about 3 weeks ago i got into my pickup to go to school, we had had a freak cold spell for a few days that made everything on my truck feel brittle. it started up just fine like always but when i pulled my foot off the clutch it did not come back out.. i was late to school.

i had it towed to my career center to the auto service shop, looking to save a grand on a clutch job because they charge only $4, FIRST MISTAKE. i suspected it was my slave cylinder and a couple days later the instructor confirmed this, so i bought the new slave cylinder, dropped it off and waited. and waited. and waited.

today i got it back. after 3 weeks of bumming rides i was excited but my excitement turned to rage when i got it my truck and started it. the clutch was extremely spongy and the shifter was loose enough to spin half circles making it impossibly hard to shift. i tightened the pin as soon as i got home

after further inspections i compiled a list of problems:
-spongy clutch
-finger tight nut on shifter pin
-plastic collar on floor was forced off, breaking screw holes in 3 out of 4 corners, and missing a screw. just annoying
-rubber dust shield/cap in side of tranny missing
-one of two studs on back bottom side busted off in tranny, one nut holding tranny to cross member
-fitting on hydro line chewed up by pliers
-im sure i missed something, trannys probably ready to drop off the back of the motor, hope it does, give me a reason it swap my tired m5od for a t-18 or t-19

BIG QUESTION: am i ignorant for being cheap and using a student repair shop or is the instructor ignorant for letting this happen and not checking that it was done right? and what should i do?

this guys gonna get chewed tomorrow no matter what anyone tells me, just wondering what the community thinks

 

Where I went to school there was no half-assing it or doing hack work, and you used the correct tools no matter what. Hopefully the instructor is made aware of this and uses it as an example of what NOT to do. Sounds like a bunch of just out of highschool kids were let loose on it.

 

Hey now, I'm a junior in high school and I don't half *** anything! Expecialy something that's not mine. I think the instructor just wasn't paying attention and let some lazy *** ***** monkey fu** your truck up. Sorry to hear about it, hope it gets fixed!

 

i agree 100%. he will know about it and so will his students, i know a couple of em.. he also told me i needed a clutch and to resurface my flywheel, but i was broke and told him to put it back together and bleed it, that kinda made him look at me funny. also i feel like the clutch might be slightly engaged when my foots off the pedal, the truck feels sluggish and is revving kinda high at normal speed in each gear.. or maybe im adjusting to my truck again after not having it for so long.. and the unsealed hole in the floor making the engine and road noise louder

 

im also a junior, would have done it myself but im a welder not a mechanic. the juniors didnt even work on it, my buddys just screwed around in it up on the lift, changed all my presets, and dropped it on a tool cart.. trucks fine, cart is scrap lol. it was the seniors doing all the work, and they still screwed it up. it will be fixed

 

Dumb *** lol let us know how everything turns out!

 

BRING IT BACK AND GIVE THE INSTUCTOR YOUR LIST. my instructor would never let a truck go like that its to big of a liability to everyone including yourself. There are nothing but idiots in my class can't imagine that that class is much different. It's so bad that well over half of them have never worked on a car in there life one kid don't even have his license yet... All I can say is I have little patience for any of them. Well put it this way there is only five of us out of 40 that our instructor has personaly told us that he trusts us to the point that checking our work consits of a glance and a couple questions.

 

will definately let everyone know how it turns out

 

he will get my list. i know liability is huge, the machinists wouldnt even shave my banshees head over liability but he lets a bunch of brainless kids patch up my truck and lets it roll out without checking that it was done right

 

I recall, many years ago in high school, watching a group of fellow students dropping nuts and bolts down a carburetor, just for laughs. I let our instructor know and man did he blow up on those dudes. They never came back to that class.

Knowing what I saw, and knowing that it must happen all over the country, I would say you had a fair chance of something even worse happening to your truck.

I would not take one of my trucks to a school shop unless I got to do all the work myself. Hope they fix you up right, bro.

 

When I was a junior in high school, my buddy that graduated the year before donated his carbed 302 to the school so the engines class could tinker with it. It was in the shop literally 30 minutes before some morons decided to drain the oil and run it. Shop teacher came unglued. He had ordered all kinds of performance parts for it the week before, knowing that this motor was getting dropped off and had plans of having students build the motor up.

I don't trust a lot of "certified" mechanics to touch my vehicles, much less any high school students. I think it was foolish to let students touch your truck. Especially if the instructor didn't look over it. He's just as much at fault as they are, and don't forget that. He's in charge there.

 

You paid $4 for a repair. You got $4 worth of service.

I wouldn't say anyone is ignorant, but the instructor should be checking every vehicle before it leaves the shop.

 

Go talk to the instructor. Don't chew on him just talk to him & see what he says.
Craig

 

This. Nobody works on anything of mine ever since I had a supposedly good, privately owned tranny shop change out an auto trans for me. When I got the car back (97 Ford Thunderbird, 4.6, 4R70W, 8.8 w/4.10 gears) I checked it over real good. Found 1 loose bellhousing bolt and another one missing completely.
I didn't even call them up or anything, just made a mental note to never let anybody work on anything of mine ever again. For things like alignments and tires, this is unavoidable but I do check over everything before I leave the shop parking lot. Don't trust them to recheck every nut, bolt, and cotter pin. Most tire shops pay by the hour, this is ok but they hire just about anybody and the ones that have half a brain get to do alignments.

Most MECHANIC shops though, pay by what's called flat rate. The jobs are charged (and the mechanic paid) by tenths of an hour. For example replacing a u-joint might pay 5 tenths. This is equal to a half hour of work at the mechanics base pay rate. If the guy gets it done in 15 minutes, he just "beat rate" but still gets paid for a half hour's worth of work. If he takes longer, he still only gets paid a half hour even though it took him twice that long. Now he's losing money so he rushes to get the job done, making mistakes in the process because he's in a hurry.

The shops don't set the time that a particular job pays, there is a book for that which lists each repair operation and the time it should take to do it. Now this book ain't always realistic, some easy jobs pay lots of time, some hard jobs don't pay crap. This is likely what happened at the school you took your truck to. The instructor probably told the students what the job paid, and they tried to make or beat the rate.

Take your truck back there, have a nice civil chat with that instructor, and only make it ugly if you have to. It's wrong of him to not check the students work, but mistakes happen.

And yeah, you did only pay $4 for it. Should have done it yourself, if you have the space. It ain't hard to do a clutch replacement as long as it ain't a stupid front wheel drive piece of **** you're workin on.

 

As many said above, when I was in a Career Center for automotive, our instructors would never have let something like that slide. We appreciated every oppurtunity to get an actual customer car in the shop with an actual problem we could fix, rather than constantly toying around with the 15 brand new donor cars that were donated from manufacturers with 0 miles. The real experience came when we could have a real job to do. And the instructor never left our sides to ensure the job was done right.

I would approach him with your concerns calmly, and see what he says. I would think he would want to know. I don't think it was ignorant, but you should have known and probably did, that you're taking a higher risk of something being done improperly at a school shop than a long standing independent repair shop with great local reputation. I rarely let anyone touch my vehicles for this reason, however there are times when I need something done that I just don't have the time, or frankly, the desire to do. When that happens, I take it to a local shop with 2 employees, the owner and his son. The owner is in his 60's and has been in business for 32 years, he's honest and knows his stuff, and I fully trust him to work on my trucks.