So some of you my recall that my tip had failed. Well let me give you a back story. In june I took my car to a local shop to have a rear intake pipe, tb, and boost leak test done. While there the car was parked in the back yard and a strong storm came an knocked the neighboring buildings roof off sending pieces of roof into the rear lot. My car along with 4 others were hit badly my car had about 7k in body damage. The driver side glass on the rear and door were shattered. I was called by the owner of the company to come take a look at the damage. He did not touch the car because he was waiting for the insurance adjuster to show. I was extremely busy at this time and waited for a phone call from his insurance. Finally 4 days later they called and we settled for 7k since the car looked to only have cosmetic damage. Well I found out from one of the employees that the car was left outside in a puddle of water for 4 day! Also the owner of the shop had my car cleaned out and dried prior to me coming there the second time. The work had not been performed yet so the car was left there. For some reason the owner kept giving me excuses about why I couldn’t get the car back. I finally get the car back at the end of September. When I got it back there was huge clouds of smoke coming out the rear. So I had to give it back to him. They cleaned the inside of the lines and removed some oil this resolved that issue. After a while of driving I noticed that the car seemed to be slamming gears and acting funny. I had the car out on the highway and decided to do some runs. After about 3 runs the car would not shift into 4th gear....

So after all these issues and feeling like the shop must have screwed something up I decided to take to a Porsche dealership who has it now. They took a sample and said that the fluid was a tan brown and stunk very bad. I stopped by the original shop to talk to the owner who was out on a test drive. I pulled aside one of the techs who I knew pretty well. He told me that off the record, the car was left out in the rain and pond like puddle of water for 4 days, he also says that the owner may have attempted to change the fluid in doing so might have put the wrong fluid in!

So here is what I decided to do. I told the Porsche dealer ship not to touch the fluid in the trans. Just give me a sample of the stuff in there and a sample of what is supposed to be in there. I am going to take it to Blackstone Labs and have them do an oil analysis on it. If it is found to have water in it then I will go after the same insurance policy. If the wrong fluid was added then I will go after his GL insurance. Finally if everything is right but I just toasted my trans...well then im out of 7-8k!


Is that the right thing to do? What else can I do? What would you do?

THIS HAS BEEN A FREAKING NIGHTMARE!!!! I just want my car back up and running so I can enjoy it.

 

Wow really wow, sorry for your car!

If he change the oil from the trans and is not good, sue him!

 

Sorry to hear Vince. I think you have no choice but to go after him...

 

Sorry to hear that... garage from hell. I do think you have to go after them too.

 

Very sorry for all that mess! Very frustrating I am sure!

I just don't understand why people try to cover up stuff like this. If it wasn't their fault, why not just let the insurance cover it? Doesn't make any sense why they would try to cover it up...

 

that sucks...good luck going after them.

No idea who the shop is, but I hope they are large!

 

Sounds like a plan.

I'd have taken primary responsibility for repairs once the phone rang the first time, move it to a body shop that day. The guy was a 'junior' wrench, not a paint and body shop, right? (Hard to believe a senior, skilled P mechanic would fill wrong ATF, or even 75w90? Yikes)


Be aware that many insurance policies have a clause that requires the insured to protect the item from further damage in the event of a claim. This might be the owner of the shop (if it is his insurance) or you (if it is your insurance).

GL

A

 

Oh boy...
Vince, if this is the shop where you took the car for the intake install... lesson to be learned is: it sometimes doesn't pay taking these car to places that never work on them...
granted, the other place raped you so I understand... but bottom line is: a lot of shops do not really know what they are doing....
sorry to hear..
mark

 

I'm shocked by the total lack of attention and "respect" for such a wanderful machine....
This is just unacceptable!

 

WOW!


I'm sorry to hear that. This is really the reason why I do all my work on all my cars. It might not always be the most time/cost efficient way for me but I enjoy it and if I screw up I got no one to blame but myself so I take time to do every job the right way.

It reminds me of a Jeep project I did last year (got a beater '99 Wrangler to park by my parents house in Florida). I got the car Cheap from an auction and since it only had 60K miles on it I figured it was an easy project with a little TLC needed. Well turned out that whoever had it didn't give a rats *** about cars. I've spent 4 months restoring the car and pretty much overhauling the whole chassis and drivetrain. When I drained the transmission fluid I almost cried. A strawberry milkshake came out along with an ounce of sand. Whoever took it off roading didn't know that the vent tube from the trans only goes up as high as the trans tunnel.

Anyway, I've had a similar issue as you when I was rebuilding a ZF trans out of a 740IL. It also called for a dealer specific oil but I found lot of people using other ATF as recommended by "some" websites with mixed results.

http://store.europarts-sd.com/ATFspecguide.pdf

Take a look at the above Valvoline sheet. I could easily see how a shop trying to cut corners on an oil change and minimize losses on an already non profitable job could have their eyes light up when they see that the MaxLife ATF is $5 a quart versus $20 a quart at the Benz dealership.

I think you are really in for an uphill battle, but I'm going to have my fingers crossed for you.

 

My experience is that shops seem to care when they are in the green "making" money. When a job goes south and they are loosing money on a job or simply doing damage control they will go out of their way to save their *** and not the customers. They probably know that they will loose the business and the rep from it so they stop thinking about the client and put a think bar to save the bottom line.