What repair turned into a nightmare?

J J wrote:

I'm in the middle of one of those jobs right now. Girlie has a VW Corrado G60. I swapped the stock headlights for some E-codes and added a relay harness. "While I was in there" I enabled the rear fog light and replaced the dash lights and poked around and thought I might have fixed the cruise control. I took it out for a test drive to see if I had (I hadn't, it still doesn't work) and the supercharger started making some alarming noises. Brought the car back home and found a seized belt tensioner, shredded serp belt, and a supercharger that did not spin perfectly smoothly along with lots of oil in the intake. So out the supercharger comes... well it took me several days of fighting to get all the stripped bolts out, right now I have the blower out and all of the intake plumbing except for the hard tubing and the intercooler, still have to pull the front bumper to get the IC out and then clean all that up, THEN I can think about putting it back together... once I have a little adapter fitting made so that I can bypass the oil lines for the supercharger so I can run the engine without the blower installed. Oh, yeah, and have the alternator rebuilt because it has a bad diode (that no mechanic was able to find in the last two years, ya think that might be why the battery keeps going dead all the time?) and at some point I need to roll the car outside and clean all the oil spray off the front of the engine and the supercharger bracket so I can see if anything else is leaking. And track down a shield for the front of the bellhousing, because it apparently got lost when the clutch was replaced. Am f**king pissed off because a lot of the issues and setbacks are due to mechanics f**king this car up not just stuff breaking.

nate

My condolescences. Backtracking a sorry assed flatrating mechanic can be an awesome task. I had to do this when I rebuilt my Fiero after a series of dealership recalls. Those guys, in their rush to beat the flatrate, really screwed up that little car.

The only time I have disasters like that is working on GM or foreign cars. My wife had a Chevy Cavalier when we got married, and EVERYTHING on that car turned into a major job. Ditto with an 84 Cadillac my folks once owned. Don't even get me started on the occasional VW (water cooled), Toyota, or Honda I've helped someone fix- those things seem built to be crushed when something wears out instead of having things laid out for serviceability.

Mopars and Fords never seem give me those kinds of problems, they seem much better laid out for serviceability.

Yours is a perfect example of why a competent professional mechanic is worth the money he charges. Most of us have stories of saturday morning repair jobs that stretch into sunday and inevitably something breaks and the parts department isn't open. I've got better things to do with a weekend....

The problem is finding the honest, competent professional mechanic that doesn't consume as much or more time watching over, double checking, and even needing to redo the work later as it does to just do it yourself.

Unfortunately more than a few short do-it-yourself jobs started on saturday morning will usually stretch well over into sunday with the inevitable additional repairs from hidden damage or damage inflicted by the driveway mechanic.

I got a little lost in that sentence, but if I understand it correctly, I would not find myself checking and rechecking the work of a mechanic I trusted.

If a person is so ham fisted that he is causing damage on that order, then do-it-yourself wasn't an option in the first place.

Usually the 'inevitable additional repairs' are things a professional mechanic on the clock wouldn't bother with. Things like... hmm.. that sway bar is getting rusty, I better sand and repaint that while I'm in here. Damm the inside of this wheel is dirty, I should clean that while I have it off. Most surprises can be avoided by spending a few minutes inspecting things before starting work. This leaves us with broken bolts and other such things.

Also it's not like shops end up putting cars back in the queue or run into delays too.

Yeah... I realized it was garbled after the point of no return.

Since an honest competent mechanic (or anything else) is so rare I have found that the entire process of having someone else do something consumes at least the same amount of time as doing the work myself in a wide variety of situations.

I have little experience with MoPars, except for 60's A-bodies, and none with Fords, but I find the older (mid-80's or earlier) VWs to be quite pleasant to work on, once you get the right tools (most notably, a cutaway socket for the upper strut nuts, and a set of triple squares for the CV bolts and head bolts) what is a PITA on them is when fasteners get rusty, seized, stuck, stripped, etc - they are not forgiving of mechanic's errors. Many fasteners only have one path of access and if you strip the head and have to go to Plan B it involves special bolt extraction tools and/or major disassembly to get access another way. Anti-seize and replacement of iffy fasteners are mandatory when working on a VW (or any German car for that matter.)

I recall my GF's old Nissan Sentra - changing the oil filter on that really required one of those Kevlar sleeves that race mechanics used. I didn't have one, so my arm was scraped up above the elbow.

And then there's the VW Corrado. That car was VW's attempt to cram 10 gallons of s**t in a 5 gallon bucket. Quite simply, it's a rolling disaster under the hood.

Guess what model VW is half disassembled in my garage right now...

nate

The trick is finding one...

nate

(Still working on that)

If you never work on your own car, why read this newsgroup?

Yes, a *hack* saw. Indeed.

Toyota MDT in MO

Not really a nightmare but a loooong project .

April 1982.

Took almost two weeks to complete. Temperatures plummeted to below zero & stayed that way for close to two weeks.

harryface

Similarly, my first really significant mechanical endeavor was a '73 Buick 350 timing chain. I made good time on it and had success on the first try. Sometimes I look back on that as the single point in time that I damned the rest of my life to the God-awful profession of wrenching :)

Toyota MDT in MO

I've not had a problem finding a good competent shop, but I do ask around some. And when I find one I stick with him.

I've been having a HUGE problem, which is odd considering that I live in a very densely populated area.

I've heard the same thing from other VW and Porsche owners, which makes me think that it's not just me being too picky.

nate

Just three, not counting the company car... my 944 and '55 Studebaker, and the girlie's Corrado. I'm thinking an old pickup or station wagon will probably be joining the fleet and/or replacing either the Porsche or the Corrado at some point (depending on which one proves more difficult to get into top shape.)

nate

I find that around here the dense population makes it worse instead of better. In a more remote area a bad reputation will ruin you but in "the big city"tm there are so many people that they don't care if the customers come back. Get their money and get them out so you can get the next sucker in. If the reputation gets toooo bad just change the name on the sign and start over.

How many cars do you have Nate? Sounds like your house could be a fun place.

Steve B.

I think that people in your situation could force a niche in the repair industry. I can envision older, experienced mechanics that are sick of working for some dick who wants them to speed fix cars regardless of quality - going into business for themselves. The specific niche I am talking about would attract those who want the very best for their cars, who would do the work but can't find the time anymore, who are getting too old to crawl under a car for hours on end, and who make a comfortable living and are willing to pay top $ if it means top quality. The mechanic would have to have a perfectionist mentality. He would likely see mostly older, well kept cars of significant value, but would need to remain aggressively tooled for late model diagnostics if he were to offer owners repairs on every car in their immediate family. The operation would most likely 'one man' as it would be difficult to find two people like this that could work together. This would cause the 'one man' to also be the writer, accountant, parts runner, etc so throughput and repair times would be slow. I really like the possibility of this niche developing manyfold from what it is today. It would be great if everyone had the equal option to go to either a dealer, general independent, specialty independent, chain store (*cough* *incompetent ripoff butchers* **cough**), or top quality one man operation.

IOW, I feel your pain, brother...

Toyota MDT in MO

I think part of the problem is also that my cars tend to *look* like hell... I will spend $$$ to get them in shape mechanically, but until/unless I get around to repainting, they will likely get washed twice a year whether they need it or not, and at least in the Porsche the dash pad looks like a map of the surface of Mars. I'm sure this tells a mechanic unconsciously "this guy doesn't care about his car" but that is far from the truth - I just don't have the $$ to spend on BOTH mechanics and cosmetics, so the latter is the one that gets compromised.

Whereas most people don't care about the mechanics of their cars at all but god help the guy that puts a ding in the door...

In any case, I don't see any point in spending any money at all on cosmetics unless/until I can find someone that can keep the mechanics squared away! Maybe I'm just fighting myself here?

nate