Little Jobs, Big Bills: Nightmare Auto Repairs
Consider these numbers: $1500 for an insignificant scratch on the bodywork; $3500 for a new exhaust valve; at least $150 for a new trunk-release switch cover. These aren’t figures from the realm of fantasy, but actual repair expenses that drivers have provided to AOL Autos after having coughed up these amounts for repair jobs that only seemed small. The alternative is to do the job yourself, or buy a new car. That seems extreme, right? So just pay up like a good citizen and suffer in silence, seems to be the mantra.
Bumper Damper
Deana May, at Los Angeles-based AC Auto finishing, is aware of the surprises a store has for even a car brought in with just a minor scratch. According to May, “It’s a scary thing — looks can be deceiving. You can do an estimate on a front bumper then take it off and behind it there’s all kinds of damage. Low-profile cars with low-profile tires go over a bump or up a driveway, they don’t take an angle, often they need a whole new front end.” In addition, problems of these types arrive frequently at her shop. Last month a Lotus driver was billed a sum of $5,400 for his car repairing; however, after verifying the condition she had to agree. She informs about the possible dangers and costs of drivers receiving incorrect quotes for the upkeep with high-performance components, like for an AMG, for a Mercedes or Brabus.
Cracked Grille and Fender Bender
Willy Stroppe, the president of automotive engineering firm Bill Stroppe and Sons in Paramount, California, says that once he had seen a minor damage to the front of a Ford pickup truck turn into a major repair bill. “It looks like the front plastic grille got broken with a light hit, but when we got into it the housing behind the grille was cracked and broken all the way up. Replacing everything from the fenders forward, the headlight vessels, a new front end, it all adds up. In a lot of cases you gotta pull out the radiator. That’s not something you can do in a couple hours.” Stroppe, who works mainly with Fords, has seen similar problems on a Ford Explorer and the pickups repair bill was more than $1200. “It’s not like the old days when everything was steel,” he adds. In his nearly half-century of experience in the car business, he has seen a lot of instances where a car whose frame and shell are in good condition but it needs a lot of work on its suspension is bought and sold off to an unwary buyer after doing a shoddy repair work on it. This leads to a gigantic repair bill in the future for the unsuspecting customer when the repair work crumbles.
$150 Cover Up
Mark Essig, is a writer in a small town in North Carolina, who was surprised with a bill of $150 by a local repair shop for altering a lost cover for the trunk-release toggle. It was terribly shocking in his ten years repair history of Mercedes 320 CLK. As pricey repair bills are not unusual for posh European marques, Essig says, repair bill charging $2,000 was a real shock for him. He also noticed that it arrived as an added cost that was not at all mentioned in the estimate. He says: “It was part of a $2000 repair bill that included valve cleaning and brake work, and I was so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t quibble over $150. Best part was, I didn’t ask him to do it.” Meanwhile, Michael Russell owner of Porsche 944, an AOL Autos friend, discovered that bringing in an old-school German car charged a lot more than he negotiated for. Replacement of a $15 exhaust valve charged him $3,500 as work was recorded. Fundamentally, he says, they needed to split out the engine to reach the valve, that was burned out, an ordinary ailment in older vehicles. He says, however, repair was essential to get to work.
Air Pressure
Taking my wife’s 1995 Nissan 240SX S-ER to my local mechanics to fix the air conditioning proved to be a costly affair. I had taken the car a week before that to get the air conditioning fixed. They found a leaking gasket that had depressurized the system. So they fixed the gasket, re-filled the system with Freon coolant and pressurized it. The bill came to be $300. I heaved a sigh of relief until two days later I found to my utter dismay that the system was again blowing hot air. So much for getting it repaired. I took it back to the shop for a second look only to be told that another seal had broken and this time it was in a hard-to-reach spot which meant extra labor that ultimately translated to an $800 dollar repair bill. I pointed out the fact that the original fix was under warranty. My mechanic argued that a different component had malfunctioned this time and therefore the additional repair was not under warranty. All attempts at bargaining failed so I was $300 out of pocket, and my wife has a hot summer ahead (unless she decides have mine). Here a word of advice: Always get a second opinion in situations like this besides assessing the general system integrity when replacing individual components on older-model cars.
Coolant Chills
Ken Lavacot, of online mechanics 2carpros.com, says its better not to ignore a little steam coming out of your exhaust, which could seem like nothing initially but it can blow into something major and cost you later on. He says: “Coolant is used to cool the engine during normal operation. If coolant is allowed to enter the combustion chamber, the engine will burn the coolant creating white smoke and steam. He says the gasket replacement is among the most expensive solutions. “If the gasket that seals the intake manifold to the cylinder head fails it can allow coolant to enter the intake port and then the combustion chamber. To check for this condition the intake manifold will need to be removed.” Most of your money goes in getting to the gasket and reassembling the parts after its replacement. Lavacot says that the engine must be taken apart if nothing is wrong with the gasket and there is coolant in the combustion chamber. He adds: “This can be tricky because it is difficult to tell which is causing the problem. For example: A repair shop has told you the cylinder head is cracked, and as they start disassembly they can discover it was the intake manifold gasket that has failed. It’s up to the honesty of the repair shop to alert the customer the repair will be less. Or the opposite can happen. A repair shop has told you your engine has a blown head gasket, once the disassembly is complete they inform you the head gasket is OK, and the cylinder has been pressure checked and is OK. This only leaves the engine block as the failure and must be replaced to repair the problem, and that can be costly.”
Paintwork Blues
My brother-in-law had lent his Jaguar convertible to a family member who took it to a wedding. He returned it with a scratch in the back panel on the driver’s side. Generally, a good repair or bodywork shop can erase scuffs at minimal cost, but the Jaguar XK8’s aluminum shell demanded a costly adhesive to repair the scratch to prevent further corrosion or damage of the car’s monocoque shell. The whole repair work was as costly as $1500. The technician told him that he was blessed the scratch was light otherwise repairs might turn out double or triple in cost, an increasingly general incident as more luxury carmakers counting Audi, Mercedes and BMW harness the aluminum-shell technology (taking advantage of its increased strength and lighter weight). So, it is better to get several estimates for the paintwork. It is also better to think twice before you lend your precious car.
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