I guess this sort of stuff happens but we really aren't doing this type of work that a full service store front would be doing. We do full restorations and maintanence work.
Cars that come to see us every season rarely have problems. Those that come after they have problems from lack of service, usually end up having a whole lot of work done.
I tell them they have a legal requirement to have a safe vehical on the road. Hey, if you don't have brakes, you're dangerous to everyone.

The guy with the paper thin rotors:eek: sounds interesting, no?:rolleyes:

I have some really decent customers and sure won't complain.

It takes a long time to learn how to run a business you start from scratch with no prior expirience. By the time you do have most of it figured out, it's time to retire............;)

I agree with him it is a safety issue. I don't see a problem with him hunting for work. HOWEVER, he needs to understand that if you didn't authorize that, you are not responsible for it. Should he make you sign a waiver that says you were informed of the possible safety issue, I would go along with it. That is about as far as it goes for his "fishing expedition". This is why I won't let my wife deal with mechanics. All she is allowed to do is get the keys and drive it off. No talking to the people. Don't even look them in the eye. Car work is NOT her forte so she doesn't get to deal with it. Some things are not my forte so I simply nod my head and go along with whatever she wants.

Communication.

It has an 85 engine out of my earlier jetta. I moved it into the 86 shell earlier this year mating it to the 86 gearbox with a new clutch and other new parts. On that upgrade, I was called by the shop owners son who figured since the thing had original shims in it, that it would be worth doing while he was in there.
That was something I had planned to do later myself, but since I had already farmed out the timing belt because I was too busy and just wanted it done, I figured what the heck. It does run much much better, which is a pleasure.

Let me explain what was "wrong" in greater depth, as under normal reasoning, brake issues are indeed about safety, when in fact they exist. :D I took the tire off and the drum at home, and not only can I not find new parts or evidence of recent adjustment apart from removing the drum, but everything in there looks the same as it was, brake dust over all. Im wondering if they made up the dragging brake shoe and broken pin they told me. Earlier I had assumed that the pin must have broken since I knew it was almost rusted through, but its still there.

Good move on protecting your wife, Martureo's story is exactly the same stuff I also experiences while working at pep boys as a mechanic for a short period. :D


On this car, I had replaced the rear wheel bearings about 4-5 months ago, and set them with just a hair of movement for heat expansion. (this came after I went off the road in this car in the snow into a field, so they needed to be done, the wheel bearings had quite a severe wrench from sliding into a field)

While I was in there, I noticed that while all the brake shoes (at least 80%) and hardware were technically good, it could really use some new brake shoe hardware since one of the pins was rusty on the passenger side.

However, since the car is a project, and sitting most of the time recently about a mile from these guys, and since I have a rear brakes rotor and caliper upgrade to install, I wasnt interested in putting in new hardware at the time, so I put it back together with the existing pins, and it was complete with no issues.

Also the car has new front brakes and wheel cylinders, and stops on a dime. Essentially, There were no visible, audible, or felt issues with any of the brakes on this car, at the time I dropped it off.

From my perspective, my new theory is they used the premise of the slight play I set in the wheel bearing (verified just a few weeks ago when I was screwing with some fuel line stuff) to take apart the rear brakes and run up a couple hundred dollars in labor. At a minimum, there should have been an attempted parts charge for at least brake shoe hardware, or wheel bearing parts, but since none of the components were bad, I had a 4 hour labor charge for taking everything apart and putting it back together again.

Something I have done on the side of the road in well under an hour for both sides, another thing I found preposterous. You really can't get much simpler than one of these cars, for an experienced VW technician to take 4 hours to disassemble and reassemble a Mk2 rear drum brake assembly WITHOUT touching lines or wheel cylinders, just removing the drums on a lift simple defies belief.

The car is now back in my possession safety. They made a threat about a waiver, but again, nothing was apparently wrong, so no waiver was produced as the car was perfectly safe. Certainly ruined my friday afternoon, Ill say.

It takes a grand total of 5 minutes to unmount the rear wheel/drum from that car and about 5 more minutes to unbolt any brake hardware. assume it takes 20 minutes to put it back.

I had such a car and I did the rear brakes in the above time, while sitting on my workchair and the car on jackstands. Even replacing the bearings is easy as chips - and when removing the drum I never even bothered to remove lug bolts, undo the cotter pin remove castle nut and pull wheel out complete with drum attached. Replace bearings at your ease too.

4 HOURS??? wow they had to take naps while doing such work?

right? he showed me 4 hours and I just stood there for a while wondering what in the hell.

I think they arrived at that number adding up the book time for everything in the rear brake assembly done separately. Only way I can think of they came up with 4 hours.

It took me half that time to fully install the 85 engine for petes sake. these old vws aren't called lego cars for nothing

The only time that I've ever trashed talked a shop was when I took a 73 280SEL to a shop called Laslos in Richardson TX. He had a number of older MB's in there so I thought he knew them and stopped by because I just bought the 280SEL and it was running badly.

I came in to see him before I took the car in. We spoke and he asked me what I wanted done. I told him it ran rich and I just wanted him to spend a few hours looking at.

He exact word for word is : Where do you want me to stop?
I said: Stop at $300 dollars (about 4-6 hours of work a decade ago)
He said ok and I took the car over there.

After four days, he told me to pick the car up and presented me with a huge bill (something like $1700). I asked him what the deal was as we agreed to stop at $300 and he went into some rant about something or another.

I ended up paying him and taking the car which did not run any better then before and found another mechanic (European Performance). I guess he won that battle, but i'm quite sure that if he runs that kind of business, he'll be short of customers pretty quickly.

It's so hard to find a decent shop. I know when I do, I start establishing a relationship with a shop by getting with oil changes, along with the objective of doing an inspections on the vehicle for other potential issues, especially whenever I pick up another used vehicle where the history really isn't well known.

I have a shop now just a mile from me that does pretty much all the work on all our cars. Most shops now keep a database history of past repairs. That was helpful when I was getting my daughter's Mustang sorted out, and I was able to spread numerous expensive repairs over a couple of years 'til it was nearly mechanically new.

But normally, they print a sheet of what they are going to work on, and your signature authorizes the work. If something else is discovered (which, for older cars, it normally does), a phone call from the shop is expected at minimum before additional work is performed.

The story from the OP sounds like something from the 70's! I thought shops like that went out of business years ago...

new rant-

Full size work van needed tires. Since I had no intention of spending big money of 4 new tires, I found 3 good used LT rated tires on craigslist for 50 bucks, and another LT rated tire at a used tire place for 30.

The next day I went to have them installed. I had 3 identical tires, one oddball. All 4 were laying flat in the back of the work van.

Took the van to local discount tire install place and instructions were simple and I believe clear, put the mismatched tires on the front, and two identicals on the rear, new valves, mount and balance.

The job begins when a mechanic shuffles out to my car about 6 spaces away at the slowest possible speed I could believe (watched from window). He gets to the van, starts peeking in the window for nearly 30 seconds, opens the door, checks the sticker, returns to the shop without bringing the van in. Gets the manager to tell me that he checked and I need LT rated tires on the vehicle and I brought inadequate rubber.
I point out that I in fact did bring LT rated tires, the oddball one is even a HD LT rated tire, and that I was able to watch the guy go out there and not actually look at the tires. Manager goes out, verifies the truth, talks to the mechanic, mechanic argues, finally goes out again, looks through the window AGAIN for about 30 seconds, then actually opens the door and checks tires.

Finally brings in van, puts on lift, mounts the mismatched tires on the rear, without consulting the work order. I call the manager again and get him to straighten it out, mechanic argues again until I lose my temper and go out into the shop and tell him to mount the dam tires where I dam well told him to and stop wasting my time otherwise. (coming up on two hours for this tire job).

I leave, the tires are all misbalanced and im late for a materials pickup. Simple incompetence, he balanced them all before I yelled at him.

Ouch. Reminds me of when I was having my wheels repainted and the 'tech' remounted the wheels with an electric drill but didn't tighten ANY of the bolts by hand first. After a few miles down the road I could feel that something was wrong so I turned around and went back but the guy had already left. I had to remove all the wheels and remount them....in the rain :mad:

If I buy used tires, I use the tiny Mexican used tire store a few blocks away for the mounting and balancing. Far better than the chain stores, even if I don't speak Spanish.

Atlantic Ave?

Same here. I learned my lesson when a big chain quoted me $40 too repair a small leak I had, the Mexican guy did it for $10.

Santa Fe and 7th.