Repair & Maintenance Help Little Jobs, Big Bills: Nightmare Car Repairs |
Little Jobs, Big Bills: Nightmare Car Repairs
A small bodywork scratch: $1500. An exhaust valve replacement: $3500. A new trunk-release switch cover: $150. AutoWerks had these repair costs coming in from drivers who took their cars with very minor problems only to be hit by these figures which were disproportionately expensive repair bills. You have no choice but to grin and bear these costs as long as you are not ready to fix it yourself or buy a new vehicle. If it is too much to grin, you can grit your teeth and then bear it. Let us take a look at some minor glitches turning into expensive repair jobs.Stump up for the Bumper
Deana May of AC Auto Finishing, Los Angeles, knows the nasty shocks that customers can face even with a minor matter like a bodywork scratch or scrape. Its a scary thing " looks can be deceptive. You can calculate an estimate on a front bumper, take it off, and behind it there's all kind of damage. Particularly with low-profile cars with low-profile tires, they often need a whole new front end if they go over a bump or up a driveway, or don't take an angle. May says she sees a lot of this in her shop and recalls how a Lotus driver was quoted a staggering $5,400 to repair his car, though from the outside she couldn't see much that was wrong. May also warns of the dangers " and expense " of drivers getting incorrect quotes for repairs that involve high-performance parts, such as an AMG or Brabus for a Mercedes, and receiving stock components in their place.
Grilled to perfection
Willy Stroppe, president of automotive engineering firm Bill Stroppe and Sons in Paramount, Calif declares that once he observed trivial damage on the frontage of a Ford pickup truck that in due course turned into a giant 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." He discovered similar troubles on a Ford Explorer. Stroppe, primarily works with Fords and result in surprise repair bill costing nearly $1200. "It's not like the old days when everything was steel," he adds. He too states that car owners must know bit about techniques. He has witnessed ample of car businesses through half century. He repeatedly says that a fraudulent shop will turn the vehicle worth driving with a careless patch up job, and then put up for sale to an innocent buyer, lending a big future repair bill as the repair work falls apart.
Broke over Brake Work
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
This is a first-hand experience. I took my wife's 1995 Nissan 240SX S-ER to my local mechanics to fix the air conditioning. However, Id already taken it into the shop the week before, to be told about a leaking gasket that had depressurized the system. So they fixed the gasket, re-filled the system with Freon coolant and pressurized it, for a paltry $300. I thought Id got off lightly, until two days later, when the system began blowing hot once again. At the shop, they told me another seal had broken, but it more complicated this time, meaning extra labor. When I was handed an estimate of $800, I pointed out that the original fix was under warranty, and my mechanic agreed but pointed out in turn that a different component had was to blame this time and therefore the warranty was not valid in this case. Having failed to negotiate a lower repair cost, Im poorer by $300, and my wife faces the prospect of a long, hot summer. Lesson learnt: get a second opinion, and evaluate general system integrity when replacing individual components on older-model cars.
Coolant Chills
Ken Lavacot, working in online mechanics 2carpros.com, says that as a small vapor that appears out of a car might look trivial, but sometimes it indicates serious future repair bills. 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 various pricey solutions contain gasket replacement. "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 the money in such a case is spent to reach the gasket and bring together the parts after replacement. If coolant is present in the combustion chamber and the gasket is working, Lavacot says the engine should be split. 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."
Silver Scratch, Green Fix
My brother-in-law lent his Jaguar convertible to a family member a couple of years back. But disaster struck when the car was returned with a scratch in the back panel on the driver's side. Big deal, you must be thinking, any decent repair or bodywork shop can polish out a scratch at very low cost, but the Jaguar XK8 has an aluminum shell, which required a costly adhesive to be used to fix the scratch and not allow further damage or warping of the car's monocoque shell. Cost: a whopping $1500. The body shop guy told him that had the scratch been deeper or in another part of the car, the repair bill would have doubled or tripled, which is now increasingly common as more luxury European carmakers, including Audi, Mercedes and BMW, use the aluminum-shell technology (owing to its increased strength and lighter weight). Solution? Get several estimates for the paintwork. Oh, and do not make your Jaguar thus accessible.
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