Is my mechanic right ?

Asked by GuruSWCRG May 18, 2019 at 01:24 PM

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

My car ( 2001 toyota camry)stopped enroute
to work, so towed it to my mechanic.Right
away he said, it needs new engine so i said
no ill just junk it because my AC has not been
working for months anyways, but he kept
telling me to do it for $ 2950 for
everything.before i decided, I asked if thats
all the problem, what about other major
repairs like transmission or belts , as a
woman, i dont know anything about cars, but
my friends said to ask these things. He said,
everything is fine, as soon as engine is
changed, it will run for years and you will just
need minor repairs like brakes or tires etc. so
i agreed, gave him $ 1T deposit. After a few
days i got a call “ your car is good , AC
blowing cold air, BUT transmission is bad,
needs to be replaced!”.. I was schocked!
They wanted $ 1800 for the transmission.
Thats almost $5K ! I asked to just cancell it
and get my money back but he said NO, his
only deal was , sign off the car to him and im
out $ 1K. It is impossible to check if
transmission is bad without replacing the
engine first, he said. I asked the business
bureau for help but the mechanic came down
to $ 3500 for everything, and these took
about 2 months because the bureau took a
long time to help. By this time, i had to get a
new car , i was taking uber and asking family
for transportation for over a month. Plus I
didn’t trust him about his work, scared that
he will put bad engine or transmission. Now
he put a DMV lein on my car. I plan on taking
him to small claims court because i am so
violated for him not disclosing me important
things before signing an agreement with him.
My question is, is the mechanic right that he
cannot check if the transmission is bad
unless he changes the engine ? If he told me
this, i would have never agreed to the job like
I planned in the beginning.

2 Answers

I have no way of knowing if you mechanic is honest or not. It is hard to evaluate a transmission without a running engine.

If he said that this is the case then i would have never agreed to get it done. Initially, i wanted to just take it to a junk shop and the shop offered to do it for me and pay me $ 50 for it . It took me over a week to make that decision, but i kept getting calls from them to just get the engine replaced.

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