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To make a long story short, son has 2001 Volvo S40, drove car while it overheated (should have known better obviously!), paid 2100 for replacement engine, gets car back after 3 weeks and next day car breaks down, turns out mechanic installed wrong engine type, it should have been a turbo engine. Replacement engine had 6 month warranty. Mechanic (long established local business, had been good up to this point) is giving son estimate?? Yikes, why an estimate and not an apology and no charge?? Any advice on how to handle this? Son had to get ride from coworker to get to and from work for several days, is now borrowing his grandparent's car.
I get help from local newspaper or tv stations. They have reporters who help people with problems like this. Businesses usually respond quickly when reporters are involved because they don't want bad publicity.
This is a rather major mistake on the part of the shop to have installed the wrong engine in this car.
IIRC, all S40's of that year model were turbo'ed. So they couldn't have inadvertently obtained a non-turbo motor for it and not have noticed upon installing it.
However, you need to be sure exactly what it was that the shop quoted and was authorized to do. At the low price you mention, about half of that cost would have been just for labor at average hourly billing rates and 12 hours (or so) of R&R time. Could the shop have quoted an engine swap that would get the car on the road, but not necessarily a like kind engine, at a minimal price and was authorized to do so to just get the car on the road as cheaply as possible?
In any event, a premature failure on a serviceable used engine that was warranted by the shop for 6 months needs to be taken care of promptly. Time to have that chat with the shop and ask them what they're going to do at this point. If they're not going to honor their workmanship and warranty, then it's time to find out what laws apply in your state for their services and pursue those avenues.
Another concern, of course, would be the devaluing of the car due to having a non-turbo engine in it. There may also be driveability issues due to a different transmission/diff due to the power on tap from the turbo engine compared to a naturally aspirated one's torque/power curve.
So far the assumption is that the shop made what would have been an enormous mistake.
"Oops, we installed the wrong engine. If only there were hundreds of sources of info available to be sure we put the right engine in. We wondered why so many things like the intake and exhaust had to be fabricated to fit. Oh well."
I'm not buying that it's that simple. I'm certain there's more to this than what we're being told.
That's true vmaxnc, it sounds incredible to me too. All I know is that the mechanic said "oh f..k" when he opened the hood and I was told they didn't know it was a turbo. I can't believe that's the whole story myself, let me get more info and make sure of things and then I'll post back.
To make a long story short, son has 2001 Volvo S40, drove car while it overheated (should have known better obviously!), paid 2100 for replacement engine, gets car back after 3 weeks and next day car breaks down, turns out mechanic installed wrong engine type, it should have been a turbo engine. Replacement engine had 6 month warranty. Mechanic (long established local business, had been good up to this point) is giving son estimate?? Yikes, why an estimate and not an apology and no charge?? Any advice on how to handle this? Son had to get ride from coworker to get to and from work for several days, is now borrowing his grandparent's car.
Paid $2,100 total? That's way cheap for an engine and labor.
Reasonable enough if it was a used motor.
My friend who owned a Volvo garage used to install used motors as the Volvo B21 and B24 motors lasted near 300,000 miles if well maintained. He never tried to pass them off as new or rebuilt.
Yes, it was a used motor, and that was clear to everyone and agreed on.
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