I wrecked my car 6 weeks ago. The body shop told me that they were waiting on a front end. I have been calling them once a week to check on the car. They keep telling me "we got a bad front end we're waiting on another" a week ago they tell me it's in the paint shop and it will be ready on friday. Friday I call and they tell me they're waiting on airbags. They didn't know they needed the airbags 6 ****ing weeks ago?

Anyone ever have problems like this. What did you do?

sorry but I caught myself laughing the air bag remark..

yes it has happen to me.. working on my car.. and the freggin guy forgot the gasket set.. so he had to special order it.. I don't know why.. to even start building my motor.. what a retard.. if they know you are going to need something.. go ahead and order it.. :)

how did you wreck your car anyways?? just b/c I am nosey..

That sucks man!

Body shops overall are fairly shady places...I've rarely had dealings with one (with major work) and been happy.

Originally posted by Wedge4876
sorry but I caught myself laughing the air bag remark..

yes it has happen to me.. working on my car.. and the freggin guy forgot the gasket set.. so he had to special order it.. I don't know why.. to even start building my motor.. what a retard.. if they know you are going to need something.. go ahead and order it.. :)

how did you wreck your car anyways?? just b/c I am nosey..

I rear ended a guy coming over the bridge from where I live. I slammed by breaks and his truck had no damage mine had $7000 worth of damage.

The best part is that for my legal studies degree I had to take a speech class and I gave one on driving safely LOL. To top it off I gave one on Mumia and the following week they over turn the sentence.

Needless to say I will not be giving any more speeches

I hate body shops and mechanics because I think that they see me and say to themselves "Oh, here's a girl who doesn't know anything about her car. I will charge her a billion dollars to fix this because Daddy will pay for it." I always try to bring a guy with me as a defensive backup when I take my car in. It totally sucks.

Originally posted by Allegra
I hate body shops and mechanics because I think that they see me and say to themselves "Oh, here's a girl who doesn't know anything about her car. I will charge her a billion dollars to fix this because Daddy will pay for it." I always try to bring a guy with me as a defensive backup when I take my car in. It totally sucks.

yes and I have been that guy before to my female friends.. and also b/c my dad's a mechanic.. and I have picked up quite a bit from him..

one guy was like.. yeah her back brakes are going bad.. even though I fixed them like 4 months ago.. I was like really.. I just replaced them.. and I didn't that the brakes would go bad in 8k miles on a -3000lbs car? the guy never mentioned those back breaks again.. my thoughts he wanted to get paid for them and he would of never touched them..

hehe.. don't ya just love stupid mechanics.. :)

Man, I'm just glad I never had to run into a shady mechanic. My family's in pretty good with ours. Hell, we even went to his wedding. He worked for our family friend when our friend used to own the shop, he ended up selling it to one of his employees, so yeah, we know him well. I mean, hell, the guy goes so far out of his way to make sure we save money on our cars, I feel blessed. Anyone need a mechanic in the San Fernando area? :)

Hmm... I have some mixed feelings here. ResRice is right about us all not being crooks, but at the same time I got into the business to avoid what some of you have gone through, and seeing it going on around me at times is one of the (many) reasons I got out of the business a few months ago...

Keep in mind that in some cases the mechanic MAY know a little more than you instead being out to rip you off too. A good example is a fight I've had with customers quite a few times where they let their bad wires go too long & did some damage to the ignition module or coil pack from it. They figure it's bad enough wires didn't come with the tune-up they originally came in for. Tell them their lack of maintenace caused their module to go bad as well and suddenly you're the flaming king of thieves.

LOL! You know it's funny though... Trashing & exposing the dark side of the automotive repair industry (on my SN personal site) is exactly what started the fight that made me leave SN a little over a year ago...

Anyway, people certainly do have cause to be cautious as consumers when dealing with any kind of a repair shop. They're hardly all crooks, but the percentage of bad ones out there is high enough that the industry has earned it's bad rep to a large extent. I feel the good elements should do more to speak out against the shops ruining the rep of the industry myself.

Couple of quick tips for everybody though. Even if you don't want to have a diagnostic test re-ran at another shop (& have to pay for it), don't be afraid to price shop on any estimated repairs. Also, most places won't mind too much if you show then the list of recommended repairs and ask if they make sense based on the original problem. Lastly, ask the shop to prioritize any repairs they recommend as well. People in general being as bad as they are about maintaining their cars, I could often find a big laundry list of things for the manager to recommend. I tried to break my recommendations into 1)Needs it now 2) Should have it done soon AND 3) Recommened preventive maintenance that isn't terribly important at the moment. That gives the customer room to budget for things. If they can't prioritize repairs or tell you that you need it ALL immediately, chances are they're not that honest. Brake work would be one exception I can think of there however. Often it is an all or nothing kind of situation with needed extra brake parts.


Oh, and I've got the best body shop story yet though. The 67 Mustang Coupe that my wife used to own and her dad later took away from her got in an accident after they took it with them out East from California. When it went into the body shop, first they got the run-around about it was going to take a long time to ix, etc... Then the body shop started calling up saying it wasn't TRULY fixable and wanting to buy the carcass for a few hundred bucks. They kept saying no just fix the damned thing though and kept gettng "not yet" A few months after this all started though, my sister-in-law caught one of the people from the body shop driving the thing to the grocery store. It was completely repaired, but they were lying and driving the thing around themselves!

Originally posted by Allegra
I hate body shops and mechanics because I think that they see me and say to themselves "Oh, here's a girl who doesn't know anything about her car. I will charge her a billion dollars to fix this because Daddy will pay for it." I always try to bring a guy with me as a defensive backup when I take my car in. It totally sucks.

It does suck. I'm pretty handy around cars. This kind of thing really makes me mad.

A friend of mine that I work with is a middle-aged widowed Japanese woman. She knows next to nothing about cars, but she understands English perfectly (as well as Spanish and Japanese..of course) but she has a heavy accent (ie accent="stupid", right?).

Whenever she takes her car for an oil change, they ALWAYS find something else that "needs" to be done right away. The last time it was brakes. The guy said that the fronts were 90% gone. He also said that she needed new rotors all around (rear disc) AND two new calipers in the back because the old ones were "frozen". He quoted something like $800. She asked me what I thought, so I told her that I'd do the job for just the cost of parts (around $300).

When I took the fronts off, they were only 50% gone (compared with the new pads I bought). And the rears looked fine. I took the calipers off in the back...they were so "frozen" that I could move them with the slightest pressure from my pinky finger!

The time before that, she needed an accessory belt. She did indeed need one, it was a little bit cracked. But, they wanted to charge her $70 to replace it! A $10 part and five minutes of labor...$70? BS ALERT! I changed it for her for the cost of the belt.

Allegra, if you need any advice on car repairs, send me an email. I'd be happy to give my opinion...free of charge, of course.

Or you could just join in the Automotive forum:D It's even moderated by an ASE certified tech:eek: :D

LOL!


Seriously people, that's what it's there for. We've got several good people here who can likely help you as well:) Put us to work! LMAO!

Originally posted by Shadowhawk
A good example is a fight I've had with customers quite a few times where they let their bad wires go too long & did some damage to the ignition module or coil pack from it. They figure it's bad enough wires didn't come with the tune-up they originally came in for. Tell them their lack of maintenace caused their module to go bad as well and suddenly you're the flaming king of thieves.

I'll agree that lack of maintainance can lead to extra repairs. But, could you please explain to me how bad ignition wires cause coil pack or module damage? If the wires exhibit a high state of electrical resistance, then wouldn't that actually reduce the amount of current the coil supplies? Does not that directly relate to decreased coil heating and therefore longer coil life?

If the insulation has broken down and the arc is jumping to the block instead of across the spark plug gap, once again wouldn't the current draw be lower?

Please help me understand exaclty what you mean. Thanks.

Actually it's exactly the opposite. Broken down wires lead to high resistance as you say, but that doesn't decrease the amount of voltage that a coil or coil pack puts out. It just gives it nowhere to go. Thus it ends up overheating the coil pack and occasionally feeding back thru the primary circuit a little and eventually damaging the ingnition module or PCM. The last instances are very rare, but I have seen it.:)

Originally posted by Shadowhawk
Actually it's exactly the opposite. Broken down wires lead to high resistance as you say, but that doesn't decrease the amount of voltage that a coil or coil pack puts out. It just gives it nowhere to go. Thus it ends up overheating the coil pack and occasionally feeding back thru the primary circuit a little and eventually damaging the ingnition module or PCM. The last instances are very rare, but I have seen it.:)

I'm still not following. Only current flow can generate heat. A high voltage that isn't causing current to flow doesn't induce any heat at all.

Consider the equation: P=I2R

Power is equal to the current flowing squared times the resistance.

In this case, if resistance increases (which we both agree), then the current decreases. However, since the current is squared, a decrease in current leads to a much higher decrease in power than an increase in resistance would cause.

Since the voltage in the system is of concern, it might be easier to consider the equation in the following form:

P=E2/R

In this case, we can easily see that any increase in resistance is directly attributable to a decrease in power (assuming the coil generates a constant overall RMS voltage...which it does).

How would the coil pack feed back into the primary circuit any differently just because the wires are higher resistance? I'll agree that the primary and secondary windings share some mutually induced EMF, but I don't see how the load on the secondary will effect the input side. Also, doesn't the ignition module or PCM include some protection circuitry such as a capacitor or diode?