell and take your business elsewhere.

 

[Garth]

im sure as you are all aware i have put some time into this commie, unfortunatly due to me working 7 day's a week i havnt had the time for about 1 and a half month's to look at the car in depth. taking it to the mechanic was realy the last resort.

problem was the car would start, run and die, it would run for about 2 or 3 min's at about 2krpm. after it would stall, you would restart it, and it would only idle for about 5 to 10 seconds.

we have replace numerouse components on the car in order to fault find.

car was taken to mechanic's which is fine by me. they turned around and said that the fuel injectors and regulator were faulty. so it was replaced, how ever, the car was surging and they were calling a auto spark out to look for fault.
so kylie (aka rebel) and i went to mechanic's to listen and look at car whilst running. however they informed us that it was still starting and stoping on them. so i wasnt impressed. i was there when kylie said not to perform any work on the car untill she was contacted. i would ring her during the day to find out progress and take it from there.
so the auto spark came out and said it was a ecu problem and it would cost $90 for him to get a second hand one and put it in, pluse the labour ontop of that ofcourse

so what they have done is replaced ecu (the mechanic did not auto spark) he informed us that the ecu was purchased from the wreaker's second hand and reconditiond by wrecker (has anyone heard of a wrecker doing any re-co stuff?)

basicaly to put it politely, i dont think this mechanic was very competent, every time i spoke to him or kylie did, his story would change all the time, beenleigh in qld doesnt realy have any good mechanic's which is kinda sad

 

[jules]

from what i can gather most mechanics aren't any good at diagnosis.

dealerships are supposed to have at least one guy trained up to do engine management diagnosis, whether he's any good is another question. the guy round the corner who cut his teeth on kingswoods might not have the faintest clue, but he sure isn't going to refuse any work.

the best places to go are those who specialise in it. how you find them i'm not sure...

 

[rebel]

I know of one good mechanic, this may sound hypocritical of me but my father is a mechanic, and I would trust him to work on my car, the problem is that he lives near Albury, that almost across 2 borders for me.

I thank dad very much, because if it wasn't for him, I guess the car would have gone to the mechanics in the first place. He pretty much tried to diagnose the problems on the commie from what I explained over the phone, he has never seen the car, and hasn't been able to listen to the engine or test drive it. As he explained to me last week before I finally sent it to the mechanics was that from the age of the car, the amount of k's on it and the problems explained to him, the parts that were replaced were either on their way out or were not working anway, and if one part goes, its like a big circle, that could lead to more parts being replaced. Garth did test the DFI module and coil pack, the coil pack was shorting between 1,3,4, and dad did agree that they needed to be replaced. The fuel pump would eventually have needed to be replaced, the CAS was what the car was originally showing symptoms for, the injectors would have been ok with a service, but dad said its safer and easier to just replace them all, and if they were replaced, then the fuel regulator would eventually need to be replaced and he said possibly with all the new parts, being electrical the ECU just probably gave in and **** itself too.

My dad has been a mechanic for over 40 years, i remember wanting to leave school in year 10, and listening to my dad lecture me about how he had left school over 20 years before but he is still learning. He is constantly at TAFE. Originally done his apprenticeship in the 60's at Miller TAFE in liverpool, and has received more qualifications since then. He told me a few years after I left school that the main reason he learnt alot of these was to stay away from the women of the house. (thanks dad) Anyway, his extensive list of quals include Auto Electrician, Oxy and Mig Welder, Chainsaws (OMG) Lawnmowers, Heavy Vehicles, and in his spare time between work and family, he went out and got his pilots licence, (im yet to know if he has learnt to work on a plane engine).
I just wish I lived closer to him so that he could have fixed my car for me, but thanks to dad for paying for all the parts on his Repco account.

If anyone lives near Albury, and is in need of a reliable Mechanic, I would go and see Arthur at Howlong Motors in Howlong, he is the service station closest to the pubs in town.

 

[seventh path]

all mechanics are trained in BASIC diagnosis(trust me i should know)the thing is that the majority of mechanics and osses think that since they've done asic stuff they can do it all..wrong. i was sdent off to do a cummins course to learn they're specific diagnosis(which took a while.....stupid cummins crap).....they all are simmiliar but they have differences....say like when you jack the kw's up in a cummins, it'a killer for detroit motors....but it sounds like you got a know-it-all mechanic that won't listen to reason