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Mr Goodwrench Warraneees[?]

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philman

philman

Jedi Knight
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Wife drove oour GM product over to Baker City last week. On the way back it died near Sisters, about a hundred miles away. She had it towed into town where the mechanic got it running (sort of) by replacing the ignition module but said that the catalytic converters, which were replaced by my local chevy dealer about three months ago were plugged up.

Towed to dealer in Bend, where dealer confirmed catalytic converters were plugged up. Cost, another $1200, but claims that something in the engine caused the catalytic converters to plug up. Not covered by warantee.

Now, when is a Goodwrench warantee a warantee? The car stopped with a sudden catastrophic failure of the catalytic converters which caused about $300 secondary repairs and $200 towing and GM claims they aren't responsible? BTW, no engine codes, no MIL.
 
Pretty much the only thing that can meltdown cats is a misfire, or gross overfueling. If the car has OBD2, there should have been a check engine light. It is possible that they missed the cause of the first cat failure, in which case they are surely responsible. Make an appointment with the service manager, and very politely, but firmly, have them prove to you why the cats failed.
 
My dad had this same problem in 1982 with a brand new v-6 Monte Carlo... The dealer was the biggest problem. Evertime he'd carry the car in to get it fixed, it came back with something else wrong. He believes they were breaking things on purpose. But as for the catalytic converter clogging up, The car will not just die, but slowly start bogging down. It'll run, but with nearly no power.
 
& after the service manager turns you down, ask him when the factory rep will be through & set an appointment with him to challenge the dealer's assessment...plus, call that 1-800-number in your owner's manual & speak to a customer service rep for the manufacturer.

I once had a problem the GMC dealer disavowed..I asked when the factory guy would be there & set up an appointment to visit with him...he overruled the service manager & they (GMC) paid for the repair.
 
Tony, you are absolutely right. Then the next steep is the national service center, then to court.

I had to sue Chrysler over a lemon Jeep some years back.

Patrick
 
Philman, I agree with everything that has been said above. To ad my $0.02, only play the lawyer card as a last result. Having worked a number of dealerships in a past life, it has been my experience that if you play the lawyer card with the factory people, they bring thers as well (to protect themselves) and even though the situation may get resolved, it ends up costing everbody involve more $$$.
 
thanks for suggestions. I asked wife again if there were any prior symptoms such as loss of power, etc and she said no. Blazers with the vortec have a problem burning up the ignition modules if the cat gets clogged and overheats the engine bay. I think that if I stay in small claims court then no lawyers are allowed. I don't mind paying someone for doing work, but I don't think that anyone should have to keep on paying and paying for at best a defective part or at worst incompetent service.
 
just an update. service manager tried to tell me that a dirty injector caused the converter to fail in less than 2000 miles. I asked him why that if an injector caused this thad odb2 didn't pick up the emissions problem that would have occurred. he danced around that and wouldn't answer. I think "dirty injector" is a euphamism for "I can't prove it didn't fail, so I'm blaming something that can't be proven."

i called the corporate customer service number, but he is refusing to return their calls. and he still has my car after over 2 weeks.
 
Sorry to hear about Mr. Badwrench. IMHO, I would write a letter and get the documentation started.
 
Time to escalate beyone the 800 number to somebody in corporate service center...ask the dealer who their corp rep is & his number...call him direct....if they won't give you that info, google the are representative.
 
[ QUOTE ]
...i called the corporate customer service number, but he is refusing to return their calls. and he still has my car after over 2 weeks.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd guess he really believes GM won't reimburse him under the warantee program & he doesn't want to risk his boss's wrath by losing money on this.

My opinion: Get a paper trail started with a polite letter to the owner or general manager of the dealership covering the history so far. Copy the zone/district. Since they still have your car (why?) you could also get the attention of your state's motor vehicle department, dealer licensing bureau or whatever it's called there. Write them a letter and follow w/ a phone call. Then try to work with the dealership (not service dept) management and the state if no response.

Forget about small claims court. The dealer won't show up, you'll get a judgement against him, he'll ignore that, and you're back where you started unless you intend to get a lawyer to get a court to enforce the judgement.

Just my .02.
 
Absolutely get a lemon law paper trail started! Talk to the service manager (the manager of the service dept.) and ask him to escalate it to the district manager.

If you get the run around, just tell the service manager that you need written documentation of the proof they have that concludes the issue is not covered by the warranty.

The other thing you can do is go to a different dealer and explain that you really want to start using their service department because the other place had the car for two weeks without doing a thing.
 
no help with corporate customer service, service manager is the one who made the decision. their final determination was that since someone else had installed an ignition module prior to it getting to their service department that the ignition module caused the catalytic converter to go bad. even though odb2 gave no codes and no service engine lamp is lit.

part of the problem is that this is a different dealer than the one originally doing the service. the car broke down on the wife on the way back from baker city, in the middle of nowhere, you don't have many choices on where you go.

i think that if i win a judgement in small claims court that the sheriff can be paid to tap the till at the dealer until the debt is paid. not a very nice thing to see when you walk into a place of business -- seeing the law there collecting money.
 
So, now you go back to the original dealer who installed the "bad module" & tell him that corporate & your dealer said he screwed up.
 
ok here is the latest. I picked up the car and decided to keep the old catalytic converters (they charged me $90 core charge). Yep the secondary converter had over heated. But, the first converter had a rattle in it with a lot of debris, and there was an additional crimp in the bend of the pipe that didn't look original. when I questioned the service writer he just shrugged and said that that's how they were made. Kind of adds creedence to my theory that the converter collapsed blocking the exhaust flow and plugging up under extreme heat.
 
[ QUOTE ]
ok here is the latest. I picked up the car and decided to keep the old catalytic converters (they charged me $90 core charge). Yep the secondary converter had over heated. But, the first converter had a rattle in it with a lot of debris, and there was an additional crimp in the bend of the pipe that didn't look original. when I questioned the service writer he just shrugged and said that that's how they were made. Kind of adds creedence to my theory that the converter collapsed blocking the exhaust flow and plugging up under extreme heat.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd check that against another one just to make sure that it really isn't supposed to be like that.

I was going through the exhaust system on my Jeep and found that the down pipe has this huge flat spot in it, as if it had hit the uni-frame. I figured this was causing a lack of performance (and with how slow that heep is....) so I headed of to replace it.

Turns out that the unusual looking "damage" is actually supposed to be there. Just a lesson to double check, especially because car manufactuers don't seem to care much about harming performance in favor of easy clearance.

Ben
 
If you collect a boxfull of catalytic converters, and cut them open, you can sell the internal catalytics to a refiner/smelter that will pay for the iridium, platinum, and other precious metals contained therein.
 
You serious, Kenny - I'm tossing 5 or 6 MG cats right now.
 
Yeah, do a search for platinum refiner or recycling and you'll find a few companies that will refine them, and pay you anything from half to pretty close to full market price for the precious metals. You can only get 2 or 3 of the metals removed from them, as some of the others are destroyed by the chemical seperating processes, but platinum is at least twice the price of gold. Some of the shops will even make you a platinum ingot or coin from your scrap. It takes a bunch of them to be worth it though. And most of the places will only work with you on large orders. But there are a few small order places. I haven't tried it yet, as I've only got about 4 cats collected right now. But I did read up on it about 6 months ago. The shells are usually stainless steel too, and can be sold to recyclers.
 
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