Thought this might be fun.....
I was thinking of some mechanical automotive failures from the days of working in the dealerships. What mechanical failure(s) did you experience, where were you and when did it happen. I can recall leaving a 10mm socket inside the timing cover on my 67 mustang when I was a budding mechanic (not a good one by the way), it made a bit of racket on start-up.
w

 

I can recall leaving a 10mm socket inside the timing cover on my 67 mustang......

Check that, it was a standard socket of some sort (7/16 or 1/2).
w

 

Thanks for clarification. I saw that and had a confused look on my face. I was going to ask what you were doing with a metric tool on that car.

 

One of the more memorable snafu's was when one of my technicians' was rushed to get a rear diff. overhaul completed by the end of a very hot Friday. He turned in the ticket, washed up and went home. I received a call an hour later that informed me that the truck skidded to a stop about 10 miles away! The tech forgot to fill the diff with fluid.....
Anyone else have a good story to tell?
w

 

My dad never tired of telling this story, so I will pass it on. In 1950 my dad had new tires put on his '49 F-1. As you know, back then, they were tube type, bias ply. When he left the dealer, the front end shook so bad he could hardly keep it on the road. He returned and they jacked up the front end to balance the tire. Tires were balanced on the vehicle at that time with a friction machine that spun the tire. When they spun the right front it almost jumped off the jack. To make a long story short. They dismounted the tire and found a 6 inch crescent wrench between the tire and tube. Dad told that story to anyone willing to listen....

Gil

 

The service dept. at our local dealer is staffed by trained chimps. Everything we've ever taken in there got screwed up. My dad bought a new '95 F-150 and somewhere around the 15,000 mile mark, the tech noted during an oil change that the front crankshaft seal was starting to leak. They scheduled it in for a warranty repair the next week. When dad showed up after work to pick it up, he found his truck sitting in the service bay with the engine out and the harmonic damper and crank snout torched off of it. Apparently, the tech tried to run the damper bolt back in with an impact and cross-threaded it. Dad went round and round with the dealer and FMC trying to get them to put a brand new engine in it, but all they would pop for was a crank kit.

Then there was the radiator flush that I paid them to do to my truck - and they didn't. And the time that they changed the oil in my wife's car and didn't bother to put an oil filter in it. (cartridge type that goes in the oil pan). The last straw was when they replaced her A/C condenser and never bothered to hook the fog lamps back up when they put the bumper cover back on. If you can't trust the dealer to fix your car right, who can you trust?!?

 

Having been in the auto/tire repair business for 40 years there have been many situations and circumstances that come to mind but the most memorable was when I was a shop foreman for a national automotive chain. I had a lead mechanic who was exceptionally bright in all fields, extremely implacable concerning his tools and their layout in his box and was extremely clean at all times ( we all called him the 'clean machine' )
One day when he was at a stand still, he was given a service ticket for a brake inspection, not his specialty but certainly ASE qualified. Not paying attention to his grumbling and going about my own priorities he proceeded with the inspection. The customer had requested a FRONT brake inspection and was explained at the front desk that we preform a full brake inspection ( all wheels ).
It wasn't long after he pulled it in the shop and was pulling the rear wheels that I heard a loud exclamation (FAR OUT!), when I reach his stall we stood in amazement that not only did this vehicle have no brake shoes, wheel cylinders or hardware but no backing plates!- just bare axles and wheel studs.
In conferring with the customer he inform us that he never had any wear from the rear brakes whenever he had them looked at so since the front was what he replaced the most, that's all he figured he needed.
Now at the time I was in a non- inspection state but needless to say the State Troopers impounded the vehicle.
There have been many more including bending a rear axle while removing an axle seal but we'll leave at that!!

 

Not my doing but... Back in sometime around '68, I was at the Monkey Wards auto center with my dad, getting a battery or something. A near-new Olds Toronado was in for new tires. They were one of the first and only FWD cars around at the time, and the deep offset wheels apparently didn't fit on the tire machine "entirely" correctly. We watched as the "tech" did the first one; instead of the bar pulling the bead over the edge of the rim as it spun, it very neatly folded up the wheel's bead, to straight vertical! More shocking than that, after ruining the first wheel, the moron went ahead and did it to the other 3!! I learned a lot of new words that day.

 

I always love it when people bring a vehicle in to our shop with a "slight" noise. I go drive it and can hear it over the radio blaring. Lift it up oN a hoist and the wheel about falls apart, because the hub is shot.

Or the people that when u tell them the engine is blown up. They say" but it starts". Yes it starts but its knocking horribly andf the oil looks like you struck gold. "BUT it starts"

 

i was working at a tire store in the south when a customer came in saying that he had to be in charlotte in then an hour but his upper radiator hose had sprung a leak and that he needed it fixed now! so i pulled it apart and had the new hose on before he found out how much his bill was, and when he found out he refused it so i was told to put his old one back on. i was a little perturbed about having my time wasted like that so i put it back together exactly as it was including the spring hose clamp that could not be taken off unless you had the right tool for it because of its position. he had a friend run up to the parts store and buy a new hose and was going to replace it in our parking lot. i watched with amusment for the next 3 hours as they tried to get that clamp off. not the nicest thing i could have done but he was addement about having this done NOW!

 

I forgot until I looked at my right hand.
I was cutting a cat out from the exhaust on a blazer due to it being plugged solid and needing replaced. Just as I cut through the pipe the hanger holding the giant muffler failed the pipe fell down and cut my hand really bad. It all but severed my extensor tendon on my ring finger. I had to have surgery to repair the 90 % torn tendon.
7+ stitches and 3 months of therapy I got my hand back. But now when the weather changes I can feel it since I also broke this hand.

 

I had the oil changed on my fairly new '85 F-150 at one of the quickie oil change places because I didn't have the time. At the next change interval I changed the oil myself. I noticed when I unscrewed the drain plug it came out kind of funny. After the oil was drained I tried to screw in the plug and found it and the internal threads of the pan were stripped. It was a late Sunday afternoon and needed the truck for work the next day so I borrowed a car and drove to the discount auto parts store and bought a new plug but it dripped oil. The next night after work I stopped by the quickie oil change place and told the manager they screwed up my oil plug and I wanted it fixed. The manager told me Fords were notorious for having the oil plugs rust up and I probably stripped the threads when I removed the plug. As he was telling me this I could see one of their techs torquing a plug down with an air ratchet, just cranking on it. I informed him that of all the bolts on a vehicle the oil pan plug would be the least likely bolt to rust up. He finally agreed to install a new rubber plug but while doing so he tried to remove the replacement plug I installed without draining the new oil I put in the day before. His attempt at stopping the hot oil from draining out didn't work too good and it ended up running down his arm and he had to end up letting the oil drain into the collector. He was cussing like crazy. I ended having to use rubber drain plugs every time I changed the oil after that.

Another time I noticed the paint flaking off of my relatively new '90 F-150. I was told by another Ford truck owner he had the same problem with his '89 F-150 and Ford paid a percentage to have his hood repainted. I took my truck to the dealer and the body shop manager, after seeing I had a bug shield on the front of the hood, told me Ford wasn't responsible for the flaking paint because of the bug shield. He explained to me that when I go down the freeway and hit a bug the shield deflects it up into the air and it comes down like a bullet and hits the hood causing the paint to chick. I ask the guy to clarify what he was stating and to verify that when I hit a bug at 60+ mph it shoots up with such force and accuracy that it can come down and hits my hood. I also informed him when I do hit a bug at 60+ mph I'd be a 1/4 of a mile down the road before the bug would ever hit the ground. I told him he was full of BS and have Ford check it out. Ford ended up paying for 90% of the repaint. But the story didn't stop there. A couple of days after I got the truck back I noticed a round circular indentation in the paint, like some one set a quart can of paint on the hood between the primer and paint. I took it back to the same dealer and talked to the same manager and asked that they repaint the hood. He looked at it and said he didn't see anything wrong and he wasn't going to repaint the whole hood and walked away. I called Ford's customer service and the next day the manager called and told me to bring the truck back. He was a extremely rude jerk throughout this whole ordeal and I made sure the dealer knew all about it.

Another time my wife got a recall on her car about the seat belts needing a part replaced. She bought the car new from one of the biggest dealers in the area before I met her and her parents always pounded it into her that the only place to get service was the dealer. The recall came after we got married. She went to the dealer on her lunch break and they made he wait over an hour and a half and finally came out and told her the car was fixed. Two days later she was giving a co-worker a ride home and when she went to fasten the seat belt it broke. My wife this time went to another dealer, on her lunch break, the new dealer looked at the for a few minutes and told her they'd have to order the parts and called her a week later to come in. It took the second dealer a half hour to install the parts and she was on her way. The funny thing was after she got the car back from the first dealer there was not noticeable difference in the seat belt buckles but after getting the car back from the second dealer the red inserts, which were sun faded pink were now a nice dark red.

I should have known the first dealer was a crook because right after we were married the car had a oil leak coming from the back of the engine. The car was still under warranty and she insisted we go back to the dealer she bought it from. They took it for a day and called to tell us to pick it up. The service manager told me they had it up a the rack for a couple of hours, running the engine and didn't see a leak. He then asked if I changed my own oil. After I said I did he said that he knew what happened. He said when I changed the oil I inadvertently poured oil down the back of the engine. I said, "fine, but seeing the fill hole is in the middle of the valve cover I'd have to go out of my way to dump oil down the back of the engine". I took the car home and the next day there was a new oil spot under the car. I took the car back the next day and firmly demanded they fix the leak. This time the dealer replaced the intake gasket which fixed the problem.

 

Two of them come to mind on an '88 Cougar that I bought brand new. As a perk, I managed to get free oil changes for the life of the car, every 3K miles. The very first time I took the car back to them, THE VERY FIRST TIME, MIND YOU, they stripped the oil plug. Luckily it was the plug threads and not the pan threads. I never let them change oil on the car again.

On the very same car, but at a different dealer, I had gotten a recall on the catalytic converter that needed to be replaced. The recall notice said that this could be a waiter, in other words, wouldn't take too long. This was plainly written in the recall notice. I set the appointment up two weeks in advance and was told that they had all the parts. I called the day before and was again told that they had all the parts and he reiterated that this would take about an hour, tops. On the day of the appointment, which was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning, I dropped my car off and the service manager told me all was well and that they were ready for my car. I checked on them at 10:30 and they told me they were still working on it. I checked again at 11:30 and they told me that they didn't have this catalytic converter in stock and they were getting one from a neighborhood dealer. I managed to get out of there at 4:00 in the afternoon. NEVER ONCE DID THEY OFFER ME A DRINK, A SNACK OR A MEAL. They would not give me a loaner vehicle either. When my car was finally done, I ripped the service manager and the owner a new one. All they could say was that they were sorry and "would you please fill out a satisfaction survey that you will receive in the mail". I was livid and I never went back to them.
Don't get me wrong, screw-ups happen and I've done them myself. But the lack of courtesy on this last one really chapped my cheeks.

 

A few years ago, I took my mother-in-laws Nissan Quest in for some recall items and when you turned the fan on it made a horrible racket.
Well, the recall stuff took a few days when I went to pick it up I drove on back to work. Only when I got back to my work did I turn on the fan to verify that it was fixed. Of course it wasn't. I checked the repair receipt and it said they couldn't duplicate the problem. Well it was so loud that they didn't even try. I took it right back and had the manager sit in the car while I turned the fan on.
I had an appointment that evening so I needed the car quickly. When they couldn't get it fixed in a timely manner I told them they needed to get me to my appointment and pick me up. They didn't want to at first, I was pissed. Finally they saw the light.

Turns out that a mouse had hauled a bunch of dog food up into the squirrel cage. Lazy A$$ mechanic. Couldn't duplicate issue......$%&*#