A Civic timing belt & a melted radiator

Here’s a question for you guys:

I did the timing belt & water pump on my '05 Civic (a 3-day job, boy that crank bolt is cranky!) and afterward the car wouldn’t start. I assumed the timing was off, and didn’t want to screw it up even more. I figured “Right, this is over my head. I’ll do the responsible thing and take it to the experts, so I can avoid causing major damage with a careless mistake!”

Well, the shop looked at the car for an hour and came back with the same: timing was off. They realigned the belt, and $350 later, I’m down the road. I asked them if there were any problems I should look for, and they said “Nah, just give us a call if you notice anything.” 15 minutes later, white smoke billows out of the hood and the car is kaput. I have it towed back to the shop.

They tell me that there was an air pocket in the radiator because I didn’t flush the coolant system after the water pump. That air pocket caused the temperature gauge to malfunction, car overheated, and the radiator melted and the head gasket was blown. A $1,200 job at least, including re-machining.

So - what’s the shop’s responsibility at this point? I’ll tell you what ended up happening, but I’d like to know your opinion first.

Some additional facts:

• The shop owner said that when they do a full timing belt job, they replace the water pump (they come together in the same kit, actually) and then flush the coolant system.
• The car wouldn’t start when I brought it to them, so there really wasn’t a way for me to flush the coolant system on my own.
• I was up front about everything with the mechanics. It was embarrassing to take in a job I couldn’t finish, but I wanted to save myself the greater embarrassment of causing serious damage to my engine - something I expected a certified Honda mechanic would know how to avoid.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this one!

Here’s the problem. You did the job and botched it. Turned to the experts to fix your botch. They corrected your mistake as requested. They did not address the cooling system because they did not touch it. You did. Once they fixed your mistake, you should have finished the job, unless you directed them to. It was not clear, but it sounds like you did not, but you expected them to know to fix your water pump job too. It’s on you, not them.

I don’t blame the shop

That said, every time I finally get an engine started on a vehicle that was brought in on the hook, I let idle for a few minutes in my service bay, just to make sure there are no obvious problems

Such as an obvious miss, overheating, bad fuel or coolant leaks, bottom end noises, etc.

Of course, if it came in with a bad fuel pump, for example, that warrants hooking up the fuel pressure gauges, and a test drive

Each situation is different, in my opinion

Sounds like they took the timing belt off, installed it properly, and put it back together.

Any competent mechanic would “burp” the cooling system and test drive it after replacing the water pump/timing belt. But the shop never had any reason to open up the cooling system. They properly installed your belt, the car started and ran, and they parked it.

The coolant wasn’t properly filled, but they’re not the ones who drained it. And I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect them to know it wasn’t properly filled. If the engine oil was low when you picked the car up would you expect them to have corrected that too?

Having said that, here we drive every car after we’re done doing anything under the hood other than just an oil change. Just to make sure we didn’t miss any problems or create new ones. We would have noticed the overheating on a test drive and probably shut the engine down before any damage. If what happened to you happened here, I suppose I’d offer a hundred bucks, maybe 2, off of the head gasket and radiator repair as a goodwill gesture. I’d feel bad it happened, but I wouldn’t accept responsibility for any of the damage.

My vote is with the others. Tough break, but this one should be on you.

Generally speaking, there are usually some signs, even subtle ones, of an overheating engine no matter what the temp gauge is doing.

That must have been one hell of an air pocket.

I’m curious as to why the “Low Coolant” sensor did not warn you, irregardless of the temp sensor. Also, isn’t the temp sensor on the block?

I am in agreement with the others that the mechanic bears no responsibility in this situation.
And, before the OP concludes that I am a mechanic or an “industry insider”–no on both counts.

The shop is not to blame. They corrected your boo boo and you drove the car without looking for signs of trouble. An overheated engine does not suddenly appear out of nowhere.

I'm curious as to why the "Low Coolant" sensor did not warn you, irregardless of the temp sensor. Also, isn't the temp sensor on the block?

I don't think any of the 05 Civics have a "low coolant" indicator. Even if the temp sensor is mounted in the block it would extend through the block into a coolant passage. I think the temp sensor on this car is in the thermostat housing, right where an air bubble would form (isn't there a bleed screw there also)?. The sensor will not read the temp. in air, it needs to be basically immersed in fluid.

Thanks for your comments. I honestly did just want to know what you guys thought, especially the mechanics among the bunch. I don’t want to immediately jump to blame the mechanic, but I do want to know what I can expect. I accept the risk I took by doing the job myself, and my ego took a pretty solid blow on the whole ordeal. Sometimes an education is expensive.

Turned to the experts to fix your botch. They corrected your mistake as requested. They did not address the cooling system because they did not touch it.

@BustedKnuckles‌ I can understand that to a degree. When I first brought the car in, though, their whole thing was “we can correct the mistake you say you made (timing is off), or we can do a thorough inspection and make sure we’re catching all the problems.” I told them to go ahead with the inspection. I didn’t want something like this happening. If I had taken it to them and said “nope, I’m trying to save money, fix the timing”, that’s another story to me.

Once they fixed your mistake, you should have finished the job

@BustedKnuckles‌ point taken.

Generally speaking, there are usually some signs, even subtle ones, of an overheating engine no matter what the temp gauge is doing.

@ok4450‌ like what? I didn’t really notice any signs until the engine started smoking.

If the engine oil was low when you picked the car up would you expect them to have corrected that too?

@asemaster‌ haha yeah, I would have expected them to check the fluid levels before they gave the car back to me. Maybe I’m just high maintenance.

Having said that, here we drive every car after we're done doing anything under the hood other than just an oil change. Just to make sure we didn't miss any problems or create new ones.

@asemaster‌ well, you’re one of the good ones. It’s possible the shop did take it for a spin and didn’t notice anything. I drove it for 20 minutes before it shut down.

And, before the OP concludes that I am a mechanic or an "industry insider"--no on both counts.

@VDCdriver‌ Not my conclusion at all - I expect an honest mechanic to be the first one to call out another who is being sloppy and making them look bad.

As it turns out, the shop owner was either more sympathetic to my argument than you guys, or felt guilty for the result. He offered $400 off the total repair.

No one here got to look at, or inspect your car. All anyone here can do is read your post and gather info from you.
If the owner of the shop offered $400 off the bill to fix the problem…then he knows more than we do. You may have offered him just that little more info than anyone here received, or they gathered the info because the car is right there in front of them.

Glad they are willing to give you a break.

Yosemite

if they said they would do a thorough inspection, that changes things completely in my view

Do you mean they offered you $400 off the job to re-time the existing timing belt? I can’t see that job costing much more than $400. Aligning a timing belt is like dialing a combination lock, provided you know how, not very time consuming. It does take some time to remove the covers, and probably have to remove the crank pulley, but still not that much time for a trained mechanic.

Or by $400 off, do you mean off the cost of fixing whatever’s now broken?

On who’s responsible, I can see both sides of the issue I guess. It depends on what exactly the agreement was between you and the shop was at the time they agreed to look into the problem for you. If they said they’d do a thorough inspection of everything involved with a timing belt change, then that would be one thing. If they said they’d find out why it wouldn’t start, that would be another.

I’m a DIY’er and did a timing belt job on my Corolla quite a while ago. I made a tool out of a piece of plywood and some wood screws to hold the crankshaft pulley still while I turned the bolt. On the Corolla there must be a pin-tool mechanics use for this job, as the pulley has two holes drilled in it. I just made my own pin-tool is all.

On aligning the timing marks. This is something where you need the factory service manual or equivalent so there is no ambiguity on how to do it. Ray has said on the show if the timing belt extends over two camshaft pulleys (in addition to the crank pulley) it is considerably more difficult to align the marks than over just one camshaft pulley (like on my 4AFE Corolla).

One more thing, there’s some possibility the original misalignment caused the valves to either collide with other valves or with pistons, and that might be related to the problems you subsequently experienced. If you go ahead with a head resurfacing and new head gasket, that can be determined then.

It is good to know that they extended you some good will. bottom line is that you are always responsible for your car. this hybrid situation of their repair and your repair does open up a gap in responsibility.

your mechanic is one to keep, as they certainly stepped up on a joint mistake.

@Yosemite‌ true enough, I’m not expecting anyone here to fix the situation, I just wanted to get a second (or tenth) opinion based on hearing my story. Fact is, while no one here got to see behind the scenes, I didn’t get to see behind the scenes of the shop, either. They could have done a half-assed job, left things out, or tried to cut corners. I haven’t worked in a shop so I wanted the opinion of some guys who have.

@GeorgeSanJose‌ $400 off the extra repairs (replace radiator, head gasket, cylinder head machining) - billed at about $1300. The previous timing job was $350.

Your homemade leverage system sounds very similar to what I ended up constructing to get that crankshaft bolt off! Boy, that was a doozy.

If they said they'd do a thorough inspection of everything involved with a timing belt change, then that would be one thing. If they said they'd find out why it wouldn't start, that would be another.

When I took them the car, I told them the work that I’d done (including replacing the water pump, which is when some of the radiator fluid leaked out, though in fairness I didn’t explicitly mention the fluid leaking). I said “I am pretty sure the timing is off.” They said “We don’t want to just fix the problem that you think the car is having. We want to make sure that there aren’t other issues at play here.” That was why I authorized the inspection, to make sure they would tie up loose ends. (This was the argument that seemed to sway the shop owner the most.)

your mechanic is one to keep, as they certainly stepped up on a joint mistake.

@gdawgs‌ I appreciate the sentiment. I don't really have any ill will against the shop owner - he stepped up and tried his best to make me happy.

UPDATE since the repairs: The car’s been fine for the last couple of weeks since I picked it up - except for a scraping noise I noticed as I was driving down the road, but only above 35mph. Couldn’t figure it out, until I looked in the wheel well and discovered that they hadn’t buttoned up the undercarriage - it was dragging and had gotten chewed up pretty badly by the tire…

Bottom line, in my opinion, is they are quality mechanics on a job from point A to point B. If I know exactly what the issue is, and need it done well, then I might consider them. But with any repair, a point C could come up, or could be waiting to pop up right around the corner. If I can’t trust a mechanic to find that point C before it wrecks my car, or at least give me an indication that something MAY be coming and to look out for it, then I’m not going to feel confident with any of their repairs in the future.

You should tell the shop owner about their staff forgetting to properly re-fasten the under-engine shield (I presume that is what you mean) . The staff is responsible for returning the car to the owner in at least the same condition it was when it was brought in. If one of the staff there forgets to reinstall the engine shield, what if next time they forget to tighten the lug nuts on one of the wheels?

I’m not saying mechanics should never make mistakes like this, but the shop owner should be made aware so they can institute training measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s a safety and liability issue for the shop owner, if nothing else.