Hey anyone have a bad experience with a classic car or sportscar repair or restoration shop they want to vent about? I have many including a bad one where the shop I went to that specialized in older sportscars did not know how to replaces the brushes in a Bosch 12V generator.
I have a couple, mostly from years ago. One time a shop left all the lug nuts loose on my Alfa, only to have the wheel fall off a couple of hundred yards from their shop. They claimed never to have had the wheels off. The job they did: brakes. Same car, different shop; the left the fuel injection lines loose after doing a valve job and all of it came off shortly after picking it up. And with a rather large explosive bang I might add. I had to sue the guy in small claims court. i won but never collected. He went out of business shortly afterwards only to reopen with a different name.
In college I dropped my '72 MG off to have the oil changed at a local shop, and when I returned later that day to pick it up, they hadn't done anything to it. They claimed they didn't know how to open the hood. Needless to say they never worked on it then or ever.
I had my '61 Fiat 600 in for spongy brakes to two different shops. Neither fixed the problem and one kept it for 6 months. I finally fixed it myself by replacing the rear wheel cylinders.
No burning desire to vent, but I can say that Motorhead LTD of Virginia will never work on anything of mine, and at every opportunity, I will do my best to prevent anyone from making the mistake of doing business with them.
On the other side, I worked in a resto shop in school. There were always a few owner-abandoned projects sitting around - usually because funds were short or the job turned out more intensive than expected once the paint came off and the owners just disappeared - usually in arrears with the amount of work done up to that point. Finally the shop owner started doing restorations only with a contract and agreed on target dates and progress payments.
Most recently, the insty lube place couldn't find the filter for my bmw e28. After pointing it out, they fessed up they didn't have a filter. After pulling a filter out of the trunk, they fessed up to not having the proper sized wrench. I left, and did my own oil change. I'm pretty much done with auto repair places.
I had a national name brand tire store replace tires on my 914/6. On a drive to my race shop in Sacramento I lost the right front wheel while on I680 in Rush hour. I was able to literally lean out the window to keep it on three wheels and a CHP motorcycle cop retrieved my wheel. Used the one lug off of each wheel trick to get to a place to get 4 extra lugs. They had not torqued them and they worked their way off. A friend at a Porsche parts company had exactly the same thing happen with his 914.
Fun with cars, huh. :)
On a plus side, over the last decade, I have had more good experiences than poor ones.
I have it easy these days. One of my best friends owns a repair/restoration facility. In his shop right now are a pair of Nissan GTP cars, among others. Last week when G35 needed brakes, there was an Exige and a C5 Mallet Corvette, along with their One Lap STI. I tried to do a trade but no one seemed interested... 
I once had a car in a restoration shop. Things were going along nicely until the EPA showed up one day and shut them down for various infractions. My car sat there for most of a year while I was waiting for them to get things straightened out. In the meantime, the owner had a heart attack so he couldn't work, and then he finally called to let me know the bank had foreclosed on his mortgage and was coming over the next day to take possession of the property...I had to hustle up a rollback truck, find all the parts that were scattered around the shop, and get the car out of there before the locks were changed.
The car was about 80% done when this all happened, the work done up to that point had been very good, and the owner was a nice guy. However, the sky just fell in all at once. Another shop was able to take the car in and finish the work and I was happy with the end result, but the whole process probably contributed to my gray hair.
I look forward to having a bad experience at a restoration shop someday, because that means I'm working on something worth taking there. 
So far my experiences with mechanics that aren't me are pretty limited, although the shop that recently did an alignment on my wife's Subaru mangled the exhaust taking it down from the lift. I was less than pleased, but they made it right.
This is why I do ALL my own work on my vintage cars. Besides, that is at least half the joy in owning them!
foxtrapper wrote: No burning desire to vent, but I can say that Motorhead LTD of Virginia will never work on anything of mine, and at every opportunity, I will do my best to prevent anyone from making the mistake of doing business with them.
The old motorhead catalogs are super cool
More of a general comment. Over the years I have become known as a classic Fiat expert and often get asked where to take one for good service. I don't have an answer. None of the local sports car, European specialists or private restoration shops have expressed any interest. A few shops were tried and the results were poor at best. Some mechanics practically ran away. There is now one willing to learn the cars and he might get some business. Maybe with a new Fiat dealership, they will rise to the task.
Cheers Ron
I wouldn't count on that, Ron. For comparison, new MINI dealers won't touch a classic Mini, for the most part.
I've done just about all of the work on our cars, so our experience with shops has been limited. We found a really good one-man body guy in York, PA we go to if we need body or paint work.
I don't have much in the way of bad experiences to talk about, but I can tell you that if you're ever touring with a Brit Car through Alberta and you need some work done, bring your troubles to Miles Import in Edmonton. Ken Miles runs a good shop, his mechanics are thorough and knowledgable, and he handled the mechanical restoration on my '53 MG TD. He's also a Mini specialist, and his own Mini is a Weber-equipped 1430 monster.
A good shop.
You'll need to log in to post.
