Help my brother, for I am his keeper, and his Mercedes 190 hath descended into mechanic's hell...

Kendall_Jones wrote: With all that top end work done, I'd do a compression & leak down before throwing any more parts on it. Does the MB crankcase have the same vacuum on it like the old BMWs? Pull the dipstick & idle drops and runs erratic...

The shop did a compression and leak-down test on the engine when they pulled the head before any work was done on the engine. He said the bottom end on the car was solid and doesn't need any work. It has good compression and the oil rings are sealing properly and there is no blow-by. I don't think that is the issue here right now. The mechanic said he wouldn't have recommended redoing the head on the engine and trying to fix it if the bottom end wasn't good.

I've never heard of an engine running like crap if you pull the oil dipstick out. My car certainly doesn't do that. I've pulled the dipstick before when it is running and it doesn't change anything.

Dusterbd13 wrote: It sure sounds like ... probably legal action action against the shop. Did you agree to all this money before the work was completed?

Well... that is where it gets tricky, lol... I didn't technically agree to the huge bill for all of the extra work done, but was forced to pay it if I wanted my car back (which I need for work as it is my only transportation at the moment...) However, the shop did call me along the line while they were working on my car to authorize more work.

For instance, he called me after he put the rebuilt head on the car and told me that it is not running right and he thought it could possibly be a plugged exhaust making it not run right. I told him he could check for a plugged cat or something, but I had no idea his idea of doing so was to sawzall the exhaust off just after the manifold and weld up a whole new exhaust with a new muffler just to "test it". I think he could have tested the exhaust very easily by unbolting it (or cutting it if was all welded, I suppose...) and if it didn't change anything, he could have quickly put my old exhaust back on the car. Instead, he cut it all up (and individually cut out the cat and resonator from the exhaust system so you could easily see inside of them) and charged me for a full exhaust system that it probably didn't need and I couldn't really afford at the time. Sure, I did want to replace the exhaust on the car at some point, but I wasn't expecting to have it done right now.

That is just one thing though. He kept calling me and recommending different parts that needed to be replaced. I did drive the car with the new exhaust on it and it was running like crap and had no power at all. He said it was a distributor, so I authorized him to replace that. Then he said it was the fuel distributor, so I even got that part used myself and gave it to him to install on my car. So yeah, I did authorize those repairs to the car. However, I have no idea if they were really needed or not. I do know the car does run a LOT better now after those parts were replaced, but it is still not 100%, as I have said. I have no idea if the mechanic potentially damaged these parts while disassembling the engine and he was covering his @$$ saying that they "just went bad" and needed to be replaced and he wouldn't admit to damaging them or what. All I know is the car ran fine for the year I've owned it before I brought it to him, so IDK how I was driving it with a supposedly bad ignition distributor, bad fuel distributor, bad computer, bad fuel pump, plugged fuel filter, bad O2 sensor, and all this other sh1t without me knowing about it. It just doesn't make sense to me. Unless somehow all these things spontaneously went bad from the car sitting for a month and a half, which also seems unlikely to me.

Do you have a tank or two of fuel through it now? As many other people have said, CIS hates to sit for long. But I'd expect to see those sitting-related issues resolved within a tank of gas. Have you given it a proper Italian tune-up?

Oh, and lots of CIS cars use engine vacuum for crankcase ventilation. If I pull the dipstick out of my SAAB when running, the engine will die. Obviously not the case with your MB, but it isn't all that uncommon.

FYI - BenzWorld.org Forum Post About My Car. It is mostly a "consolidated re-post" of information that is already contained here across many posts, but just thought I would share in case anyone is a member over there and would like to read up on the entire story. I'm hoping maybe I can get some good answers from Mercedes Benz experts over there as well.

So far still no progress on my car and it is still not running right.

EDIT - IDK why the above link doesn't work and isn't formatting correctly. You can try this if it's not working: http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w201-190-class/2172657-my-190e-hath-descended-into-mechanics.html

Well, I got quite a lot of bad news today, unfortunately. Since the engine hasn't been running right ever since I got it back from the shop and now, within the past 2-3 days, it has been running SO poorly that I can barely limp it down the road, I decided to take it somewhere else for another opinion today. On the way to get to this other shop, the engine was backfiring badly when I was accelerating and it felt like it was going to stall. (It actually did stall on me once today.) It just has no power and I can hardly get it to accelerate at all anymore.

After explaining to this other mechanic what was done to the engine and how it is behaving, the first thing he wanted to do was a compression check to analyze the overall health of the engine. So, he started by pulling the stark plugs out to check the compression on all four cylinders. The results were NOT good:

Cylinder 1: 34 psi

Cylinder 2: 26 psi

Cylinder 3: 46 psi

Cylinder 4: 62 psi

EVERY single cylinder in the engine has compression WAY UNDER the recommended specifications! That means the bottom end of my engine is JUNK!!! All the rings in the engine are shot. To verify this, he shot a couple of squirts of SAE30 motor oil into each spark plug port and checked the compression again. Each cylinder then jumped right up to 120-125 psi, which is a lot closer to spec, but still a bit low. So, this means that I can tell that the shop owner LIED THROUGH HIS TEETH about checking out the engine prior to doing all of the work on my car! It took this other mechanic not even 10 minutes to check the compression on the engine to tell that it was worn out and would need to either be replaced or at least completely rebuilt in order to make it run properly again. If Capital Mechanics took the 10 minutes to do this test in the first place like I asked him to and he told me he did, it could have saved me a LOT of money, grief, and aggravation over this whole situation.

Next, after determining that the piston rings were shot in my engine, he put the plugs back in and hooked up a timing light to check to see if the engine timing was also off like I had suspected all along since it was running like crap. I started up the engine and let it run for not even 30 seconds when the mechanic told me to shut it off already. I was like, "Wow, that was fast, you checked the timing on it that quickly already?" He told me that, as we had suspected, the timing is WAY off on the engine. He said it was so far off that when he pointed the timing light at the crank while the engine was running, he couldn't even see the timing mark at all. He thinks that the timing chain is at least a tooth if not two off from where it is supposed to be if the timing mark isn't even showing up with the light.

On top of all of this, just to add insult to injury, remember how I mentioned that we had to remove the spark plugs to check the compression? Yeah, well when we did I noticed something peculiar. The plugs we pulled out were the same exact Bosch Iridium plugs that I put in the engine after I first bought it when I did a tune-up (plugs, wires, cap and rotor). However, I thought I had seen a line on the bill that I had paid about spark plugs. So, I pulled the receipt out of the glove box and sure enough on the first page, he charged me $45 for new NGK spark plugs - however the Bosch plugs I put in over a year ago were still in the engine!!

So, now I'm wondering what ELSE he charged me for on the bill that he never actually did! Obviously, he never properly diagnosed and troubleshot the engine before he did any work on it, despite the fact he charged me on the bill for initial diagnostics on the engine to do a compression and leak down test and to check the cylinder walls for scoring. He obviously charged me for spark plugs he never installed. And he also charged me to install a head, set the engine timing, and replace a chain tensioner that was more than likely all done improperly or just "by eye". Not to mention the myriad of parts that he threw at my car that it didn't need because of his shoddy work. I wonder if he even did an oil change and flushed the cooling system like he told me he did (and charged me for in the bill)? He could have just recycled the used fluids back into my engine when he put it back together...

Here is some more food for thought too - do you want to know WHY the distributor advance wasn't working and he ended up replacing it? Because the engine has no vacuum due to the worn out rings and the timing being off. The other mechanic and I decided to throw a vacuum gauge on the engine after the compression check came back negative and with the engine running at 2,000 RPMs, the engine was only pulling 5 psi of vacuum. That was it. That is not nearly enough to activate the vacuum advance on the distributor. So, more than likely, even though the distributor is brand new, the engine is still not getting any timing advance.

I cannot even begin to explain how LIVID I am right now at this shop for completely ripping me off like this and performing sub-par work on my car, at best. Now, I am stuck with a car that doesn't run right and at this point I cannot continue driving in the condition it is in. I am out DOUBLE the amount of money that the shop originally quoted me for the repairs and I am stuck with a car that I cannot drive and I also cannot sell to get my money back out of it. I would need to repair the car further in order to either keep it or sell it, unless I decide to just scrap it, which I don't want to do.

At this point, the owner is just going to have to refund me the entire cost of the repairs and I will have to take the car elsewhere to have it fixed properly or else I am going to have to take him to court and sue him for the cost of the repairs PLUS probably another $500-$750 in car rental costs since I had to go rent a car to get back and forth to work until I can get my car repaired so it is driveable again. Given what I have found out today, yes it is a lot of bad news, but at the same time I feel very confident that I can use the information I found out today to support a very strong case against this shop for fraud and unethical business practices. I will most likely also call the Better Business Bureau and the State Attorney General's office to submit complaints against this shop for how they totally f#cked me over!!! I am literally just blind with rage right now at these @$$holes over this whole sh1tty situation!!!

Yes, just sue them at this point.

Dam that sucks. Would it be cheaper / quicker to just get another used motor for that thing?

What is the total bill? You should look at the specific laws in your state and see if this is a small claims court thing or if it goes to "real" court.

Having danced around the legal system some take a long hard look at your costs to take it to court and even if you "win" the court can make a judgment to have the shop pay you $50/week and then after say 3-4 payments they stop paying and you have to hall them back in to court and if they then get tossed in jail you are not going to get anything.

The short of it is once the red mist wares off a bit sit down and think about it and what your real cost in time and $$$$ will be to follow through with a court action.

OR

I was involved in a case where the plaintiff did not care about the $$$ spent and was willing to spend 4x the amount he was originally taken for just to prove a point and pound a scum bag in to the ground and them some. If you have the resources and the time and it will make you feel better go for it. As this person will just go and get some one else unless they are stopped.

Best of luck with this. A bad situation no matter what direction you go.

My opinion, given as someone who has some experience with these cars from the service sales end of things and I am not going to spare your feelings: take the refund, then get rid of that car NOW and buy something from the Land of the Rising Sun.

190's were bottom feeders to begin with and Mercedes cut corners like crazy. It will eat you out of house and home, take it from me the 'experience' of driving a Benz is just not worth it.

Got a news station in the area that does consumer fraud kinda stuff? Get a hold of them with all the info you've got and maybe they can visit the rat bastards and shame them into never getting anymore business.

dean1484 wrote: What is the total bill? You should look at the specific laws in your state and see if this is a small claims court thing or if it goes to "real" court.

Well, I'm kind of embarrassed over how much money I dumped into my car at this shop. But, the final total I paid was about double what he initially quoted me, mostly due to him throwing part after part at my car trying to make it at least driveable (and failing). But, I guess I will let the cat out of the bag and tell you that he originally quoted me between $1,800 and $2,000 to fix the head gasket, including all of the machining work on the head. By the time I got my car out of there, he charged me near as makes no difference $4,000 for the privilege of f#cking up my car! I believe anyways that it is still under the limit for small claims as I think you can sue up to $5,000 in small claims court. But I could be wrong on that...

dean1484 wrote: Having danced around the legal system some take a long hard look at your costs to take it to court and even if you "win" the court can make a judgment to have the shop pay you $50/week and then after say 3-4 payments they stop paying and you have to hall them back in to court and if they then get tossed in jail you are not going to get anything.

I doubt this guy is going to go to jail and lose his business over a "measly" $4,000 (compared with how much his shop is probably grossing in a month). IF he does try to pay me in $50/week payments, that would seriously suck, but at least I'd be getting SOMETHING back out of his @$$...

dean1484 wrote: The short of it is once the red mist wares off a bit sit down and think about it and what your real cost in time and $$$$ will be to follow through with a court action. OR I was involved in a case where the plaintiff did not care about the $$$ spent and was willing to spend 4x the amount he was originally taken for just to prove a point and pound a scum bag in to the ground and them some. If you have the resources and the time and it will make you feel better go for it. As this person will just go and get some one else unless they are stopped. Best of luck with this. A bad situation no matter what direction you go.

Well, I still think it is totally worth it to sue this guy (if it comes down to it) over $4,000. If it were under $1,000, then maybe I'd think twice about it. However, I'm going to try to make a deal with him on Monday to either refund my $4,000 or I drag his ass to court. In court, I'm going to sue for at least $5,000 - the extra $1,000 going to cover court costs plus the cost of a rental car for several weeks while I don't have my car to drive until another shop can fix it properly. Depending on what a lawyer thinks about it, I may even go over $5,000 and sue him in "real" court for everything I can get out of him - the cost of the original repairs, cost of having to go to another registered shop to have them diagnose the problem after his work didn't fix the car, attorney and court fees, cost of rental car, plus the cost of new repairs at another shop having to fix the work that he did on my car. That could easily go over $7,000-$8,000 before I'm done with his @$$... But again, I'd have to check with a lawyer first to see what I could legally get away with given the situation. One way or another, I'm going to make him bleed for this... He f#cked with the WRONG guy now...

Well, this got interesting.

Best of luck. In for updates.

berkeleyin a!

Sue the bastards.

Curmudgeon wrote: My opinion, given as someone who has some experience with these cars from the service sales end of things and I am not going to spare your feelings: take the refund, then get rid of that car NOW and buy something from the Land of the Rising Sun. 190's were bottom feeders to begin with and Mercedes cut corners like crazy. It will eat you out of house and home, take it from me the 'experience' of driving a Benz is just not worth it.

Yeah, the 190e/W201 really was the first Benz built to a price point, the beginning of the end to the mechanical engineer's dream cars they were still building (W126, W123) at the time. It all went downhill from there.

Sorry I haven't looked at this thread before now, man I would be suing the hell out that shop. Between stories like this, and the practices I've seen shops use, I won't be taking any vehicle I own to one ever.

Sadly if they did a half assed head gasket repair job it could have possibly lead to further engine problems/damage. ESPECIALLY if it was out of time, and their answer was "OH it just need's to be driven a few 100 miles". Possible loss of compression could be from a piss poor seal on the gasket, but that's also a case of looking at the best possible scenario. You've proof of them charging you for services not provided, it's not a far stretch to speculate they Berkeleyed up setting the timing, and just didn't care enough to go back in and fix it right. Car came in running just fine just pressurizing oil into the coolant. Means it needs a new headgasket. that means, pull head, possibly replace timging components (I don't know this engine, if it's an OHC design or pushrod motor) water pump, etc. But you get done, and it runs like E36 M3? That means 2x check your work, (if you haven't been doing it all along) and then go looking for other issues.

Engine basics 101: Suck, squish, bang, blow. It has to happen in that order, They need fuel, spark, and air to run. You check that it's getting air? check. Getting fuel? check. Got spark? ummmmm

I think a certain "mechanic" has been watching too many engine speed building competitions on youtube. The proper way to set timing is not lets drop the distributor in and spin it around while cranking till it starts.

BTW things I've seen/experienced in shops: Leaving the washer/gasket off an oil drain plug so the oil leaks out because the customer "pissed you off". Use a GIANT pair of channel locks to demonstrate how "soft and brittle" and exhaust was and that it needs to be replaced. I used a 5 year old that was in the lobby with his mom to debunk the mechanic with that one. "see it's so soft that a kid can cause it to break", "then why can I hang my 160lbs off of it and it not break?" btw kid and mom left without that shop doing any work on their vehicle as well. Intentionally loosening an ignition wire or vacuum line so a vehicle "runs rough and still needs work". It was one of the reasons I left the garage I was working for when I was 19, between the shady business practices and the drugs/drug dealers around the shop, I didn't think it was a place to be.

Sorry you got nailed as bad as you did. Get them for what you can. If they give you the 4k refund, and you love the car that much. I would take a grand of it, buy a winter beater, a tool set and rent a storage unit with a power supply if you don't have a garage. Tear it down yourself, you can do ~60% of a rebuild with the engine in the car if you take your time and are careful with it. Take pictures, ask questions, the internet has made doing something like a headgasket job EASY for a person with a bit of time and intelligence. A full tilt engine rebuild isn't much more once you've gotten it to that point. Once you've got the head off, pull the short block and let the machine shop disassemble/hot tank/machine/reassemble the short block. If they had it that far out of time, I would be concerned with camshaft damage or possible head damage. Whatever you decide, keep us informed and good luck!

"the 190e/W201 really was the first Benz built to a price point"

The 190e was the first car by Mercedes to use the multi-link rear suspension that they have been using ever since!

Spinout007 wrote: Between stories like this, and the practices I've seen shops use, I won't be taking any vehicle I own to one ever.

If you have the time, knowledge, tools, equipment, and location to do all repairs on your car yourself, then ideally that is the way to go. But when you've already got a full time job, a part time job, no garage at home, and only basic hand tools (not the specialty tools needed to do a head gasket, let alone a complete engine rebuild), that can be a lot trickier. I have actually done a lot of work on my car and I'll do oil changes and tune-ups and brake jobs and basic routine maintenance that most other normal people will run down to a repair shop to have done. However, when it comes to "big jobs" like this, I have to rely on repair shops and entrust them to work on my car and do as good a job as I would do myself. I just get pissed when a shop cuts corners and takes advantage of people like this. Luckily for me (but bad for the shop), I'm not your ordinary average every day fool (like Clark W. Grizwold) and I know enough what to look for and can compare data to a spec sheet on the car as well as any supposed "mechanic" out there. I may have needed some help checking the compression and performing a leak-down test on the engine, but I know what the data that we got out of these tests means. Now I'm going to use that to go back to the shop to prove them totally wrong. Most other people would probably have just kept taking the car back and being charged for more repairs by this guy until he finally just yanked the whole engine, which is what he SHOULD have done in the first place! (And then they would have written a glowing review about how this guy took "such good care" of their car and kept plugging away at it until the problem was resolved... <>)

Spinout007 wrote: BTW things I've seen/experienced in shops: Leaving the washer/gasket off an oil drain plug so the oil leaks out because the customer "pissed you off". Use a GIANT pair of channel locks to demonstrate how "soft and brittle" and exhaust was and that it needs to be replaced. I used a 5 year old that was in the lobby with his mom to debunk the mechanic with that one. "see it's so soft that a kid can cause it to break", "then why can I hang my 160lbs off of it and it not break?" btw kid and mom left without that shop doing any work on their vehicle as well. Intentionally loosening an ignition wire or vacuum line so a vehicle "runs rough and still needs work". It was one of the reasons I left the garage I was working for when I was 19, between the shady business practices and the drugs/drug dealers around the shop, I didn't think it was a place to be.

Wow, what shops have YOU been hanging around at? That sounds horrible. I grew up hanging around at repair shops when I was in High School, but granted I lived out in the country and a lot (not all, mind you, but a lot) of them were very decent, upstanding people and had no problem with a young, interested kid hanging around asking questions and trying to learn as much as he could about cars. It was people like this (along with my next door neighbor who was a backyard mechanic himself - and a retired mechanical engineer) that got me interested in cars and engines at a young age.

I am a bit confused myself about your whole exhaust story there though. (I got the rest of it, but that just confounded me - maybe you just didn't explain it well enough?) I mean, I can see how using a giant wrench (as a lever to apply way more torque to the exhaust than it will ever experience) would crush an exhaust pipe, but what does that have to do with a kid and 160 pounds? lol... But I get the point of it, the "mechanic" used unethical practices to try to prove something needed replacing that didn't. I'm sure he could have taken a brand new piece of exhaust pipe and used the same giant wrench and bent and crushed the new pipe the same way, so that proves nothing. (Only that the exhuast pipe is hollow and made out of thin gauge steel, lol!)

If he won't agree to a full refund, sue the bastids, bro. (And yes, I mean 'Bro", as he is, in fact, my brother.) You have the proof, get the other mechanic's testimony in writing and request he be willing to testify for you. Courts look very favorably upon a nicely dressed, clean, well-spoken young man who shows up with stacks of organized paperwork and expert testimony to prove his point. The sloped-forehead hammer monkey who messed up your car will likely shuffle into court with nothing but a bad attitude and a bunch of excuses. Nail him.

And screw all that garbage about him "needing to provide for his family". HE screwed HIMSELF when he screwed you. This is HIS fault. You're not only making yourself whole by going after him, you're protecting the untold others who might come after you who he'll likely screw out of their hard-earned money. Money they could use to feed their families.

Definitely use all the leverage you can against him to avoid going to court. If he won't refund your money, you have all sorts of ways to go after him- you have family in the legal profession, friends in the news media, the BBB, social media, etc.

Good luck, and keep us all posted.

By the way, I hope you've been cured of your Mercedes infatuation. I know I'll never touch the 3-starred make ever again. I've run through enough electrical, vacuum, and other maddening crap with the 240Ds, 300Ds, and R107 chassis cars to make me swear off Germans forever. I love my 1960's Volvos. Fix them with a hammer.

MailmAn wrote:

Spinout007 wrote: Between stories like this, and the practices I've seen shops use, I won't be taking any vehicle I own to one ever.

If you have the time, knowledge, tools, equipment, and location to do all repairs on your car yourself, then ideally that is the way to go. But when you've already got a full time job, a part time job, no garage at home, and only basic hand tools (not the specialty tools needed to do a head gasket, let alone a complete engine rebuild), that can be a lot trickier. I have actually done a lot of work on my car and I'll do oil changes and tune-ups and brake jobs and basic routine maintenance that most other normal people will run down to a repair shop to have done. However, when it comes to "big jobs" like this, I have to rely on repair shops and entrust them to work on my car and do as good a job as I would do myself. I just get pissed when a shop cuts corners and takes advantage of people like this. Luckily for me (but bad for the shop), I'm not your ordinary average every day fool (like Clark W. Grizwold) and I know enough what to look for and can compare data to a spec sheet on the car as well as any supposed "mechanic" out there. I may have needed some help checking the compression and performing a leak-down test on the engine, but I know what the data that we got out of these tests means. Now I'm going to use that to go back to the shop to prove them totally wrong. Most other people would probably have just kept taking the car back and being charged for more repairs by this guy until he finally just yanked the whole engine, which is what he SHOULD have done in the first place! (And then they would have written a glowing review about how this guy took "such good care" of their car and kept plugging away at it until the problem was resolved... <>)

True

MailmAn wrote:

Spinout007 wrote: BTW things I've seen/experienced in shops: Leaving the washer/gasket off an oil drain plug so the oil leaks out because the customer "pissed you off". Use a GIANT pair of channel locks to demonstrate how "soft and brittle" and exhaust was and that it needs to be replaced. I used a 5 year old that was in the lobby with his mom to debunk the mechanic with that one. "see it's so soft that a kid can cause it to break", "then why can I hang my 160lbs off of it and it not break?" btw kid and mom left without that shop doing any work on their vehicle as well. Intentionally loosening an ignition wire or vacuum line so a vehicle "runs rough and still needs work". It was one of the reasons I left the garage I was working for when I was 19, between the shady business practices and the drugs/drug dealers around the shop, I didn't think it was a place to be.

I am a bit confused myself about your whole exhaust story there though. (I got the rest of it, but that just confounded me - maybe you just didn't explain it well enough?) I mean, I can see how using a giant wrench (as a lever to apply way more torque to the exhaust than it will ever experience) would crush an exhaust pipe, but what does that have to do with a kid and 160 pounds? lol... But I get the point of it, the "mechanic" used unethical practices to try to prove something needed replacing that didn't. I'm sure he could have taken a brand new piece of exhaust pipe and used the same giant wrench and bent and crushed the new pipe the same way, so that proves nothing. (Only that the exhuast pipe is hollow and made out of thin gauge steel, lol!)

Story goes like this, ex-girlfriends grandmother was giving my ex her car. It needed an oil change and a muffler as the old one had blown out. They took it to a chain garage in a larger city. I get a pretty frantic phone call from the ex telling me that something isn't right, this guy is telling her grandmother that she needs a whole exhaust system, plus a laundry list of other things. Basically grandma was thinking her car may not be so safe for her grandbaby. I told her gimme 20 min and I'll be there. DO NOT LET them work on it till I get there.

I get there and this "mechanic" starts in on me. He grabs the BIGGEST pair of channel locks I've seen and grabs the exhaust with em and starts squeezing the tips of the handle. "see it's rotten, it needs to be replaced". I disagreed with him, and told him anyone can crush a pipe with that "wrench". to prove the point I had my 4'9" ex give it a little squeeze which freaked her out a bit, wigged grandma out when I got the little boy from the lobby and had him do the same. A little background on me at this time, I was 17, spent 5 evenings a week in the gym, 3 nights a week in martial arts classes, and had weight lifting in school, and played baseball and football. My weight fluctuated between 150 and 165, and my goal was to bench twice my weight. Got damn close too.

Anyway. After I held the kid up and got him to give the pipe a squeeze, granted the kid had to use both hands but he was able to flex it. The "mechanic" made the comment "SEE?!?! it's so rotten a kid can crush it. So I reached up and tried to crush it by hand. I couldn't dent it. So I reached up and hung my body weight off it, it didn't budge. I told him to take the car off the lift, he wasn't going to touch it, took grandma's car to the parts store, then to the base "hobby shop" and took care of it for her. The lady with the kid left right behind us.

Make a bit more sense now?

By the way, bro, did you ever get the engine in your truck (brother's second vehicle is a 1997 Chevy pickup with a 4.3) fixed, so you at least have reliable transportation?

If he charged for plugs that clearly weren't there, that's an easy lie to catch him in.

That said - the other stuff, not so much. Sure, you have E36 M3ty compression numbers now, but that doesn't say anything about what they were before the work. For instance, if the car has been running lean and you've been driving it, you very well may have cooked the pistons. That would take a motor from good compression to bad in a hurry.

Sorry you're dealing with this. Good luck getting money back. I agree with the above - if you're not doing the work yourself on a 30 year old german car, you're asking for trouble. Get something boring and japanese and drive it until the zombies come.

I unfortunately got stuck in the middle of a 190 (roughly same vintage) 'fixer upper' with a young lady who inherited it from her grandmother. The car had a heap of miles on it, everything was worn out and as was typical for the era every piece of plastic on that car had the consistency and tensile strength of a Ruffles potato chip.

My tech and I put together a list of the repairs needed to address her concerns, then pointed out there was MORE stuff that needed fixing which was going to add to the cost which would far exceed the worth of the car and due to its age/mileage we could not tell her when/how/what interesting breakage the car would experience next. Our counsel: get rid of it.

Since she had inherited it from her grandmother, there was this big emotional connection which typically raises HUGE red flags. Danger ahead. She would not hear of getting rid of the car, signed off on the original estimate which was't far from the total you mentioned, and by signed off I had her signature and last 4 of her SSN authorizing repairs on a copy of the estimate. I'd been down this road before.

Long story short, we finally refunded something like 2/3 of her initial 'investment' and asked her to take the car elsewhere. It just wasn't worth fixing, as we had told her at the outset. Don't fall in that trap; get back what you can and cut your losses.

You don't need a lawyer for small claims court, lawyers are where all the money goes for legal stuff. Filing suit in small claims court just costs you some time and the filing fee.

I would definitely file suit if you have adequate proof of his misrepresentation of the repairs, but I would not use a lawyer as that will just end up costing you.

I've been having a go at the shop that half-assed my a-arm bushing install for $400, I couldn't imagine how pissed I'd be over ten times that amount.

Get those berkeleyers!!!