These guys glued a broken intake together with RTV
The previous owner of my car has meticulous maintenance records from Cal's Auto Center since 2009. The car was never taken to another shop in its life until I bought it directly from them.
Recently, the car began misfiring and showing symptoms of an intake leak. Is the intake gasket leaking? When we inspected the intake plenum, we found RTV on a corner of it. Hey, it looks like someone in the past fixed the leak with this. Nope. When we pulled it off, a huge chunk of the plenum broke off and was sticking to the engine by the RTV.
So this shop, instead of telling the customer they dropped the intake and broke it, tried to Mickey Mouse a fix using RTV as glue and hoping they never noticed. (Yes, the previous owner was an older lady and never noticed.) They didn't even have the decency to use Alumiweld or JB Weld. They just used some RTV they had lying around the shop.
Over time, the plenum developed a long hairline crack that was now creating a leak so severe that the engine was misfiring. You know how cheap and easy the permanent fix was? Getting an undamaged one from the junk yard for just $30. (These dum-dums didn't even have the decency to do this either.)
I hope my story is a cautionary tale to anybody giving this shop a try. They are your typical dishonest mechanics taking advantage of people who know nothing about cars. These kinds of shops existed in the 90s and 00s before they had to face the consequences of online reviews. Please don't support them when there are a ton of good, honest mechanics out there.
tl;dr These guys glued a broken intake together with RTV. I've never seen this level of laziness and incompetence in my life.
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Recently, the car began misfiring and showing symptoms of an intake leak. Is the intake gasket leaking? When we inspected the intake plenum, we found RTV on a corner of it. Hey, it looks like someone in the past fixed the leak with this. Nope. When we pulled it off, a huge chunk of the plenum broke off and was sticking to the engine by the RTV.
So this shop, instead of telling the customer they dropped the intake and broke it, tried to Mickey Mouse a fix using RTV as glue and hoping they never noticed. (Yes, the previous owner was an older lady and never noticed.) They didn't even have the decency to use Alumiweld or JB Weld. They just used some RTV they had lying around the shop.
Over time, the plenum developed a long hairline crack that was now creating a leak so severe that the engine was misfiring. You know how cheap and easy the permanent fix was? Getting an undamaged one from the junk yard for just $30. (These dum-dums didn't even have the decency to do this either.)
I hope my story is a cautionary tale to anybody giving this shop a try. They are your typical dishonest mechanics taking advantage of people who know nothing about cars. These kinds of shops existed in the 90s and 00s before they had to face the consequences of online reviews. Please don't support them when there are a ton of good, honest mechanics out there.
tl;dr These guys glued a broken intake together with RTV. I've never seen this level of laziness and incompetence in my life.