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How did you pay for the first car? Also dampers and springs should be done on both sides. Did you get the old parts back? Can they do the work while you wait?
Second car once again how did you pay? can go and ask, be polite.
When you go to both record the conversation, as if the garage get confrontational you have a record to prove it.
Good luck.
lynx-
Debit on those unfortunately.
Have the 'old' damper, even though its well under a year old and in good shape. Slight imbalance across the front on that car seen as they've used the wrong spring, and also a gas topped damper instead of an oil only job. Pretty sure its depositing its oil on the inside of the upright too, not coming from brakes, hub, cv joints, so guess could go the route of 'your newly fitted damper is leaking, btw can you fit the right one, and the right spring'.Just utterly fed up of folk not doing a job right, and I'm a medium sized white sys male with good mechanical knowledge who can find out their mistakes, any other people likely get screwed even more.
BrickMan
Anyone got some quick legal/consumer advise?
I very rarely trust any garage or workshop with anything, many bad experiences in the past has taught me, do it yourself where possible, at least you can only blame yourself then!
Wife's car breaks springs quite regular (roads here are shite), the last full set (strut, top mount, all bolts, spring, a bunch of bushs) were replaced around 8-10 months prior. Broken road spring happened on a week I just couldn't' spare the time and car was very close to a local chain garage/tyre place. Haved used them for tyres + alignment before and thought they were fine.
Drop off car, get a call back, nah mate needs a spring (obviously), a top mount and a strut, apparently strut is blown. OK unlikely, but need it done, do it.
Get car back, drove it around 30 metres, took it back, made a racket when turning or moving at all TBH. They 'look at it' for a day, and give it back to me. Its exactly the same. 'It'll settle in' I'm told.
Get top mount + strut back, top mount yeah it has a tiny nick in the plastic, and TBF if your taking a strut out of a FWD car you might as well change it for the £30 it costs). The strut is fine, after 9 months or so of Scottish weather its not even really dirty yet. They say its blown, but actually its just not a gas topped strut, the compression damping on this particular car is kept minimal as it has tiny 165 tyres, all the other models in the range get a gas topped strut and 195-215 tyres.
A week later (next available minute I have), take it back and leave it, suggest maybe they've put the spring on upside down (as I can see the writing is upside down). Another day, get it back drenched in grease. They've' just used spray grease on the top mount.
Fast forward to now, the other road spring has broken (2 months) on the other side. So have just replaced that myself in all of the hour it takes to do. With the correct spring the correct way up. Works perfectly obviously.
Took other road wheel off (fucking job as 4 out of 5 bolts were in there well over the torque spec, nearly broke the locking wheel nut) to see if they defo have put it on upside down. Yup, writing is upside down, but you can see up in the strut top mount that spring doesn't sit right (one end of road spring is flat, the other end is on an angle, angle end is mean't to be in the metal cup of the strut, flat end in the top mount, which is pretty standard on regular FWD cars for the last 3 or 4 decades no?). And its making a right mess of the top mount seen as its not in right.
OK so, we are a few months later, do I have recourse? Do I start nice, and 'can you put the right spring in this (they physically look different to the other models in that car range so quite obvious), and also btw put my old/new totally fine strut back in it. And I want a refund for that strut you should have never fitted, but you can keep the money for the spring, mount and labour seen as you are actually gonna do the job right now? Do I just ask for a full refund and go elsewhere (do myself as I normally do!) as at this point they are gonna do dodgy shit, put rocks in the engine oil, screws in the tyres etc? Or do I go further and report them somehow seen as its pretty blatent. Also managed to get MOT station to note 'road spring fitted incorrectly, possibly also incorrect spring' last month.
Second car problem
MOT + new tyres recently. About a week after picking the car up noticed judder under moderate braking which has stayed the same for 2 month or so now. The garage admitted they broke a locking wheel nut and it was a pain to get out, they were sorry these things happen.
These things do happen, but what I discovered yesterday when went to rotate the tyres round (2k on them), that rear axle was tightened a bit more than I would like but broke free OK. Front axle, fuck me, 3/4" (300-400nm) impact wasn't taking them off, so had to resort to heat, hammer and a 4' breaker bar. Got both locking nuts out, just, both have visible distortion to the face from the forces involved in removing them. One regular bolt snapped in the hub. They are genuine volvo bolts and really do not break for no reason. Must have been tightened to around 180-200lb.ft (close to breaking point) when the spec is ~80-100lb.ft, maybe less, and then 2 months of corrosion + heat cycling = needs more in order to remove, i.e normal bolt behaviour.
Ok so have a broken bolt in the hub, and I'm fairly sure the hub flange is distorted, hence the brake issue, you can feel it by rotating wheel. Hub was an SKF bearing'd item, new not long ago (maybe 6-10 k on it) and I actually had to replace it because of the last time the wheel bolts where over tightened causing really noticeable brake rotor runout.
Same again, do I go and ask them in a reasonable fashion to sort this out, or are they gonna say 'tough, its 2 months+ later, you can't prove we did that'. In which case I'll be out £200 for a hub, 2-3 hours more of my time, £30-120 for an alignment, and 10 wheel nuts at £8.x each, possibly a brake rotor if its distorted that too. Or go straight to feet stomping. Never like to do that, but honestly I give up, why can't others do the job they were asked to do without monumentally fucking everything up.