So I took my car to be serviced, and when I arrive to pick it up they tell me that it broke down on the test drive – it won’t go forward and they are scratching their heads as to why. They keep it overnight and next day tell me the gearbox is bust, and they need to remove it, send it off to get fixed then put it back – not a cheap job.
It was fine when I took it in, but all they were doing was changing brake pads and usual service stuff.
So, do I accept that the gearbox was going to break sometime anyway, and just put it down to bad luck, or do I protest that it must have been something they did?
My thoughts are that I even if I did protest, I wouldn’t get very far anyway….
what does STW think?

tricky to see how even the most, errrm, spirited test drive would completely knacker the gearbox. Are they beign specific about what’s broken?

I’d be asking for quotes elsewhere and some sort of recognition from the garage that it broke in their care.

Second opinion required methinks. How well do you kmow / trust the garage?
Call me cynical, but its a bit odd that it fecked up with no prior warning that it was going to go beforehand…..

In god knows how many years as a mechnaic, I’ve never heard of a gearbox just giving up the ghost with no prior warning!
Sounds like they might have made a boo-boo and are trying to cover up!

I can never understand when work requires a “test drive”. You take it in for a service, they do the work, you pick it up. Surely moving it from the work bay to the car park is enough to test the brakes. Nothing else done on a service needs field testing.

What car is it?

I’ve had a car smashed on a “test drive” when it only went in for new tyres, and the same car taken out for a “test drive” (a very spirited one – they forgot I live across from the garage) after an exhaust repair.

I now set the ECU on my new car to a 2000rpm rev limit whenever it’s not it my care. They can move it about, but they won’t be hooning up and down the high street.

Exactly my thoughts wisepranker!

I’ve used the garage for years with no problems. My thinking would be that a second opinion would just say that the gearbox is knacked, but it’s still a question of why it happened. Unless they find a spanner that was dropped into the engine, it’s just going to be them saying that it’s just a coincidence.
It’s different from if they had rammed it into a lampost, where the fault would would definately have been theirs.

I can never understand when work requires a “test drive”. You take it in for a service, they do the work, you pick it up. Surely moving it from the work bay to the car park is enough to test the brakes. Nothing else done on a service needs field testing.

A pie run at 11am is mandatory

Firstly if theres a chance that they are lying they will have already started the work (or removed x, y etc) to stop you from checking the gearbox works yourself by driving the car.

No garage should start any such work WITHOUT advising you first. so you’ll know that they are lying if they say ‘sorry its in bits, you cant drive it’.

If they say inform them you’ll be picking the car up – by whatever means and taking it elsewhere.

bloke I worked with was having his car repaired after an accident.

Phoned the garage “Is it ready yet?”

“No sir, we’re still waiting for a new front wing, I’m afraid”

“Well it looked like it had a front wing when it went past me doing over a 100 on the M4 this morning.”

“You’ll have it back by lunchtime.”

As an ex-mechanic who now makes a living in identifying overpriced aircraft repairs – this stinks to high heaven

A reconditiooned gearbox & fitting is going to cost you £500 minimum. If you tell me the make, model & year, then i can be a lot more specific

Gearboxes rarely just break. They whine and leak and annoy you. You can break them – if you give them enough abuse – and trust me – mechanics – especially young ones – give cars a right hammering!

Automatic gearboxes can break – especially if you don’t put enough oil in them after a service

I’d be happy to help out a fellow STW person to prevent a garage ripping you off – i saved someone £1200 not too long ago due to the garages dishonesty

All in all – i’m 99% sure that you’re being taken for a ride!

Jon

As boltonjohn says- you tend to get a clue leading upto. I once had a car that jumped out of gear at lights. Crunching, difficult to select gears, syncro-mesh whine etc etc.

Like I said if they say they’ve already started stripping down- thats the lie.

No garage starts anywork without the go ahead of a customer.

I can never understand when work requires a “test drive”. You take it in for a service, they do the work, you pick it up. Surely moving it from the work bay to the car park is enough to test the brakes. Nothing else done on a service needs field testing.

No decent mechanic would release a car with new pads without having bedded them in.

Bedding new pads takes more than driving more than 1/2 a mile….but anyway- thats not the issue. OP should have had a call ‘erm this happened, what do you want us to do/here are your options’.

If they decided to start stripping down- they are in trouble IMO as stripping down is a good way to mask if there really is an issue….

Its a recession and quiet business/cash flow can be turned around with a few big bills for customers coming in…

Test drive in a full service or after brake pads I cant argue with.

Surely you’d be more pissed if they said they had done the work and as soon as you drive away something goes clunk/bang/snap etc. A test drive makes sure silly things like that dont happen, sadly there is a small chance that your car did have an issue before hand and you hadnt noticed. Even smaller chance there is a genuine issue with the gearbox.

As Boltonjohn says what make and model, year and engine model would help to diagnose if there is any known issues. A mileage of the vehicle would also help as its rare that a sub 50k car should have many gearbox issues

Perhaps naievly, I already told them to go ahead and find out what the problem is. The told me it was the gearbox and they have removed it and sent it off somewhere to get it looked out – so perhaps by doing that I’ve already accepted liablilty?

boltonjohn – it’s a Hyundai Santa Fe 2007. It’s my wife’s car and she needs it for work – so we need it back as soon as we can which sort of put me in a corner yesterday when I told them to just go ahead and fix it. Cost was given at “anywhere between 300 and 1000” so I’m preparing for the worst.
I could ring them up and say that I’ve been told that gearboxes don’t jsut go, but I forsee a shrugging of the shoulders on their part.

Ah. Hyundai I remember some of the MPV’s of theirs had really bad gearbox issues which put me off buying one.

Correction- I think its the Kia Sedona with the gearbox issues.

Service, gear box oil change, forgot to refill? Does sound odd. I would be putting pressure on them, it broke whilst it was in their care. Get them to justify beyond doubt it’s not their fault.

Bit like when Renault tried to bill me for an abs pump that failed whilst they were replacing an airbag that had gone off when it shouldn’t have (ie not in an accident with no passenger in the seat). The dealership admitted to destroying a circuitboard in the dash, couldn’t wiggle out of that as the odometer was rest. They also managed to blow both low and full beam on both head lights, gave it back to me in that state as well at 5 oclock on a winters evening. As such I made them repair the abs as well and I’ll never have another Renault.

I remember 5th gear doing a gearbox test, to see how long a box would last without any oil.
Long story short, the blew the engine and gearbox was still working, ok there maight have been wear, but it didn’t break.
Is there a 4wd or low ratio system fitted to your car?
Selecting 4wd or low ratio on some cars whilst moving can kill a box stone dead.

No decent mechanic would release a car with new pads without having bedded them in.

Given it’s 100 mile or so for them to be bedded in, sometimes more, I’d say that a decent mechanic wouldn’t release the car without explaining the need and procedure so you can do it yourself. They’re going to make no dent whatsoever in the bedding-in process on a 10 minute blast up the road.

I think I trust the garage. The car is driven by a woman normally.

^^ lies your issue.

So this isnt your normal daily driver, its the mrs’.

Sadly I have too much experience of when women drive cars to death.

IME they dont have mechanical sympathy and certainly dont report issues as much as they should or with any knowledgable detail.

What does your mrs say about the car? Was it driving perfectly before hand? Did she notice anything at all? however minor it may appear to the wife i would be checking 100%

argoose, there is a 4wd switch. it’s one of those ones where 4wd will come on automatically if the wheels are slipping, or you can have 4wd on all the time. I would like to have thought that they wouldn’t have built a car with a switch within reach of the driver that would destroy the gearbox if pressed! Wife wouldn’t it becuase of the snow, and of course it hasn’t snowed since we bought it.

almightydutch – I drove the car down the garage and it was fine. never been any problems. I was thinking that the obvious reason is no oil in the gearbox, but argoose’s post seemed to negate that. They only drove it a mile of 2 before it blew. Centre of Edinburgh so couldn’t have thrahsed it.

If you’ve asked them to start on the work, i’m not sure theres much you can do.

I had some problems with a car after a garage changed the cambelt. I got it fixed somewhere else, but had to arrange an independent engineers inspection to confirm the fault and take them to court. The engineer isn’t actually allowed to do any disassembling or anything either, so the garage had to do that. I had to cover all the costs but the garage at fault paid up before court.

So even your mechanic did break the gearbox i’m not sure theres much you could do now if they started dismantling it, other than getting it moved on a flatbed somewhere else at your own expense. And if the engineer decided the garage had done nothing wrong, you’d be out of pocket by a fair bit.

Trust me they would, if it’s explained in rhe hand book and a sticky sign next to button or on sun visor then they’re happy you’ve been warned.
Auto windows throttling kids/pets spring to mind, before anti-pinch systems were added.
Merc’s which needed to be driven below certain speeds before raising the roof.
Worth checking the drivers handbook, fore warned is….

Perhaps I should go singlespeed in future?

rthomas17

I’m west of London, so unable to help – but the important thing here is that the vehicle is currently stripped down. It’s on their vehicle hoist with no gearbox in whilst the gearbox is off at the g/box shop being repaired

So, do you know any trustworthy mechanics (family or other fellow riders/STWs) who would be happy to visit the garage and g/box specialist to look at the vehicle?

I’m pretty sure that i could walk into the g/box specialist and ask to look at the gearbox of the Hyundai from xxx motors.

You’d need to do it unannounced

Then, if they say no, get them to phone xxx motors – if they’ve got nothing to hide – then they’ll allow you to look at your gearbox

A technically competent person would be able to review the ‘faults’ with the g/box technician within the gearbox and see if the whole thing has ran dry or if there is a real fault

Then again – the g/box may still be in the vehicle and they might just be fixing a stoved in wing or something….

Also – did they clearly explain to you what the symptoms of the failure where? If they did, please share

but they won’t be hooning up and down the high street.

Dropped a car off for an MOT one morning and picked it back up later that day with an extra 80 miles on the odometer 😡

Just a thought, but is it definitely gearbox and not clutch, which can go with little abuse, i.e. select 1st instead of 3rd/5th

I’d be contacting Hyundai before letting anyone touch it.

Do they have 5 or longer warranties and if 2007 it may still be covered.

edit:

Are there any models to which the five year warranty does not apply?
No, all current vehicles supplied by Hyundai Motor UK Ltd. registered on or after August 1, 2002 are included.
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Is the warranty transferable between owners?
Yes, providing the car is under five years old at the time of the sale. The balance of the warranty goes to the new owner, subject to servicing having been carried out at the recommended intervals.
back to top
I have just bought a used Hyundai that has warranty left on it. Do I get the balance of this cover?
Of course — our Five Year Warranty is fully transferable between owners for the duration of the warranty. Simply complete the Change of Ownership card located in the back of your Service Record Book and send it back to us FREEPOST to have the warranty details updated. Alternatively, complete the form online.

I broke a perfectly functioning gearbox once, I was trying to get my Midget to make at least a small 3rd gear wheelspin with 3 of us in it, snapped a shaft.

This probably doesnt help much.

Take boltonjons offer it sound’s like it might help.

Ah. Hyundai I remember some of the MPV’s of theirs had really bad gearbox issues which put me off buying one.

Correction- I think its the Kia Sedona with the gearbox issues

Kia Sedona and Hyundai Trajet use the same gearbox, manual ones anyway, don’t know about autos.

Find out where the gearbox is and ring them and ask them for their opinion on what’s wrong.

Don’t go through the garage, speak direct with the gearbox specialist.

Given it’s 100 mile or so for them to be bedded in, sometimes more, I’d say that a decent mechanic wouldn’t release the car without explaining the need and procedure so you can do it yourself. They’re going to make no dent whatsoever in the bedding-in process on a 10 minute blast up the road.

20 years of being in the Motor Trade including working as a Technical Engineer for 2 Manufacturers disagrees with this.

Mike

Not much to add other than good luck.

I just picked my car up this morning from a well known tyre specialist after they had fitted 4 new tyres I pre-paid for. They upsold me rear disks and pads which I kinda knew I needed,and I watched them do the work seemingly proficiently. All looked fine until I noticed they had fitted differing tyres to those I paid for. Oh well they are similar,and at least they match..

I saw the problem when I went to pick it up – it went backwards but not forwards – so that would rule out the clutch being gubbed as it was OK in reverse. All the mechanics were gathered round it trying to work out what the problem was. They started stripping it down the next day and I was told that they were 100% positive that the problem was the gearbox rather than any broken shafts or linkages.
They sent the gearbox off to somewhere in Falkirk for them to look at it – with an eta to start this on Monday, so I should maybe find out who that is and get them to tell me what the problem is directly. I don’t know anyone technical enough to inspect indiviually. The gear box man is probably mates with the garage man, so suspect he wouldn’t be blowing any whistles.
As for warranty – ran out about 2 months ago – which isn’t helping my mood.

Selecting 4wd or low ratio on some cars whilst moving can kill a box stone dead.

This – depends if it has a locking differential. If it has, and it was inadvertently engaged, they can go badly wrong in about five yards if you try to go round a corner, and not much further if you don’t.

All looked fine until I noticed they had fitted differing tyres to those I paid for.

were they cheaper tyres, if so did they refund you the difference?

It is a manual isn’t it?

if is is fine in reverse but not forward I’d suspect that there is something wrong with the gear selector mechanism inside the box allowing two gears to be engaged at once. Its most probably stuck internally in reverse for some reason and then when you select 1st the box will lock up as it’s trying to forwards and backwards at the same time.