Today I work for free

Maybe this will help alleviate some of my anxiety…

So today I get to work on a customers car, 2g gsx. kid brought it to me b/c it was making a weird noise and didnt have power over 4g. He said he rebuilt the whole thing from top to bottom after it blew up once before. It smoked the vavles out of the head b/c the tbelt shed its teeth, then after that it was fixed b/c it spun a bearing.

So i have this fresh 1000mi motor brought to me, making a timing belt buzz/slap kinda noise, no one can figure it out supposedly. So, using the mighty jtech muscles i have, i started looking at it.

Nothing came up visually, so i figured id take it for a ride and see how it acted. The noise sounded pretty much like a growling tbelt cover which a lot of them do. Power though was fine, ran really good, no loss of power or anything.

About 3/4 around my test-drive loop i have, driving 45-50 on rt8 north, car just shuts off… boom dead. Get it pulled over, cranks like the belt broke. FANTASTIC.

Tow it back to the shop, find the teeth are mostly shreaded off, but the belt is still tight. Got the kid out to check it out, he’s like “do you think it bent vavles?”. I’m like yeah, it probably did. He looks at it for a second then says “i’m not paying for a thing.” i’m like great… He starts saying he brought it there running, now it doesnt run… saying “you blew it up”, whatever “you did” screwed it up. Now im a nice guy, but business is business. I start asking him about what he did when he put the motor together, did he rotate the tensioner in the correct direction, etc. …this is ontop of the fact that it did the same exact thing when he bought it. sheesh…

so, im tearing it apart to see what happened now. Hopefully i wont have to go to court. I’m sure he put it together wrong for something like this to happen being so fresh. I wasnt railing the piss out of it, but even if i was it should still stay together…

o the joys of sole proprietorship.

Man that sucks. You’re trying to help someone out and then they try to blame you for their problems. Do you have any type of liability insurance that would cover something like this? Hopefully nothing is messed up too bad. Good luck.

Dude that sucks, I hope everything works out. Hopefully this kid isn’t a huge dbag

jess christ please tell me you aren’t actually a sole proprietorship. incorporate and file for s-corp status asap. it will only cost you a few hundred bucks

Welcome to the world of owning your own business… this certainly will not be the last time this happens either… in the kids eyes, it ran fine… you drove it, im sure he assumes you beat on it, it broke… its your fault…

Hopefully you don’t end up in court… thats no fun… maybe quit working on DSM’s?

Hope it all works out for you… you need to draw up a form for a person to sign on a performance car that if you test drive… any mechanical problems that happen during the drive… you are not responsible…

Man that really sucks… Hopefully it’s nothing big and you can get it cleared up ASAP!

+1 Would definitely be a good idea. Most of the companies I deal with are S Corps, very rarely do I ever see an actual SP.

I guess with the level and type of customers/cars i deal with i should LLC at least. I wasn’t planning to last this long :tounge:

I do have insanely good insurance if something big happened, like the car was stolen, vandalized or whatever. Its nickel dime stuff like this that sucks. I understand though, i’d be upset if the situation was reversed (especially since he just put it all back together).

Well i just got it all apart, took pics.







the last two pics show the cause. kid tensioned the accentric the wrong direction, jammed it into the bracket, started sheering the teeth off ever so sex-i-ly.

…seriously, the job right before this was a 1g headgasket job… gawd i make them stop!

Do you have any way of proving that this was not your fault? Just in case the kid gets a little happy in the ass and wants to cause static…

Well tell him to take you to court then… fuck him your not paying.

Then charge him 25.00 a day storage .Like Supra said FUCK HIM

really? is this an issue?? isnt there some sort of presidents for this?
some kid “builds” his own motor and you are liable for it popping on a test drive? i’d take my chances in court… seems kind of silly to me. doesnt seem like he’s got much of a leg to stand on.

x2, Then tell him to pressure wash the dog hair and carpet of his block. :down:

dont give this kid a dime… If someone brings a fucked up car thats about to blow up to your shop and you drive it to try and diagnose the problem and it blows up, that sure as shit is not on you. Tell the kid to fuck off. Maybe offer to tow it wherever he wants it or something… but don’t give him a dime.

And make sure you let the judge know that there’s established presidents for this!

Hahahahah.

you’re setting a dangerous precedent by continuing to call it a president.

“precedence”

pittspeed english class wutwut???

all i did was take it apart to view the cause of the problem. its not like i can fake this sheet!

If he wants me to fix it, he’ll have to pay (i smell court hearing). or, i’ll just charge him like $50 for looking at it and tow it for free. If he built the motor himself, i dont know why he’d want me to fix it.

…the other thing about this whole deal is, the kids uncle or something stopped by one day when my dad and I had the blue vette running outside (pretty much the whole neighborhood rolls up to see whats going on). We bs’d for a little and he saw my green 2g with my big ars IC hanging… he’s like, do you work on these? im like i specialize in these… so he went to the kid saying this guy (I) am really nice and the one you want to have work on your car. I dont want to burn that by being a dick and telling him tough :-/

he needs new friends. friends don’t let friends buy dsm’s

shoot me. i apologize for incorrectly spelling the first word ever on pittspeed… probably on the entire internet.