blunders of car mechanics

[Cathelijne]

I'm just wondering...
How unique is car mechanic who watched after my car:
When we got the 280 back from the garage we heard a strange squeeking sound by the left rear wheel. We first thought we needed a new shock breaker but we just discoverd that the wheel was loose! The nuts were put on by hand and not futher tightend

>>> Edited by Cathelijne on Thursday 24th January 16:37

[Don]

Glad you back OK!

[PetrolTed]

That's the second story I've heard this week of that happening!

[bertie]

I once found a pair of pliers, a couple of spanners and a screwdriver under my bonnet.

The tool kit is comming along nicely..

[Paul V]

I had a wheel bearing over-torqued on my old 924, I was travelling at 70mph in the outside lane of the A2 when the bearing ceased to the hub, the hub snapped and the wheel, disk and half the calliper came off, managed to get the car onto the hard shoulder then the police had to rolling road block the road I they could get my wheel back from in between the crash barriers, that was a rather scary experience.

[PLA]

After a 24k service at great expense, I went to get the car out the following morning to find water over the garage floor. The highly qualified grease monkey had drained the coolant using the bottom hose but had'nt tightened the hose clip when he refilled the system.

[JMorgan]

I had a cam belt change on a Carlton and they forgot to put the water back in. Dealership as well

[AdamB]

Had a wheel bearing replaced for which they had to remove the disk. They re-assembled everything and handed the car back, only for me to discover on the first corner I came to that the brake caliper was still tied harmlessly out of the way in the wheel arch.

Haven't been back to the that High street name since. S'pose I should have known better in the first place.

[gideonr]

My dad once had a rear wheel come off a Land Rover 110 at about 50mph, suspiciously just after he had serviced the brakes. The wheel overtook him and then bounced over a hedge.

He managed to put it back, tighten up the nuts (this time) and complete the journey though

Chimaera 400HC

[plotloss]

The firm I used to work for prepared cars on behalf of manufacturers. We sent out a load of Primera's covered in stickers all over for some roadshow event that LeasePlan were sponsoring.

We get the cars back after the event and they need the stickers removed off them so they can go back and be disposed of.

3 valeters, again highly skilled in their field, get allocated these 12 cars. 8 get cleaned perfectly, finished off with alcohol to get all the glue off etc etc.

One car however, looks particularly sad, as one of the valeters had decided to scrape the stickers off with a razor blade because he had seen someone doing it with windscreen stickers and thought it would be a much quicker way of doing it!

Matt.

[Fatboy]

Once took my golf into Kwik-Fit for a new backbox, to discover it needed a new centre silencer as well - got called out to the workshop floor, fitter asks - are you sure this is a 1.8? I say yes, why? he replies - well the centre pipe doesn't match up to the new centre silencer, it's the wrong diameter for a 1.8 golf!
So he gets out is calipers, measures the pipes,and checks in his big catalogue of exhuast parts, finds out some muppet at the local independant garage had fitted a jetta exhuast to my golf a couple of years previous (when it was my mum's car)!, despite the fact it didn't match up to the downpipe properly (golf's exhaust is bigger bore than the jetta's), so they'd bodged some exhaust repair round the join to silence the joint!!!!

[JSG]

I had a similar exhaust story. A few years back we had a Mazda 626 GTi Estate. This was a 7 seat job with the 16 valve twin cam engine - very ordinary looking but great for blowing away boy racers.

Anyway most exhaust / tyres places etc said it didn't exist as they were rare and not listed in their books.

I went in to get a new back box and found the there should have been a middle box which had been cut out completely including the fixings for the central support. The bodger had even been kind enough to remove the brackets from the floor pan so I had to refabricate when I got the correct exhaust parts.

Cheers,
JSG.

[K27]

Just before I bought my car the owner had an "Audi mechanic" fit new cam and balance shaft belts and rollers to my 944 turbo and he mixed up the rollers for the cam and the balance shafts,this subsiquently ate the cam and balance belts.I caught it soon enough by the noise it started to make to avoid the catastrophic "cam belt snaps smash the valves and pistons $7000 bucks please" failure.
arsehole!

[kevinday]

I was at a petrol station one day when a guy came in in his just serviced car saying it was running hot. On investigation it was found that there was no oil in the engine! Drain plug was fitted but no oil had been put in.

[johnwilk]

Our Peugeot 205GTi went to a main dealer for running problems. They replaced the airflow meter, and countless other components only to discover that the problem still existed. I complained but was told that the car was old and you should expect some running problems. It was checked over by a Green Flag mechanic who discovered the Distributor cap was full of water! It has run perfectly ever since! His discovery was made by using an electronic engine tune device - I thought main dealers had all the equipment!
Needless to say I did not pay the full bill and will never grace their workshop again.

Edited by johnwilk on Friday 25th January 08:59

[grantberkeley]

Had my bike serviced at local dealer (FJ1200) - who 'forgot' to bolt the rear brake caliper stay back on. Quite interesting was an understatement . . . . .

[DIGGA]

A friend had an engine rebuild on his Scania truck - at a Scania dealer - and the greasemonkey left a socket in one of the cylinders.

It ended up embedded in one of the pistons, Needless to say, the dealer owned up, and I guess (since all tools had to be marked with their owners identity, for exactly this reason) the relevant mechanic was sacked.