hey. i had my car "fixed" about a month ago. i brought it to a mechanic to get a head cyclinder put on. he charged me $1500 in parts and labor and didnt fix it. he said the it didnt run and would be another $600 to fix... do i have any grounds to sue in small claims court.? any info would help so i can fix the car and get my money back.
Thanks in advance

did he diagnose the problem or did you just tell them what work needed to be done?

i told him to fix the head.... i gave him the rebuilt one....he charged me 1500... wouldnt run.. he said another 600 and i told him to screw.

Is the bad head the one you'd like to sell in our classifieds?

If he told you, in writing, that your car didn't run because the head was junk and that $1500 would get your car running again, then yes, you might have some grounds for legal action. At the same time, $1500 isn't that far from the average rate for a shop to swap a head on one of these cars. If it was a piece of cake, you'd probably have done it yourself. If you were quoted $1500 to replace the head - parts and labor - and the car still doesn't run, it's not the shop's fault. There's no Hippocratic Oath for mechanics, after all.

Life's not easy. If you don't like responsibility and tend to cry a lot, a DSM is probably not the best car for you. Good luck.

They Charged you 1500 and you supplied the cyl head what else did they do 1500 is high for a gasket set and R&R the head

sounds like you mis-diagnosed the problem.

why are you replacing the head in the first place? what is he charging you 600$ for?

No offese, but it is the biggest pain when costumers would diagnose there own cars and be mad when it didnt fix the problem.

If the shop didnt diagnose it and tell you thats whats wrong, then you cant sue them. You told them to R&R the head. They didnt say "If we R&R the head it will run".
-Chad

No offese, but it is the biggest pain when costumers would diagnose there own cars and be mad when it didnt fix the problem

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I agree same where I work


But the paper work from the shop will have to literally say "We will get it running for XX amount of dollars

I will check my business law notes later tonight. I will be a business law minor for a few more moonths until I change minors.
Anyway, regardless of why you needed head work there might have been a breach of contract. That will fall under contract law. Give me time.

HERES THE STORY WRITTEN MORE CLEAR!!


ok i had one guy put on a head after blowing the stock one. He installed the cam caps wrong and because of that the head was no good.( backyard mechanic...my falut for being dumb and cheap)

I brought it to another person / shop ((THE mechanic who charged me 1500$$ )) and i told him need a head job done. i got one and he put it on, which was the second one which i bought off of this site, it was rebuilt but shaved too much.

HE then told me i needed ANOTHER head. that was when i rebuilt my stock one with all the parts from the second one.

after the rebuild he installed it. he then told me that its was 1500$ for parts and labor for what he did so. it would be another $600 to "fix it the right way". which he told me he thought were the dowel pins

heres what he wrote on the recite
"labor to replace cyclinder head and gasket with cometic gasket including timing belt and seals. DOWEL PINS TOO LONG/ HEAD GASKET TOO THIN head not seating properly"

labor $550.00
parts $485.23

parts were:
new arp studs
full upper gasket set
head gasket
plugs and wires
Cam sensor
all new belts
fuel injector spacers

all these parts i already had on the car BRAND NEW!! from the 1st head job. when i saw the bill i told him i already had new parts and never told him to get them but he said
"to late..there already on the car"

ohh and by the way i never got back my timing belt cover and valve cover bolts

sorry i didnt write the whole story clearly last time....

and DR1665 i wanted to sell some new performance parts for a buddy and i did have the head for sale for parts but cheap..

and this isnt the first expensive thing i've fixed..i know how dsm are it's just for $1500 fo a head job and it still wont run i fell i got screwed , plus i paid him 480 to install the 1st head to find that was junk.
and i was only quoted like $500

TurboTalonAwd95 said:

HERES THE STORY WRITTEN MORE CLEAR!!


( backyard mechanic...my falut for being dumb and cheap)

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I made the same mistake last year. Long story short, I brought the car for it's 60k mile service (new t-belt water pump, etc.) Got the car back with a lumpy idle and leaking oil. Now 9 months after getting it back and letting it sit for most of that time, I have decided to fix the car myself. Found problems: Problem 1, timing off a tooth, problem 2, intake cam seal FUBAR'd. That should explain both idle and leak. Hopefully in a few days she'll start back up and I'll know for sure. Lesson is, do the work yourself It will get done right and if it doesn't you have no one to blame but yourself.

Sounds to me like you two have some communication problems .
The gaskets cant be re-used, so I understand those.
Make sure he didnt combine both bills into one invoice.
Also, you had to pay to have the first R&R go around, Then the second one. Its not his fault you brought him a bad head. So $550 x 2 plus 480 sounds right.
-Chad

Every legally enforceable contract has two components- a legally sufficient offer and a legally sufficient acceptance of that offer.

Your storyline seems unspecific and unclear, so it is hard to judge. I would think that you entered into a bilateral contract with the mechanic because you went in there and "told him need a head job done" and "he put it on." So the mechanic (the offeree) responded to your (offeror) offer to put your head on.
It gets unclear about who's at fault because a.) the mechanic did install the head; b.) you may have supplied the mechanic with faulty parts.

So from what you say, I really don't think you have grounds to sue in a small claims court. You can try, but I doubt it will get you anywhere.

Unless you can prove some sort of negligence on his part, such as him installing the head wrong, you are not going to win a claim against him. What exactly is he going to do for the other $600 that he says will make it run again?

The only problem I'm seeing here and I may have miss read something above, is that the mechanic didnt take the initiative to properly seat the head. If the dowel pins were too long than why did he go ahead and put everything together anyway. He should have noticed the problem and replaced / shortened the dowel pins if that were the case. In either case, you told him to replace the head, Everything looks in order there except the cam sensor and the wires, unless you told him to replace everything. Which I would have gone ahead and replaced the cam sensor as well. Wires are cheap, and simple to replace, I dont see them as a mandatory head replacement item. Most of the bill is labor, if you could prove it is the dowel pins than it is possible, but you would have to go somewhere else, spend more money, and waste more time.

Your entitled to your original parts back, go and get them. It your car went into the shop with a timing belt cover and left without one on the car you could mention something about that.