Quote:
Originally Posted by ToxSocks
Your story reminds me of how many silly little things that can go wrong when building one of these cars. Everything has to be torq'd to spec and seemingly everything has a different torq rating. I have a number of different lug nut sets i keep in stock just for this reason. Wheel studs can vary in length, and different wheels seat differently.
We've ALMOST let a car go out of here with loose lugs. It's just such a simple thing to overlook. I had a customer that did something similar to what your mechanic did. He wanted to clean his calipers, took the wheels off and forgot to torq one of the wheels up. Wheel came off a few miles later and completely ****ed his driver side fender....
If he doesn't wanna take the money it's hard to make him do it, right. My belief is that he doesn't wanna take your "tip" because he views you as a good customer and just wants to make it right.
And i can't imagine that repair was cheap, nor do I believe his shop insurance would cover such a thing. I'm 95% positive dude just paid that out of his own pocket. We're talking thousands of dollars for a repair like that. Ouch.
My recommendation would be to just keep giving him work. It'd show that you still trust him while also putting money in his pocket. Get that fuel gauge/sending unit done and maybe ask him about future upgrades so that he knows he's still your guy.
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The damn paint alone was evidently $500/
pint. They put ground fairy wings in that shit? I had no idea paint could be that stout. So yeah, that couldn't have been cheap.
I hope he didn't have to eat shit over it. I'd have run it through my comp coverage if that were the case (though they may well have pursued him in subrogation anyway. I would've just been non-cooperative at that point and they'd have probably had to hire counsel which would be....me. So **** 'em).
Yeah, he was mortified. "Man, I've done this for 25 years and never done a thing like that. I had it up on the rack, all I'd have needed to do was just jostle those wheels to be sure. Just messed up..."
I really do wonder if the stuff with his dad can get him a little distracted at times.
Thanks for the advice. The long-term parking place somehow managed to wreck our stupid van while we were on vacation last week (that thing has been hit in some way EIGHT times now; this would be its 5th trip to a body shop - folks love hitting that thing). It has a ton of miles on it and we were going to just cash settle it and leave it boogered up. I wonder if he'd have any interest in doing it instead. Ain't much, but it's something.