Is my mechanic incompetent?

[ck1938]

Or is he honest and I'm an ignorant jerk?

I had a timing belt break. Ended up with some bent valves so I gave the garage the go ahead to fix it. They sent the head off to be machined, installed some new valves and reset the ones that weren't bent. I got the car back and it's burning oil like crazy, 3 quarts in 300 miles. I take it back in and they say the piston rings are bad and they did everything right. Shouldn't they have looked at the pistons and piston rings when they had the head off? I thought it was common for them to be damaged when bent valves occur and a mechanic would look for that. They charged me $490 for labor for the head job so I'm assuming a similar bill if I have the piston rings replaced.

Also, any ideas what a piston ring job should cost? I'm selling the car (98 Eclipse Spyder) and am going to discount the cost of the work for the buyer. I had 2 buyers at $5500 before I new about the piston rings. Hopefully I'll be able to get $4500 after all is done.

 

[blackGSX2g]

Try performing a wet/dry compression test to see if you are losing compression. 3 quarts over 300 miles is alot of oil to be burned. Do you see any smoke when driving, idling, start-up? If so, how much smoke?

When they took your head off to fix the valves, the pistons *should* be inspected and have any hot spots (from hitting your valves) ground down. Other than visually inspecting the bore for any obvious marks, you can't just check the rings with the head off nor is it part of a head rebuild. The best way of checking the rings is to do a wet/dry compression test, and then a leakdown test.

Post back and we'll guide you further.