Huge Repair Bills - A Big Dent In Your Pocket
Jul 5, 2009 More Saving
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Consider these numbers: $1500 for an insignificant scratch on the bodywork; $3500 for a new exhaust valve; at least $150 for a new trunk-release switch cover. These aren’t figures from the realm of fantasy, but actual repair expenses that drivers have provided to AOL Autos after having coughed up these amounts for repair jobs that only seemed small. The alternative is to do the job yourself, or buy a new car. That seems extreme, right? So just pay up like a good citizen and suffer in silence, seems to be the mantra.
Beyond the Bumper
Deana May has seen first hand what lies ahead for the customers who bring their car with just a surface scratch or an abrasion at Los Angeles-based AC Auto finishing. “It’s a scary thing — looks can be deceiving. You can do an estimate on a front bumper then take it off and behind it there are all kinds of damage. Low-profile cars with low-profile tires go over a bump or up a driveway, they don’t take an angle, often they need a whole new front end. May says that this is a common affair at her shop and explains it with an example. Last month a Lotus driver was quoted a cool $5,400 to get his car repaired though the car did not look as though it needed so many repairs. She says there is always a danger of the customers getting erroneous quotes for repairs with high-performance parts such as AMG or Brabus for a Mercedes. Some standard or stock components are put in place instead of these high-performance parts.
Up in Your grille
Willy Stroppe, president of automotive engineering firm Bill Stroppe & Sons in Paramount, California, says he once looked at what seemed like insignificant damage to the front of a Ford pickup truck that ultimately became a huge repair bill. It looked like the front plastic grille was broken by 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, to the headlight vessels, to a new front end, it all adds up. In many cases you gotta pull out the radiator. That’s not something you can do in a couple hours. Stroppes seen similar problems on a Ford Explorer ” he works mainly with Fords ” and the pickups repair bill crossed $1200. Its not like the old days when everything was steel, he adds. He also says that second hand car buyers should beware of a practice hes seen plenty of in nearly 50 years in the car business ” a repair shop buys a car whose frame and shell seem fine but whose inside needs a lot of work, for example, on its suspension. Often, says Stroppe, an unscrupulous shop will make the car roadworthy with a substandard repair job, and then sell it on to an unknowing buyer, leaving room for a huge future repair bill.
$150 Cover Up
Mark Essig, a writer in a small town in North Carolina, says he was shocked when a local technician charged him $150 to replace a missing cover for the trunk-release switch in his ten-year-old Mercedes 320 CLK. And while Essig was expecting a reasonably expensive repair bill given that he owned an upscale European make, he was certainly not expecting a $150-add on to a $2,000 repair bill, particularly since it came as an additional cost that was not included in the original 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, an AOL Autos friend who owns a Porsche 944, found out to his dismay that an old-school German car could cost more than he had budgeted for. A $15 exhaust valve replacement eventually cost him $3,500 once labor had been factored in. Essentially, he says, they had to take out the engine to reach the valve, which had burned out, a common failing in older performance vehicles. But without the repair, he says, he had no way of traveling to work.
Air Wear
It is advised to search out a second opinion, and always review general system reliability as you decide to replace individual parts on older-model cars. Look into this story to know the brutal truth of car repair: I found this to my cost when I took my wife’s 1995 Nissan 240SX S-ER to my local mechanic’s last week to fix the air conditioning. I’d already taken it into the shop the week before, where they’d diagnosed a leaking gasket that had depressurized the system. So they duly fixed the gasket, re-filled the system with Freon coolant and pressurized it. Bill: $300. Not bad for an AC fix, I thought, until two days later the system again began blowing hot. So it was back into the shop, where they took a second look at it before telling me another seal had broken, this time in a hard-to-reach spot, meaning extra labor. Estimated cost: $800. When I pointed out that the original fix was under warranty, my mechanic agreed but argued that a different component had malfunctioned and therefore the additional repair was not under warranty. Many more attempts at bargaining failed. Result: I’m $300 out of pocket, and my wife has a long, hot summer to look forward to (unless she nabs my car, which is likely).
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.”
Paintwork Blues
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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