Even some of the most skilled shade tree mechanics among us don’t always do our own automotive work. Whether that’s down to time, resources, skill, or simply a lack of desire to be under or inside of a car working on it doesn’t matter. We want to know what’s the worst thing to happen to you or your car when you take it to the repair shop.
As the guy who used to run an auto repair joint, I can tell you that I’ve seen a lot go wrong for customers in the past that was out of my hands. Parts could take weeks to arrive after initially being promised to us in just a day or two, one smallish-looking problem could balloon into a 10-hour or more repair job, and sometimes damage was so bad that cars couldn’t be saved.
Of course, I’ve had bad experiences as a customer too. After quitting the gig I had I needed a new clutch installed in my hopped-up WRX. Instead of taking it back to where I worked, I went with a transmission shop that was much closer to home and where I knew some of the team.
Read: Mechanic Crashes Toyota Supra Mk4 Into A Train While Test Driving
Literally a day after picking up the car it seemed to be slipping again. Neither I nor the shop had any idea what was wrong or how it could be slipping already but tear it all back down they did. As I had supplied the parts, I was on the hook for the complete tear-down and reassembly when they found nothing wrong upon inspection.
I took the car home and began furiously researching this obscure condition where sometimes it felt like my clutch was gone while at other times it felt fine. Turns out that on early 2000s Subaru’s like mine, the rear axles will sometimes just pop out of the wheel hub just enough to feel exactly like a slipping clutch.
Three hours and about $60 later I had a properly functioning WRX again with an unnecessary new clutch kit. That’s about as bad as it got for me on the customer side. What about you though? What’s your auto repair shop horror story?
