Handbrake failure after new caliper fitted

[tc4332]

Nicely put Lee.
Times have changed. Everyone is now affected by our "Blame and Claim" society.
Great shame in a lot of ways, but then life has changed. We just have to be more careful and be aware of all the pitfalls.
I think I had better revert to being a turtle and withdraw my neck

[Quattrodave]

Originally Posted by Mechcanico Lee

Can i put a whole new take on this , it's not a witch hunt or against you in any way .

So you supplied your local garage with a caliper from eBay ( unknown sources ) they fitted the caliper and all went well , a week later you pressed the brake the pedal hit the floor , you crash into the car infront smashing it to bits injuring the occupants .
Police come ,you say you had brake failure , police impound car for inspection and find caliper has cracked down the bleed nipple threads .with major fluid loss

You say such and such garage just replaced it for me , investigation officer goes to local garage , local garage owners says "yeah customer supplied his own parts so not my problem " Arrr but it is his problem now ,as he was the last 'expert' to have worked on said vehicle .
So garage owner speaks to his liability insurance man ..... liability insurance man says ," yes send in receipts of the part you supplied and your fitting invoice "..... which he does not have .
Liability insurance say null and void claim no pay out you did not supply the part , where does it go from here , two damaged cars and injurys claim from both party's ??


You will find that garages who fit customers own parts will stop doing so sooner or later as liability insurance is stipulating the issue of fiting parts supplied by the owner will not be covered in the event of a claim .

I see little point in your post other than to be inflammatory? Please explain what the point is if not for that?

Modern society in this regard is ****, there must always be someone at fault and someone must always pay and plenty of people like yourself who look for areas where solicitors can come and f*ck up a situation. You're not a solicitor are you?


Anywho, I don't want to be drawn into that.

£724 is the total cost to me. ECU blew for whatever reason, potentially suspect caliper, so I've returned the caliper and the specialist sourced their own caliper and ecu, so yay I get to BLAME THE GARAGE 100% when my car crashes in a brake failure related fireball in a weeks time, that makes me feel so much better!

Geez, some people really do know how to put a real downer on a situation, I was looking forward to getting my car back too!

[Mechcanico Lee]

Inflammatory ??I'm a forum member just like you and will try to help anyone I can on here , why should I revel from someone's woe ??

Solicitor ? No , I'm a car technician and worked in an independent garage for near thirty years

I'm generalising here ..... why do people go on eBay or where ever and find there own parts ....main reason is to save some money ....why are some of the eBay parts cheaper than others ....main reason .... they are sub standard , corners have been cut , quality control is much poorer if any .

I was on a technical seminar the other week with Lemforder suspension components , they had dozens of Chinese copy suspension parts...ball joints suspension arms and so on that where down right horrendous in there construction

So folk buy said parts then talk them to there local garage and ask them to fit them , how can the repairer warrant a job and give due care and diligence to an item that they have no clue where it's come from .

As I said in my other post the book stops with the repairer if something goes wrong ....and it does .

Quick story
Friend of mine in Kent has his own independent garage , guy comes in off the street asks him will he fit a suspension arm to the front of his E class Merc , he wouldn't of done in normally but against his better judgement he fits it to 'help the guy out ' , job done sends the guy on his way .
Couple of weeks later an insurance engineer calls at my friends place asking about the job on the Merc , he ask what's the issue .... the front suspension had collapsed the car has veered over the road and knocked someone's garden wall down and done extensive damage to the car . The ball joint had completely pulled out of the socket by the way
My friend thinking well the owner supplied the part ' not my problem then '
How wrong was he , little later, solicitors letter through the door for court proceedings against the repairer for damage to the car and rebuild costs off the wall , hire car costs , injurys and stress .... all the usual solicitor rubbish .

My friend speaks to his insurance for liability .... yes you guessed they will
Not pay out as he did not supply the part , long story short the owner of the car wins the case , judge said words to the effect , the repairer is the expert in his experience he should of known better , the owner could of made that suspension arm in his garden shed , £16k bill for repair to the car , rebuild the wall , hire car costs , but he was ' helping the guy out ' after all so silver lining and so on

Suppose what I'm getting at here Dave is that repairers who fit customers own parts are leaving them selves exposed if things go wrong , suspension arms , ball joints , any braking parts are all safety critical .

Can I just ask and be honest ,the caliper you got off eBay that may or may not seen the ecm off is there a big difference in the price of the specialist TRW caliper .
Again I'm out here to gloat over someone's bad news , just trying to get across how it works from the repairers point of view .

[Quattrodave]

Nope didn't save a lot of money on caliper over ECP or trade sourced. The ONLY reason I sourced one myself (TRW so oem spec) is because my local specialist who I originally took it too was so busy that they didn't manage/bother to get a price for a caliper so I figured I'd fit it myself (as I've built a UR engine and done plenty of maintenance before) only to realise that I needed software and coding to change an otherwise simple to change part, so I went to my local non specialist garage with caliper in hand and asked if they could fit it as I don't have the necessary software, which they didn't have a problem with.

So I wasn't trying to be cheap as you may be thinking, I just wanted to get my leaky caliper changed quickly before the leak got worse.

[Mechcanico Lee]

Fair comment , hope you get the car back soon as , these things happen in life , grin and bare it and move on .
UR engine .... just had to google that .... Toyota v8 motor , only ever done basic service work on them pretty strong as a rule the Toyota stuff

Best regards
Lee

[Quattrodave]

Originally Posted by Mechcanico Lee

Inflammatory ??I'm a forum member just like you and will try to help anyone I can on here , why should I revel from someone's woe ??

Solicitor ? No , I'm a car technician and worked in an independent garage for near thirty years

I'm generalising here ..... why do people go on eBay or where ever and find there own parts ....main reason is to save some money ....why are some of the eBay parts cheaper than others ....main reason .... they are sub standard , corners have been cut , quality control is much poorer if any .

I was on a technical seminar the other week with Lemforder suspension components , they had dozens of Chinese copy suspension parts...ball joints suspension arms and so on that where down right horrendous in there construction

So folk buy said parts then talk them to there local garage and ask them to fit them , how can the repairer warrant a job and give due care and diligence to an item that they have no clue where it's come from .

As I said in my other post the book stops with the repairer if something goes wrong ....and it does .

Quick story
Friend of mine in Kent has his own independent garage , guy comes in off the street asks him will he fit a suspension arm to the front of his E class Merc , he wouldn't of done in normally but against his better judgement he fits it to 'help the guy out ' , job done sends the guy on his way .
Couple of weeks later an insurance engineer calls at my friends place asking about the job on the Merc , he ask what's the issue .... the front suspension had collapsed the car has veered over the road and knocked someone's garden wall down and done extensive damage to the car . The ball joint had completely pulled out of the socket by the way
My friend thinking well the owner supplied the part ' not my problem then '
How wrong was he , little later, solicitors letter through the door for court proceedings against the repairer for damage to the car and rebuild costs off the wall , hire car costs , injurys and stress .... all the usual solicitor rubbish .

My friend speaks to his insurance for liability .... yes you guessed they will
Not pay out as he did not supply the part , long story short the owner of the car wins the case , judge said words to the effect , the repairer is the expert in his experience he should of known better , the owner could of made that suspension arm in his garden shed , £16k bill for repair to the car , rebuild the wall , hire car costs , but he was ' helping the guy out ' after all so silver lining and so on

Suppose what I'm getting at here Dave is that repairers who fit customers own parts are leaving them selves exposed if things go wrong , suspension arms , ball joints , any braking parts are all safety critical .

Can I just ask and be honest ,the caliper you got off eBay that may or may not seen the ecm off is there a big difference in the price of the specialist TRW caliper .
Again I'm out here to gloat over someone's bad news , just trying to get across how it works from the repairers point of view .

I figured your point was coming from either personal or someone you knows experience.

Sorry to hear your friend got stiffed. In your example above it points out some major issues with modern society:
1. The merc owner either had a malfunctioning conscience when they decided upon the legal route, or perhaps wasn't told that the garage wouldn't be liable for failure of the part, only the fitting of said part and assumed that the costs would be covered under standard liability insurance;
2. Some solicitors are only too willing to park their morals and jump into legal proceedings on the most minor of technicalities. In October a guy I sold my old car to tried sue me for £1k more than he paid for it citing a multitude of problems with an 11 year old 150k beemer which were all explained prior to him buying and driving away the car (including stating oil leak from engine when mot certificate which was 3 days old stating oil leak which he read infront of me before paying!). Solicitors were involved and eventually I won but then he switched tactics and wrote to me directly requesting a full refund citing his disability on being unable to fully inspect the car (and I quote "due to my disability I was physically unable to unfold the mot certificate"!!). It scared the bejesus out of me for the six weeks or so that it went on.
3. Judges have awarded some ludicrous cases in recent years. Whilst researching my legal position on the above point I found examples where the solicitor has found in favour of the buyer in a private sale for failures that no one except a mechanic who's regularly inspecting their car would have identified until it went pop.

[Quattrodave]

Originally Posted by Mechcanico Lee

Fair comment , hope you get the car back soon as , these things happen in life , grin and bare it and move on .
UR engine .... just had to google that .... Toyota v8 motor , only ever done basic service work on them pretty strong as a rule the Toyota stuff

Best regards
Lee

Thanks Lee.

Life does indeed like to shovel that smelly brown stuff at us every now and then! But as you say I've just sucked it up, paid the bill (sobbed a little) and I'm getting on with it.

Sorry when I said ur I meant UR Quattro, WR engine, 2.1 turbo. One and only engine I've built and my god are some bolts virtually impossible to reach (i.e. lower inlet manifold bolts!). Car sold last year though, too time and money consuming!

[Delboy]

Im going to take a wild guess given his name and the fact he's here on an Audi forum that he's referring to the engine from the rally legend, but perhaps not the car in the following vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDRkHXMHqFo

[Mechcanico Lee]

Is that the 5 cyl jobby , remember doing turbo changes on them donkeys years ago , used to take headlight out , Audi 200 s , manifolds used to crack iirc

Best sounding rally car ever them 5 cyls

[Mechcanico Lee]

150 k miles 11 years old beemer
People expect to much , things go wrong , mechanical things need more care as they get older , what do they expect , deal with it .... write a letter of complaint to bmw stating there 150 k miles 11 year old car has some issues and see if they will do anything about it pfffft !

Hehe , hey saying that , few years back we had a bmw 740 the v8 petrol , they had issues with the plating coming off the bores and loosing compression , car was about 6 years old or so , we spoke to bmw about it and they said get it to them , they put a full brand new engine in it free of charge ,it was around 7 grand , owner was over the moon , that's superb customer service .