WindClimber
Junior Member
Located in Oregon.
I had a customer come in with a vehicle at 204k miles with a burnt valve. After replacing the head gaskets, doing a valve job (Outsourced to a machine shop), replacing the timing belt and water pump, and replacing the clutch, the customer was back on the road and happy.
2 months and 4k miles later, his wife was driving the car out of town, the car overheated and effectively killed the engine. The first shop it was taken to while out of town, mentioned the radiator cap was left loose; an issue that would have presented very shortly after I did the work if it was something I had done, but ultimately led to the death of the car.
The customer towed the car to my shop and demanded I redo the work. I pulled the engine from the car, disassembled it, and diagnosed fairly; no error in how I did my work or failure of parts I installed. Problem now is that his engine was unusable due to the level of overheating it saw from no coolant in the system. I offered him a replacement engine for 1/2 of my cost, and no labor to install. He refused, stating a lack of faith in my abilities, and came to get his car.
At this point, I had stored his car for 2 1/2 weeks and accrued about 6 hours of work in removing the engine and diagnosing everything, which would total out to $1250 in storage and labor fees.
He made it obvious we'll go to court and came in with a mechanic to pick up his car.
What does this look like going to court? I've already began to chronicle the timeline of working on the car, and keep detailed logs of what I was seeing as I disassembled the engine. In addition, I have a compromise I was trying to offer, and if need be, a bill for storage and labor to "counter" with (Maybe?). I'm not sure what I can prove as far as following the factory service manual, but I do follow it, have a hard copy, and have many many other cars on the road who I've done the same work to without incident.
Any tips on how to to approach this once it gets to court would be appreciated.
EDIT: I should mention, I have no express written warranty on any paperwork in my shop, nor did I verbalize any type of warranty. In fact I mentioned that doing the work on an engine this old may be in vain as it may have other issues.
I had a customer come in with a vehicle at 204k miles with a burnt valve. After replacing the head gaskets, doing a valve job (Outsourced to a machine shop), replacing the timing belt and water pump, and replacing the clutch, the customer was back on the road and happy.
2 months and 4k miles later, his wife was driving the car out of town, the car overheated and effectively killed the engine. The first shop it was taken to while out of town, mentioned the radiator cap was left loose; an issue that would have presented very shortly after I did the work if it was something I had done, but ultimately led to the death of the car.
The customer towed the car to my shop and demanded I redo the work. I pulled the engine from the car, disassembled it, and diagnosed fairly; no error in how I did my work or failure of parts I installed. Problem now is that his engine was unusable due to the level of overheating it saw from no coolant in the system. I offered him a replacement engine for 1/2 of my cost, and no labor to install. He refused, stating a lack of faith in my abilities, and came to get his car.
At this point, I had stored his car for 2 1/2 weeks and accrued about 6 hours of work in removing the engine and diagnosing everything, which would total out to $1250 in storage and labor fees.
He made it obvious we'll go to court and came in with a mechanic to pick up his car.
What does this look like going to court? I've already began to chronicle the timeline of working on the car, and keep detailed logs of what I was seeing as I disassembled the engine. In addition, I have a compromise I was trying to offer, and if need be, a bill for storage and labor to "counter" with (Maybe?). I'm not sure what I can prove as far as following the factory service manual, but I do follow it, have a hard copy, and have many many other cars on the road who I've done the same work to without incident.
Any tips on how to to approach this once it gets to court would be appreciated.
EDIT: I should mention, I have no express written warranty on any paperwork in my shop, nor did I verbalize any type of warranty. In fact I mentioned that doing the work on an engine this old may be in vain as it may have other issues.
Last edited: