Am I Being Ripped Off?? Cooling system pressure test

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ostatenk - 10 May 2007 04:18 GMT

My car overheated about an hour and a half away from home 4 days ago
and each day there is a new problem with it. I'll try to make this
brief. On Sunday it broke down and was towed to a Jack Williams. On
Monday they said I need a new heater core ($822) and I'd be out of
there by 6pm, it took longer than they expected and said it would be
done first thing on Tuesday. Fine by me. They call up on Tuesday and
say there is a new problem, one of the hoses has a hole in it and
needs to be replaced ($108), they have to order it so now I'm gonna
have to wait till Wednesday. They said that if I rent a car then they
will reimburse me so that's a credit to them (I'll believe it when I
see the money). I called up on Wednesday (today) and they said that
they took it for a test drive and it overheated on them. I was told
that the neck on the radiator is brittle and falling apart ($350),
they have to order one and they will have it done on Thursday. I'm
thinking that tomorrow they will discover that the water pump is bad.
My question is, if they pressure tested it, like they said they did,
wouldn't the problem with the hose and radiator be recognized from the
beginning? I don't know anything about pressure testing a cooling
system but it seems like finding a hole in hose would be very easy.
Then it took 3 days to discover that the neck of the radiator is
brittle, is this possible? Does anybody know how it's determined if a
heater core is bad? I'm thinking that since the car is still
overheating then the heater core probably didn't need to be changed. I
obviously don't know much about the subject and if somebody can fill
me in on what the standard procedure is for finding problems with an
overheating car it would be greatly appreciated. I live in New York
and the problem happened in Pennsylvania, the car is a 96 BMW 328is. I
have to talk to these people in the morning and I want to sound more
knowledgeable than I have been. Do you know PA law regarding this?

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Ashton Crusher - 10 May 2007 06:32 GMT

>My car overheated about an hour and a half away from home 4 days ago
>and each day there is a new problem with it. I'll try to make this
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
>have to talk to these people in the morning and I want to sound more
>knowledgeable than I have been. Do you know PA law regarding this?

Since it's a 96 it may be that all that stuff is original parts. So
it's certainly possible you had a leak in the heater core. It's
possible that when they took the hoses off that one of them was old
and on it's last legs. Never heard of a brittle radiator neck before
but it's probably plastic and plastic could get brittle. Did you ask
them to call you with an estimate before they did the repairs? As to
standard for diagnosing an overheating car I'd say some of the first
things would be to pressure test it and see if it holds pressure. They
may have done that and found the heater core leaking and figured that
was the problem. Another test would be to pull the thermostat and see
if it's stuck closed or otherwise defective. On some cars you can
look into the radiator and see if the tubes are all crudded up.
How often, if ever, have you changed the coolant? If you never have,
the 1996 model year coolant most likely was no longer providing any
corrosion protection.

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