Is My Mechanic Treating Me Fairly - Is This His Problem or Mine?

This was your first mistake. You should have chosen a rebuilder that offers a longer warranty. Even Scramco offers a 36 month/36,000 mile warranty, of course it's a bit more expensive than their basic 12 month /12,000 mile warranty. The 6 month warranties are for people that are rebuilding their trans so they can sell the car quick.

Well to be brutally honest you don't got a leg to stand on. You can of course go yell at the dealership all you want, but the fact is that you never would have took it to a mechanic if you didn't think there was something wrong.

Also, if it turns out to be some problem internally in the transmission, then nothing that someone could do to the outside of the transmission - except perhaps pouring sand down the dipstick tube - would cause the trans to completely collapse internally less than a mile from the dealership. If this is an internal failure, as opposed to something simple like a sensor came unplugged or some such, then your beef is with the rebuilder, and the dealership was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are a couple things with this whole scenario I find disturbing:

Everyone knows that dealership repairs cost more than repairs done at an independent auto repair shop, unless the independent is cheating you of course, mainly because the dealership service places automatically use new parts for everything (even if what they are replacing is a cast iron exhaust manifold or some such) and the factory OEM parts are almost always the most expensive parts as compared to the aftermarket.

For this reason it is typical that for most people particularly in larger cities, once the factory warranty has expired they start taking their vehicle to the independent garages.

What you need to face now is you got a potential major repair here, and you need to shop it around. Call the dealership and tell them you are going to drive it around and get a second opinion - nothing personal, but with this much money on the line your going to have to compare prices.

People have no qualms calling around to a dozen stores to save $5 on a cd player, why should a $2K trans repair be any different?

Ted

Based on repair prices I keep hearing quoted in the area where I live-some areas may have independent mechanics not booked for months in advance-you just can't afford to keep a vehicle running for more than a few years after EOW (end of warranty) unless you are doing you own repairs. My next door neighbor sunk $3400 into having a Dodge minivan "gone through", which wouldn't have an "ACV" of $3400 even if the factory paint-the dull rose beige- weren't sloughing off.

I'm in the planning stages of a Jeep project and planning to use fiberglass body parts. I looked around for a shop to paint them-new fresh out of the mold fiberglass, no hardware attached, and me doing reasonable surface prep, no dismantling involved, wipe it down and shoot it-the "legitimate" body shops around here either stuck their nose up at it unless they could have it as a running vehicle (so they could take it back apart at $75 an hour....) or quoted me astonishing prices. Finally I found a guy who redoes boats in his little quonset hut who wanted the job and will get it if I don't go the gelcoat route, but it was obvious these guys either had monster overhead or wanted to retire to a penthouse in Manhattan.

If your comparing them to used car prices, then yes. For example, if you have a 1994 Ford with a $1000 book value and 180K miles on the odo that has a blown rod, then sure, you can buy a used 1997 Ford for $4000 that has maybe 120K. Yes, the numbers are going to work out in favor of the newer used car.

But it's a whole different ballgame if you have a vehicle with a clean, straight body, good paint, and screwed up engine and drivetrain., and your comparing this vehicle plus rebuilt engine/drivetrain against a brand new vehicle.

As an owner of a 95 T&C myself I know a bit about these vehicles. While I don't know what you mean by "gone through", let me tell you that a 90-95 minivan that has good interior, good paint, no rust, no accidents is definitely worth replacing both engine & transmission with rebuilt units, if the engine is a 3.3 or 3.8L model and does NOT have ABS or AWD.

Don't confuse independent mechanics with bodymen. The two are totally different markets.

Body shops with rare exceptions pretty much exist as parasites on the auto market, feeding off the insurance companies. The only kind of work they bother with are vehicles that are 7-8 years old or younger, and the reason is that is the range whereby the vehicle has this artificial value called "book value" that the automakers and insurance companies use, that is actually high enough to where the insurance companies have an interest in saving money by repairing, rather than replacing.

You got to think of it this way. What, really, is the real intrisic value of a vehicle? Well, the answer is the following: if new, the value is the sum cost of all parts plus assembly plus profit. This dollar amount cannot be reached by most of the market without financing. So, most new vehicle owners are stuck paying a loan over 5 years or whatever, and so you got to make sure that at any point during that loan, that with AVERAGE use, the vehicle value does not dip below what the owner owes. Why - because if the owner defaults, the loan guarantee organization isn't going to take a loss.

Imagine going into a bank and saying you want to borrow $20K, and spend it on an item that 6 months from now will be worth nothing - and by the way, you want to make payments on this $20K over the next 10 years. The bank isn't going to make the loan without collateral. Thus, the banks and the auto industry and the insurers have come up with this idea that cars somehow depreciate at some formula based on the total mileage, etc. which produces a depreciation curve that approximates what a financed auto loan would create.

In reality, of course, used car prices are set by the market - not by "book value" Many people discovered this to their dismay in 2002 when the used market has been so flooded with vehicles (due to the 0% financing incentives) that actual street value of used vehicles was much lower than KBB's book value. But, if the automakers actually came out and told new car buyers this, it would cut into their business because new car buyers would not be able to count on a "trade in" value.

Thus, we have book value, and thus we have an opening for body shops to hold the insurers over a barrel on pricing. If book value says the heap is worth $20K and the body shop promises they can fix it for less than $20K then the inurance companies are stuck paying the bill.

Ted