I ordered some Engine mounts from New York.   I took it to a local mechanic, nothing too fancy seemed like a bunch of good guys.  The owner of the mechanic shop looked up the book value for getting a rough idea of how many hours it would take to perform the engine mount swap.  He tells me says here 3.5 hours.   They charge 90 bucks an hour, i thought, alright that sounds decent.

Anyways the engine mounts come in 3 days later.  I take it to their shop at 9am.   The owner of the store wasnt there, i dealt with some other guy.  He asked me if i had an official quote or estimate.  I just said Dave ( store owner) looked it up in the books and said it was a 3.5 hour job.  This guy then says ok no worries, we should have it back to you just after noon.   I decide to walk across to a restaurant and have some breakfast.  About 45 mins later i get a phone call.  I get told that they need an extra 2 hours.  I agree to pay for 1.5 hours over the phone.   So a total of 5 hours labour.   After sitting in the restaurant and doing a bit of shopping at a few other stores i decide to head back to the shop.  This is now around 12:30.  I just walked into the shop through one of the bay doors and walk up to my car.  Theres a mechanic working on it.  I ask him so how many mounts you got left to put in... he then says we havent even gotted 1 out yet.  Just taking the turbo on the back out right now to get access to it.   He didn't make it sound like a big deal at all.

I call my wife to pick me up.   At 4 o clock, they have now had my car for 7 hours, i phone up to ask the status and get told they need to keep it over night.  I then freak out and say, im not paying any more than 5 hours labour on the car.  The book calls for it to be a 3.5 hour process.  That was your estimate, you asked me for 2 hours extension i said 1.5 hours. And what not.

Anyways today i call up at 9 in the morning, Dave is back.  I ask him what the status of my car is. He says not good.  He says its an absolute nightmare.  I ask whats the issue, and hes like its just awkward.  Anyways he proceeds to tell me that its going to take over 10 hours for 1 engine mount.  Possibly a 14-16 hour job in total.  I then say, im not paying for that, 5 hours is what i agreed too. He then says well what would you have me do.  And i respond do the work and suffer the loss.  Pointed out that im a bricklayer and know what its like to underquote a job.  He then says, you know what... were gonna walk away from this car.  We will leave it as it is, get a tow truck get it towed take it somewhere else.  Im like what?  Hes like weve done 7 hours work on your car... And im like yeah well we agreed it was going to be a 5 hour process.  And hes like yup, well we wont charge you nothing, get it off our lot.

So i go down there.  Talk to him face to face.   He basically pulls up the manual pictures online and shows me theres no instructions of what to do.  So the book is wrong and its the books fault not his.  I point out thats garbage.

Anyways i finally find a mechanic that is willing to fix my car.  At this point my car is in pieces, washers, nuts, bolts, gaskets, clips, hoses, turbos, you name it all over the place.  The tow truck comes, and the stupid mechanic didn't plug the coolant lines.  When the car is tilted on a 45 degree angle, it poors coolant all over the rear turbo.  It turns out they told me the turbo was taken out, but really there was 1 bolt holding it in.  So now i have a turbo that is exposed covered in coolant.  A car that is in 100 different pieces sitting in my trunk.

GG

Im gonna post up screenshots in a min.  This was suppose to be a simple engine mount swap.

Blixxus

As you can see they completly left the car in a mess, on top of that didnt plug the coolant lines which led to coolant pouring all over the rear turbo as they half disassembled the rear turbo.