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Date:         Mon, 3 Apr 1995 13:36:02 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Thom Fitzpatrick" <thom@tim.com>
Subject:      Shop Problems

Howdy

Disclaimer: While this is not exactly a VW-related story, the shop mentioned herein does advertise themselves as VW shop. Alsong with Mercedes, BMW, etc.

My SO took het '78 530i to the shop a few weeks ago because it was running poorly and running hot, and getting steam out the exhaust. The shop confirmed our fears that the head was cracked.

So she has them do the work. They took three weeks to do whatthey said was gonna take a week, but kept it within $40 of the estimate.

She gets the car back Friday, and I drove it home. Here are the problems:

Smells like antifreeze inside - turns out there is something leaking into the car, like the heater core.

Idles like sh*t.

Awful gas mileage - used 1/4 tank to get from downtown Sacramento to Carmichael! (That is really, really bad! _it about 8 miles!)

Car runs hot, still! and ...

I tried to bleed the system, just in case that was the problem, and it was fine, but the antifreeze was this sticky, greasy YELLOW stuff I've never seen before. Have any of you? I left big yellow stains everywhere it landed!

They scraped the crap out of the roof, and there are huge greasy drips on it, looks like they put one car on the lift and then parked this one under it. There are greasy handprints all over the car, and big gouges in the paint from where they prolly put all the parts from her car while they were working on it!

Any ideas what the path of recourse should be? She is going to take the car in tomorrow to have them look at it again. I'm thinking of telling her to cancel the VISA until they do it to her satisfaction.

She had a similar problem last fall with a different shop, which yanked her chain pretty hard until she pulled the plug on the VISA. People pay more attention when you have them by the short and curly's!

Any comments would be appreciated. I think for $2500+, you should get a better end result. I wonder if its just because she's a she?

The shop is European Automotive on 16th and T in Sacramento

Thom -- > The beatings will continue until morale improves. ............................................................................ : Thom Fitzpatrick Transamerica Info Mgmnt : : Systems Administrator 1860 Howe Ave : : tfitzpatrick@tim.com Sacramento, CA 95825 : : fax (916) 921-6781 (916) 565-3346 : ............................................................................


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