Michael's Eastside Service in Rochester: horrible

NYSpeed Automotive
1

backstory.

i picked up tpgsr’s 2001 540i last month. it had the motor swapped by a shop in Rochester (Michael’s Eastside Service) due to bad headgaskets on the original motor. i had some reservations about buying it because of all that work done, and not really knowing some of the history of it, but the car drove perfectly, so i decided to go with it.

last week, when i replaced the radiator, i also replaced both accessory belts. the tensioner was a little weird to operate but i figured them out. the “left” belt operates just the AC compressor, and the “right” belt operates power steering, alternator, water pump, and 2 idler/tensioner pulleys. got them both on no problem, everything ran great.

today i’m driving around downtown Buffalo with the girlfran, and as i look down at the dash, i see the battery light come on. ok, no big deal, it’s an older car and maybe the alternator has gone bad. 30 seconds later, the steering gets SUPER hard to turn, power steering is gone. i’m like WTF, how can 2 items break within seconds of each other? i start to slow down to pull over and check under the hood, and RIGHT as i do, the temp gauge starts to rise towards the red very quickly.

shut off the car, check under the hood, and it’s obvious that the ‘right’ belt has come off the pulleys. ok, no big deal, it’s not damaged. i had my buddy bring me my tools, and i dove right in and started taking apart stuff to get to the tensioner. included taking off the intake, the fan (big ass 32mm fan clutch nut), etc. get it all apart, figure out the routing (i forgot how it went), tension it up, reinstall intake and big fan, start the car, and IMMEDIATELY the belt comes off again. what the fuck, maybe i didn’t tension it enough. let’s do it again. take apart all that shit again, put the belt on, tension it HARD this time (pain in the ass, 2 wrenches at the same time), put fan and intake back on. i stand by the engine while Melissa starts it, and BOOM, again belt comes off.

at this point i’m livid because i have done this twice now and something is obviously wrong, more serious than i think.

i inspect each pulley and they all seem fine. however, when i loop the belt around them right and pull hard on it, it’s still somewhat not tight (has a BIT of slack in it). as i’m tugging on it, i see one of the pulleys MOVING (not rotating, but actually wiggling in and out, and rotating around the wrong axis. it’s the power steering pump pulley, so i figure a bearing has gone bad and now we have shaft play, or something like that. i get under the car and inspect closer, and i look at the mounting points for the pump where it bolts to the engine block…

AND THE FUCKING BOLTS ARE GONE.

there are only 2 or so (couldn’t see well) holding it to the motor, and at least 2 are clearly gone. the whole pump is rotating and moving, no wonder the belt won’t stay on.

my friend calls AAA and we get it towed home. tomorrow i have to find out how many bolts are missing and their thread/pitch, so i can get it back on there.

ALSO, when i did the CDV delete on the car, i also noticed that out of the 10 or whatever bolts holding the motor to the tranny, 1 had completely backed out and had fallen into a smaller crevice that held a wiring harness, 3-4 were only finger tight. i had to go around the retorque all of them.

technically, i can’t PROVE that it was them that did it wrong, but i don’t see why anyone else would have tampered/replaced it. the tranny bolts are also pretty much a dead giveaway.

i needed to vent about this, figured i’d let everyone know.

http://seekandfind.com/directory/michaels-eastside-service-aut_25316.html

2

did u talk to the shop at all?

3

Yikes.

4

Wtf that’s really fucked up! Hope you get it all sorted out

5

I warned him about the shop when he bought the car. They were horrible to deal with, I did not however think that the quality of their work was this poor. Their place is always loaded with high end car so I figured they must be doing good work. I wish that there was some recourse I could take against them, but the dealer paid for the service so neither Vbird nor myself can really do anything I think.

6

I haven’t even heard of them before. For something that big of a deal, I would have gone to a shop that actually specializes in BMW. Sucks that you had to find it out the hard way. Hopefully you can take it somewhere good and get it fixed for relatively cheap!

7

this

calling them back, they’re just probably going to deny anything or say that they can’t remember it. even if they admitted it, there’s no point in getting it towed all the way to Rochester to have it fixed when i can do it myself much more quickly…

just more of a pain in the ass/annoyance, but it could have been something more serious

8

Yeah, there are several shops in Rochester that specialize in European cars, why was it taken there?

9

^^That’s where tpgsr originally bought the car. So once his problems began he had to have the work done there in order for the work to be done under warranty.

http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?214600-Since-I-bought-a-garage-I-had-to-put-something-in-it.

http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?215252-BMW-Guys-Need-Help-Misfire

http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?218882-WWYD-V.-Blown-Motor-NOW-WITH-INTERNAL-VIDEO

edit- Actually Michael’s Eastside Service was the place the dealer decided to have the work done on the car originally, not the dealer themselves.

10

Sounds like a shity experience. I’ve never heard of this place though.

11

Damn man. Who forgets to bolt the entire pump back in?

12

it’s not so much forgetting to bolt it in, it’s forgetting to tighten everything down when swapping parts over.

it’s a great car, not even that hard to work on, it was just worked on badly

13

well they had to have the bolts atleast in or torqued, otherwise the car wouldnt have made it this long

take a bolt off another accessory and go to a hardware store, should be the same? or atleast try it on the PS pump

14

i know how to fix it, i’m just pissed it happened.

forgot to add…the bolt for the passenger side cam position sensor and an oil plug bolt were also missing completely on that side, spraying oil everywhere.

#8 and #14 in the diagram

http://realoem.com/bmw/diagrams/f/d/22.png