Car Talk

January 2006

Dear Tom and Ray:

I have a 1984 VW Vanagon (yes, it does break down a lot!). Anyway, I recently had a rebuilt engine put in it. However, the mechanic loused it up, but tried to convince me that that was as good as those engines could get. Not believing this, I eventually had to have another mechanic fix the problems. The problem is that it was wired wrong and only running on three cylinders, not four. Since that time, it's been running great (for a week!). This morning, when starting the van, my husband looked in the rearview mirror and noticed large flames coming out of the tailpipe. He turned the engine off and had to use snow to put the fire out, which he was able to do. The problem: I don't want to take the van back to the original mechanic, even though the warranty is through him. What should I do? -- Tracy

RAY: You made a crucial mistake, Tracy. You should never have let your husband put out the fire. That was the perfect solution!

TOM: You're in a bit of a pickle now. The first guy obviously did something wrong. Or he put in a badly rebuilt engine. But it's hard to know now.

RAY: What you do next depends on how ethical you are.

TOM: If it were me, I'd just go back to mechanic No. 1 and tell him the car caught fire. Don't even mention mechanic No. 2, because mechanic No. 1 will just try to blame him, and then you'll be out of luck.

RAY: Like I said, Tracy, what you do depends on how ethical you are. If you're more ethical than my brother or George Costanza, then you have to be honest, even though it makes things a little messier. Here's what I'd suggest. Go back to mechanic No. 2 and ask him to undo whatever he did and explain what he did. Then bake some brownies, go back to mechanic No. 1 with the brownies, and confess.

TOM: I'd fudge the story a little bit (I'd fudge the brownies, too). Tell him it was running terribly the other day, and you thought it was going to leave you stranded, so you stopped at the nearest garage, which happened to be mechanic No. 2. Explain to him what mechanic No. 2 did.

RAY: Tell him that the Vanagon ran much better for a week, but then caught fire. And in a moment of confusion, you told your husband to put it out.

TOM: Tell him that you had mechanic No. 2 undo his work, but now the Vanagon is running terribly again, and you need him to fix it -- minus the flamethrower option.

RAY: He may very well try to wash his hands of it. But if he's a decent guy, he'll go back and try to figure out what's wrong. He really owes it to you to make the thing run right. If there's a dispute about how well it should run, borrow another Vanagon and bring it to his shop so he can see the difference between that one and yours.

TOM: And if all else fails, Tracy ... well ... start parking near big piles of leaves. Beat up old car

Back to the January 2006 index

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