I've been holding back on this but decided I should share my experience.
Until this episode I had done all the work on my Elan myself. Everything. I took care of it, did things properly and made sure it was safe and ran properly, even if it will never be the "best" or "prettiest" Elan.
Last summer whilst driving back up through France it broke down. I couldn't fix it by the side of the road and I had no chance but to call ADAC and get it collected... I won't repeat all that here, there's another thread on that.
Anyway, the car got transported back to the UK and to a garage close to our new home. This garage had been used by my wife's family for decades. However, I was too complacent, I should never have taken their word that they would look after my car and with hindsight I'm kicking myself. Here's what went wrong:
- When the car arrived they never told me, I only knew because ADAC sent a bill! this should have set alarm bells ringing, but we were in quarantine and I couldn't do anything anyway.
- I told them the car had to be kept covered because the roof wasn't watertight but not to use the roof cover which is in the boot.
- Since the car was at a garage I felt I could trust, I asked them to diagnose and repair the fault. However they didn't have staff available to work on it straight away.
- I did consider bringing the car home but having just moved house our garage was full of boxes still. It took me a couple of months to get it sorted, during which I kept calling the garage but they didn't have the staff to start the work.
- After a couple of months (yes, I know, why didn't I go over sooner? Because I trusted them!) I went over to the garage to try and figure out if they were going to do the work or not. I also took the old UK spec dipped beam lamps for them to swap for the French ones, to try and incentivise them to get on with it as this would be an easy job to get paid for. When I arrived I found the car out in a yard, surrounded by other cars in sorry states of repair, uncovered! They had put the roof cover on that I'd told them not to, but it had of course blown off like I knew it would. I opened the door and the floor was soaking, swamped in water. I was livid. They did sort of apologise and say they would get it covered straight away, but when I asked them when they would do the work they had the nerve to tell me I'd had free storage!
Now I should have just gone to get someone to help me tow it out of there there and then, but I didn't, I think I worried they would actually send me a bill for storage. I left it there on their word they would get on with the work. - A week or so later they called to say they'd fixed it. The problem was the immobiliser apparently, and they'd put a bypass in with a switch so that the fuel pump could still be turned off... this is what they told me anyway. When I collected the car the lights had been changed and the car ran, so I believed that they said they'd done. However, the boot carpet had been ripped out and not put back properly (they told me they were trying to trace the wiring - why didn't they just call and ask me?!), the same with the hood stowage area carpets and they'd actually ground off the scrivets (granted, they're ancient and required a knack to undo) and lost several screws. Not exactly the quality service I was expecting.
- Later, I started to wonder what they'd really done because the fuel pump no longer turned off after a few seconds after the ignition was on. With some help from this forum I worked out what they had done - they'd run a bypass directly from the ignition to the pump! They had, thankfully, put a fuse in, but a measly wire was now taking the full pump power from the ignition, the ECU no longer had any control over the pump to stop it when the engine wasn't running and they'd bypassed the inertia safety switch. I was absolutely flabbergasted that they could do that and with a straight face send me on my way. They obviously didn't have a clue about the fuel pump circuit and had made no attempt to understand it.
- Once I'd figured out what they'd done I started to wonder if they'd actually diagnosed the problem at all. I undid "all of their good work"
and put things back how they should have been. I then replaced the fuel pump relay with the horns relay as they are the same, and hey presto the fuel pump worked and the horns didn't! Well, eventually the horns did work, I think it was a sticky relay contact. - So, they'd hadn't actually fixed the fault, they'd made the car less safe (untrue to say dangerous, but I didn't feel safe in it) and had left the car in a mess. What else could they possibly have done? Well, the car had its MOT last week and it failed on... unsafe seat fixings. Somehow, one of the passenger seat fixings was no longer... fixed! The rubber foot was there with a bolt in it, but the bolt no longer fixed to the seat. I tried to see if it was loose and it came away! It was actually not the right bolt, it was only 2cm long! Now, I've no idea why they needed to remove the passenger seat, possibly to run the new wires to the fuel pump? But why would they put a fake bolt there?! Perhaps it wasn't them and it had always been like that, but how come it only failed its roadworthiness on that fault this time? That bolt which was doing nothing was certainly not put there by me.
- Another thing I just remembered, the roof stowage area lid doesn't fit properly anymore, the trailing edge scrapes on the body strip between it and the boot lid. They must have tried to remove the stowage area lid and not put it back right, but as far as I can tell the bolts on the lid side are at their maximum setting and the lid still scrapes. Could they have bent the hinges? I couldn't see how to access the body side bolts, where do I get to them from?
The good points of this garage? Well, they did manage to swap the headlamps over without breaking anything, well done. [slow clap]
I feel a mixture of anger and embarrassment for what happened. I should have never left the car there so long without checking it, and when I saw how they were treating it I should have taken it away immediately. I'll never let such a situation happen again, lesson well and truly learnt.
I'm not sure if I feel ready to name the garage, since some my wife's family still use it and I don't want them via the wonder of Google to get wind of my "review" and cause my relatives any problems.
I hope this tale helps others avoid such a situation, or perhaps none of you are as trusting/naive as me in the first place.
Cheers
