Dodgy garage advice

Hi guys.

I recently posted about my fathering in-laws disco 2 td5 having cutting out and starting problems.

He took it to a local landy "specialist" in sheffield who had the car for 2 weeks and on the final day came to the conclusion it was the ecu causing problems so they swapped it out for a "new" one at a cost of £260.

Took the car out the day after and it cut out 3 times and the starting fault was still there.

I decided that they were a waste of time and took it upon myself the change the injector harness as they said the ecu was covered in oil and completely knackered..So i checked around the seal where the harness plugs in and it was bone dry, no sign of leaks getting to the ecu wiring. I changed the harness and cleaned the wiring anyway (wiring to ecu didnt look as though oil had ever been there) and both fault were still there..

So i changed the injector seals..Job done. Car is perfect again.

Called the garage today, he basically fobbed me off saying the ecu was defiantly the fault and the fact it cut out 3 times the day after was a seperate fault and gave me a load of other mechnic bullsh**. Conversaion ended with him putting down the phone and saying thats it nowt we can do, problems fixed.

Have i shafted myself by repairing the fault myself? These guys seem like complete cowboys so i did not want it going back in for another 2 weeks to come out with more made up faults.

When the in-law took it down he told them that research on forums suggested the injector seals were the fault but they still failed to change them. Later in the conversion he told me that doing the injector seals would have been his next step, at more expense..

Name and shame

Doug Dransfield

Not Doug, he died last year. No idea who's running the place now. I occasionally use them for spares but do all my own maintenance so I really can't comment on how good local "specialists" are.

The guy in question is Dougs grandson.

Just been thinking.

If they did change the ECU then surely both keys would need recoding? They never asked for the spare key. So when the in law gets back next week ill try the spare, and if the spare key still works surely that proves they never actually changed the ecu.

Or are landrovers different? I know when i did my peugeot, both keys had to be recoded.

Small claims court very simple to do and worth it can take a bit of time but do it, money claim on line the court does all the hard work I suspect they won't even turn up to court then you win automatically

hipwell said:

The guy in question is Dougs grandson.

Just been thinking.

If they did change the ECU then surely both keys would need recoding? They never asked for the spare key. So when the in law gets back next week ill try the spare, and if the spare key still works surely that proves they never actually changed the ecu.

Or are landrovers different? I know when i did my peugeot, both keys had to be recoded.

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You might be getting your ECU confused with your BCU regarding the keys.

Cheers

I'd hand deliver a letter asking for the old ECU to be put back in and your f-i-l's money returned. Hand deliver for speed because you don't want them to have thrown it away.

I think that you have missed a chance to photograph the evidence that the harness had not been cleaned, and these days a bit of time-stamped video of the fault reoccurring would have been handy.

Garages that swap virtually random bits instead of diagnosing aren't rare enough, and you need to do your bit to stop this one.

I tried that but he said they binned the old ecu because it was faulty.

It's a while since I had a car that goes to garages, but I learned that they must always 'phone me before fitting anything that isn't expected, and I've asked them for the old parts to be left in the boot. (There's a fairly long story attached which would explain why I do it). I expect you and your family will consider doing the same in future.

Does the ECU look brand new - you sounded suspicious? Now that you can't have the old one back my approach would be face to face asking for money back or you'll speak to Trading Standards.

Nah the ecu in there looks old, all the serials numbers etc have rubbed off.

Me too, the only time my car sees a garage is for the MOT, this only ended up in the garage as I was tied up changing the clutch on my wife's astra so advised him to goto dransfield because he wanted it on the road asap and dransfield as they had a good rep. 2 weeks later this backfired and I ended up picking up the pieces.

In that case it looks like fraud, so give him the choice, Trading Standards or Police.

u got a receipt ?

boguing said:

It's a while since I had a car that goes to garages, but I learned that they must always 'phone me before fitting anything that isn't expected, and I've asked them for the old parts to be left in the boot. (There's a fairly long story attached which would explain why I do it). I expect you and your family will consider doing the same in future.

Does the ECU look brand new - you sounded suspicious? Now that you can't have the old one back my approach would be face to face asking for money back or you'll speak to Trading Standards.

Click to expand...

+1. My local peugeot dealer were adamant one of my vans needs new discs until I said 'that's fine, just leave me the old ones in the back for me to inspect' and also asked them the thickness of new discs vs my discs which they couldn't specify. Suddenly there was no problem and by magic they didn't need changing. Another peugeot dealer a bit further afield even charged me for topping up my adblue tank at a 16k service after I questioned them three times about the location of said tank, the fill point etc. knowing my van didn't even have a system for adblue. And these ARE specialists. God help us that have to go to backstreet garages.

I used to run my place as a back street garage but wouldn't dream of treating people in an underhand or dishonest manner as above., In the 20 years we traded, we didn't have one complaint. I am not saying we never ha any faults with our work - we did - but anything wrong was put right at our expense.

Cabbie, don't take anything I said as a criticism of all garages. I was stung by main dealers several times and the only problem I ever had with independents was sloppiness, not fraud. The last independent that I used always gave the customer the old parts without prompting, although even he wasn't perfect - he didn't change the tensioner when replacing a Citroën cam belt (factory mandate it) and I was very lucky that it got noisy before it failed. But. as you did, he replaced it with labour at his expense.

And before somebody from a main dealer chirps up - I've had some fantastic service from them too!

The most expensive and unreliable by far though, me.