One of my friends fixed the car. I gave him $250 for his labors. That included:
Four hours of labor
A hour driving to pick up a part for me
$20 of gas because I had less than a 1/4 tank
Verizon FIOS connection so I could work while the car was fixed
I ordered about $230 in parts, but one of them was the wrong piece and I’ll have to return it. So I spent about $450 on the entire project and the car doesn’t need an alignment after all the work. The steering wheel does not pull at all.
There is a problem though with one tire because the alignment was off so badly there is some serious wear on one edge. However, the tires are about 2 years old and will probably last about another year because there is enough tread left on the rest of the tire that it should be ok.
In the end the dealer trying to tell me that my front and rear strut assemblies needed changing was too much. Only the front right shock needed changing. The rear strut assembly doesn’t include a lower control arm, but that was the main source of my alignment problem. I’m kind of ticked off about this because my friend pointed out how badly it was bent on the rear passenger side. It tells me the dealer shop never actually looked for what was broken. My friend stuck the jack under the bend on the control arm, jacked up the car and bent it back into shape with gravity. (It’s free!)
I was ok with that as a temporary fix, but again, ordering the part from the dealer ended up being a pain in the neck. This time, we called and got one ordered and set aside for me. However, the dealer parts rep neglected to ask me if my car has ABS brakes (Which it does not). Apparently this changes the part I needed. Lucky I sent my friend to get the part because I would have left the dealer without the right one.
In the end my friend gave me the most valuable help of all, but I’m scared that he’s leaving me for grad school and I don’t know where I’m going to find a mechanic quite like him the next time this happens.
PS-I now have experience with about 6 different Nissan dealers in the DC area and I’m not impressed.
1. Koons Nissan Arlington – Closed, but they were ok. They did fail to balance and align my tires after rotating them. Why is that not included when you rotate tires? That’s crazy.
2. Rosenthal Nissan Tysons – Ok but no longer near my office since I moved jobs. They also changed my spark plugs after 17K miles without asking me or telling me why. I would have told them no if they said they were changing them. To be fair they removed the parts charge after I complained.
3. Passport Nissan – Can’t get a call back from their service department rep. But their parts department guys are awesome! (Jeremiah and Lenny) Not sure if I will attempt to use them again as they are inconvenient to my office and my home.
4. Sheehy Nissan Springfield- Did not actually look at the car to fix it. Very distressed about this because my car was actually very unsafe to drive with a bent control arm and they did not advise at how bad the problem was. Although they were very nice and I will probably use them again to check out the car because the run a shuttle to my office park.
5. Chevy Chase Nissan – Parts department failed to ask me if I had ABS when we ordered the new part.
6. Criswell Nissan – Was very cool about my friend picking up the part for me and ensuring I had the non-ABS part I needed. But they are too far away for me to use them regularly.
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I no longer bother with dealerships for repairs. If necessary I go there for parts; I take all of my repairs to independent mechanics.
Like you, I’ve found that dealerships don’t ask the right questions, and are too quick to diagnose expensive shotgun approaches to problems with old cars.
I’ve actually had a dealer charge me $1000+ for a repair that didn’t address the problem I was having; when I reported this to them they suggested another $1000+ repair. My independent mechanic solved the problem for $80, because he actually listened to my explanation of the problem I was having. (Of course the dealer claimed that the work they suggested was necessary also and refused to give any refund or consideration).
lower control arm is exactly the thing you get from a junkyard, not the dealer.
@ “They did fail to balance and align my tires after rotating them. Why is that not included when you rotate tires? That’s crazy.”
because rotating the tires is a 5 minute job that just requires a wrench while balancing requires a $5000 balancing machine and aligning requires a $10,000 alignment machine, plus you didn’t tell them to do those things.