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DISPUTE WITH MECHANIC

I am faced with this dispute as a result of a worn out little rubber button thats located underneath the brake pedal arm that trips the brake light switch. Several weeks ago, I replaced it with an adhesive backed rubber foot. It seemed to solve the problem of the brake lights remaining on after stopping the engine - or it did until the adhesive gave out. A few mornings ago, I found the button on my floorboard and a dead battery once again.

I called AAA for a jump. I was not there when they arrived - they popped my hood and attached the cables in my absence. When I did arrive

- five minutes later - I tried to start the car, it would not take the charge. I had the car towed to their location.

They diagnosed a fried battery, blown alternator, blown main fuse and various other blown fuses - repair estimate = $680.00.

Question: In this instance, Is there any way that draining the battery could cause this type of damage?

Right now, I feel like I have a rub with the folks that jumped the car

- thinking that they either surged it or reversed the cables. I have since replaced the main fuse and battery and have encountered no resulting electrical problems. I know for a fact that the alternator is bad. There has been no previous indication of electrical problems. The car has 45k miles

Reply to
steavboyd
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All that damage doesn't happen on its own. I believe you have been hosed.

Reply to
Al Bundy

The cables were definitely hooked up backwards. I had this happen to me, but no damage was done to my vehicle. I was boosting a friends Honda Accord and his girlfriends brother, who is supposed to be a mechanic, grabbed the cables and proceeded to hook them up backwards on my car and properly on my buddies car. The second he clamped the last cable onto the dead battery, the largest fuse in the distribution block under the hood of the Honda let out a large crackle and snapped, before any other damage could happen. My buddy instantly grabbed the cables and pulled them off his battery, preventing any more damage, realizing what his girfriends brother had done. Fortunately, nothing happened to my car, and beside the fuse, his Honda was OK as well. If I had been boosting him with a larger vehicle (thus larger battery) such as yourself, I could definitely see more damage happening. That tow truck more than likely had at least a 1000 CA battery, probably a second battery as well for the winch and all the accessories.

It sounds like when you called AAA, a dishonest shop was sent out to tow your vehicle. When the tow truck driver made the mistake of hooking the cables up backward and realized what had happened, he probably already knew there was something wrong with your battery anyway, and took advantage of the situation, figuring you would not know otherwise. I'm guessing once the car was brought into their shop, they told you the battery was fried, alternator was shot and whatever other damage was caused because of the original problem with your brake lights. I'm willing to bet this is completely untrue and if I were you, I would get my car out of that garage ASAP. Get that taken care of and the next step would be to call AAA customer service and let them know what happened. Tell them they or the shop that towed your vehicle should be going good for at least 1/2 the service bill. The whole idea of paying that yearly subscription to AAA is so that things like this do not happen in the first place, not to make things worse for you.

This truly is a situation of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Keep in mind, this is all speculation, but it happens every day. The proof is the numerous people who come on this newsgroup asking similar questions as yours in the same type of situation. I hope everything turns out well, given the situation.

Sharky

Reply to
Sharky

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