It sure sounds like a failing wheel speed sensor for the ABS. This car has not only ABS but stability control that works through the ABS system. It was required as standard on the car because it failed the “Moose Test” in Europe. Google it if curious. The system will actuate without your foot on the brake pedal. If a wheel speed sensor is dropping out or the sensor ring is damaged or covered with metal bits, this could easily happen. Your brakes were just done so the rings aren’t likely just dirty. The mechanic needs to test each wheel speed sensor and check for cracks.
OP has a Smart
I think it was the Mercedes-Benz A-class that originally failed the “Moose Test” and later passed the test, once it was equipped with ESP . . . aka stability control
AFAIK . . . the smart and A-class are completely different cars. And I believe the smart is much smaller than the A-class
I was still living in Europe at the time and clearly remember reading the magazines, and I also remember there were a lot of jokes about the Moose test and the A-class. I don’t recall anything about any smart car failing the test at that time
db4690 is spot on.
Thanks for all of the advice so far.
The other (not directly related) factors that make me question the shop a bit are:
- It seems that while doing my requested alignment, they found that one of the front suspension coil springs was completely broken near one end and replaced both in front. Seems to be a prudent repair, but they did not notify me until way after the fact
- When driving at highway speed, I noticed that the alignment still seems off. Car will pull out of the lane within a few seconds on the highway if the wheel is not held to one side to compensate. They don’t do the alignment in house so they took it down the street for that. His response was something like “well the alignment report shows that it was within tolerance, so if I take it back to the alignment guy and he says it is still within tolerance, are you going to pay for that?”. I am not super familiar with the language of the alignment report that they gave me, but to me it is clear that shifting out of the lane so quickly is a problem.
- I asked them to fix the A/C, which has stopped cooling. They didn’t mention until they were done that apparently it is difficult to fix an A/C when the outside ambient temperature is in the 50’s F or so. I didn’t realize that. So they asked me to bring the car back later for the A/C when it was warmer outside. I figured they could easily fake the car’s thermostat with a heat gun or something to be able to fix this at any time of year.
It is difficult to test the performance of an AC system in cool weather regardless of tricking a thermostat. There are temperature/pressure charts to compare actual to designed performance and I have found that they are not worthwhile until the ambient temperature is above 85*F. And using an external heat source to ‘fool’ the thermostats can result in compressor damage due to poor lubrication. But again I am not familiar with the specifics of that car, just commenting based on industry common technology. I understand that electrically powered compressors are on some imports now and I am totally out of the loop on those.
I have bounced around the web looking at that car and at 71 mpg from a car that seems solid enough driven on urban and suburban streets at <45 mph I might take a close look at one if I were commuting to work. It seems quite minimalist and well made which suits me.
You definitely need to find a different shop
I’m quite certain the coil springs and labor associated with that, exceeded the initial estimate which you agreed to. Going beyond that requires the customer’s written authorization. What they did is highly irregular. And if you “went after them” the judge/arbitrator would quite possibly/probably find in your favor
They clearly did NOT verify the vehicle handled okay after getting the car back from the other shop. A quick road test on the freeway would have told them all is NOT well
They’re probably not competent enough or properly equipped to properly diagnose and repair your ac concerns
Here are some of the “cardinal rules”
Get written authorization before starting a repair
Get written authorization before exceeding the initial estimate
Understand the customer’s complaint
Verify the customer’s complaint
Repair the customer’s complaint
Verify the repair
Clearly they did not adhere to all of the “rules”
@scootley Are you saying that they called you with the price to replace the front coil springs after these were replaced?
@Nevada_545: Yes. They gave me an initial estimate before discovering the coil spring issue. Then after they had discovered the coil spring issue, fixed it, fixed other things I had requested, and gotten the car ready for pickup, only then did they call me and say something like “your car is ready for pickup, and we found and fixed this coil spring issue which will cost more”
I said why didn’t you call me and he claims he tried to but I didn’t answer and he didn’t leave a message, even though he had left messages previously to discuss other topics.
He only charged me for 1 hour of labor for the coil spring but says it took way more than that. I think that was his way of compensating for the fact that they fixed it without my authorization. I paid for the coil spring parts as well though.
They actually didn’t initially break down labor costs on my bill and had one lump sum (which itself was wrong because arithmetic of parts+labor did not equal the total) So I had to sit and ask him to give me the line by line labor costs which I wrote onto the invoice myself. While I was doing that he was like “oh don’t write that on there because you will screw up my paperwork”.
Does anyone else hear the hint of “creative book keeping?”
But in small service businesses it’s difficult to avoid some “literary license.”
A repair shop should always obtain authorization before performing a repair.
On the other hand that shop must have felt they had a trusting relationship with you, performing an unauthorized repair is a free repair in my state. Replacing the front coil springs is normally 2.5 to 3.0 hours of labor, if someone squawked about a one hour labor charge for this they would no longer be on a family type relationship.
Concur w @Nevada_545 about the replacement of the broken suspension part. They shouldn’t have done that without asking permission from the car owner. Unless of course you told them, or implied to them, to fix whatever needs fixing. Sometimes a shop develops a long term relationship w/a customer and will just fix things that are obviously broken without asking. B/c everytime they’ve asked in the past the owner says “oh, you don’t need to ask me for permission to fix something that’s obviously broken”. But that’s not the usual course of events in auto repair. If you don’t appreciate that they did that work w/out your permission, suggest you have a chat with the manager there about your service expectations. I expect they’ll cooperate once they know what you expect.
About ongoing repairs. When the customer reports a symptom, sometimes it makes more sense from a dollar cost point of view to fix the most likely culprit first, and see if that fixes the entire symptom. The alternative would be to do all the tests for every possible culprit, and fix everything found to be working incorrectly the first time. But that might cost much more than the iterative approach, as the iterative approach eliminates a lot of the dismantling, testing, and putting everything back together otherwise required. The downside is you have to return to the shop sometimes. It’s a compromise. If you have more money than time, tell the shop this fact, and that you want them to do everything possible to solve the problem on the first iteration, no matter the cost to you.
The pulling problem might be the tires too. You could try moving them around temporarily to see if the pulling is related to where the tires are positioned on the car. It seems to me the shop tech should have asked to go with you for a test drive to confirm the pulling. Did that happen? There’d likely be charge for that of course. Are you willing to pay for them to do that?