Metropol

I have no ideas about cars, but my Corsa broke down last wednesday, took to to an approved Vauxhall Garage (beside my work) and they said the spark plug had exploded and they needed to strip the engine to see what damage if any it caused. They phoned me up today saying the whole engine needs replacing... I wouldn't have thought a spark plug would have caused that much damage... whats more they are going to charge me £2500 for it!!!!!

Take it to a small independent garage and ask them to look at it.

The price you're quoted sounds like it's for a brand new engine. You may well find a small garage could get hold of one out of a car that's been written off, which should be a good bit cheaper. Or they may even be able to fix the engine you've got.

I once wrecked the engine in my first Fiesta... there was no oil in it and the oil warning light had broken. A mate replaced the engine with one from a scrapper for the princely sum of £90.

thats hopefully the plan - 2500 is 1/3 of the pice of the car!!!!!

Most, if not all dealership garages are complete rip-offs; they assume the majority of customers won't question the prices they pull out of their asses.

The Ford garage wanted me to pay £14.10 for them to replace a brake light and £83.73 to replace a broken spring in the gear lever on my Focus when I took it in for a service the other day. From Ford parts, however, the items cost £1.41 and around £8 respectively. Spot the scale up factor :roll:

Ask your friends, particularly any into their cars, if they can recommend an independant local garage. Most are good and genuine. And they charge realistic prices.

when I clobbered the back lights on my old zafira, my garage quoted me £40 for parts and another £60 for labour. So I just bought the light and put it in myself. Taking into account all the labour involved was opening a flap and clicking it into place, I can't see how they got £60 out of it

Most dealership garages charge around £60/70 per hour for labour, with a minimum charge of 1 hour, even if it takes 15 seconds.

Will see tomorow when I move it to a local garage and see what happens.

Have to say, it may be the case that your engine does need replacing.

If a plug has exploded they can cause some pretty serious damage and get incredibly hot. It is not really the spark plug exploding that would cause damage, though... hard to explain, but it is the heat produced as a result of it, rather than the physical force of an explosion (it doesn't blast the thing to bits, basically put, just sort of melts it). Spark plugs channel heat out of engines rather than create it, so without one your engine will get very, very, very hot. That coupled to the heat from the plug explosion could be why they're saying it needs replacing.

And before you ask why/how I know this - cars are my secret passion. Although I don't drive as it is expensive and bad for the environment. What a freak I am.

But, yes, authorised dealers are mostly cunts.

cat wrote:Have to say, it may be the case that your engine does need replacing.

If a plug has exploded they can cause some pretty serious damage and get incredibly hot. It is not really the spark plug exploding that would cause damage, though... hard to explain, but it is the heat produced as a result of it, rather than the physical force of an explosion (it doesn't blast the thing to bits, basically put, just sort of melts it). Spark plugs channel heat out of engines rather than create it, so without one your engine will get very, very, very hot. That coupled to the heat from the plug explosion could be why they're saying it needs replacing.

And before you ask why/how I know this - cars are my secret passion. Although I don't drive as it is expensive and bad for the environment. What a freak I am.

But, yes, authorised dealers are mostly cunts.

Thanks - hopefully the other garage will be able to do it cheaper - have had to arrange a loan to pay for it!!!!!

You could buy a nice bike with the money you're paying to get the car fixed.

Dont - I wanted to get everything paid off before I bought a new bike.