A few weeks ago I had an alignment and 2 tires mounted at Licatas. Yesterday I had all 4 tires off to bleed the brakes and put on my race pads and noticed the center cap on one of my front wheels (the ones they took off to mount/balance tires) had 3 of it’s 4 tabs broken off and someone glued it in place with what looks like gasket maker.
These wheels have only ever been to Swerve prior to this and I know Paul wouldn’t do something like this (besides that, I’ve always been standing right there shooting the shit with the Swerve guys while they mounted my tires).
I’m ordering a replacement on ebay for $24, just not sure if it’s worth talking to Licata’s about it. What would you do? The fact that they broke it, made a half ass repair and then didn’t even mention it to me is enough that I won’t be going back for service there in the future.
Worth a pleasant phone call to Licata. I forget the owners name, but I had several conversations with him while having my car worked on recently, and he seemed like the type of dude that would understand. It’s completely possible he was unaware of this situation, and would have never approved of the repair.
I would either make a call or stop back in. They should have documentation of who was working on the car. Something like that is important to bring back up. May not so much be a solve to your problem, but in the long run you are saving others from the same mistake happening to them. Which from one car guy to another would be something I would definitely do, being I wouldnt want that happening to anyone else.
On the other hand, if one of my guys did something stupid, being the owner I’d like the chance to fix it rather than have you pissed. Who knows maybe the guy is a hack and it’s a good opportunity to say get the fuck out you loser.
It’s not about the price, it’s that someone is trying to hide the damage.
Licata’s was working on my old Range Rover and one of the guys snapped off a sensor by accident. I got a call, was told what happened and they said it was already ordered and on it’s way. That’s how it should happen.
I say call the the owner. Like others said, he was probably unaware of the situation. I’m sure he would love the opportunity to make things right especially now everyone on NYSpeed knows about what happened under his watch.
If he knew you put it on here (whether you tell him or if he found out any other way) I’m sure he would love to make you whole again so you can follow up with another post explaining how he made things right and therefore killing the bad PR.
I really don’t care about the $24. In the scope of car ownership it’s a minor expense. What bothers me is that the first I knew about it was yesterday when I was putting my wheels back on and said to myself, “What’s this black goop that looks like it was used to glue my center cap on”. I realize center cap tabs can just break no matter how careful you are and wouldn’t have had a problem with them saying, “hey, one of your center caps is in really bad shape so we used some glue to hold it on blah blah”.
I know Josh knows Russ pretty well so if he’s saying I should give him a call that’s probably what I’ll do. The replacement is already ordered since I have my doubts the hack repair is going to hold up the first time the wheels get good and hot under heavy braking.
Yeah, I take them off at the track. Sometimes I get a little, uh, over enthusiastic on back roads cruises to the point that my brakes get pretty hot though.
Not to shit on Licata’s by any means…but when I had an alignment on my Mustang a few months ago they failed to notice the passenger side inner tie rod being shot. Anything over 60mph caused a serious shake to the car, one that wasn’t noticable prior to aligment. Anyway, I took care of this on my own after the fact…but for ~$200 for my aligment I wasn’t exactly thrilled they didn’t pick up on this and aligned the car. I didn’t think a car could be properly aligned with a loose component (like an inner tie rod)?
Contrary to my advice above, I never called them to notify of the issue since I drove the Mustang to Minnesota a few days later where it is now parked collecting dust.
Russ doesn’t personally work on every car there but he’s one of the most standup guys I know. I started going to him in 2005 for alignments and inspections. Just call and I’m sure he’ll take care of your problem.
---------- Post added at 12:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:23 PM ----------
Clearly Russ isn’t a hack. This is me speaking my mind. A person doesn’t expand their business to what it is and buys out another repair shop from being a “loser” or a “hack”. I’d let russ personally work on ANY car I owned. Clearly Russ knows how to run a SUCCESSFUL business. Just a thought…
you missed the point. don was saying that it is possible that the guy who did the work (not russ) could be half a douche bag who does dumb shit sometimes and that bringing this cover-up incident to light could be what gets him canned.
edit: apparently i took longer than i thought to type that