The new invoice states:
REPLACE SPARK PLUGS 96.82 68.94 165.76
6.00 SPARK PLUG 68.94
01 REPLACE CYLINDERS #1 AND #6 IGNITION COILS 0.00 309.86 309.86
NO LABOR CHARGE: IN CONJUNCTION WITH 0.00
IGNITION COIL REPLACEMENT 0.00
2.00 IGNITION COIL 309.86
MS 0 01 REPLACE AIR FILTER 38.73 20.10 58.83
1.00 AIR FILTER 20.10
01 REPLACE AIR INTAKE TUBE 25.00 59.68 84.68
1.00 AIR
It looks like you are on the right track. Keep an eye on the coolant temperature until you are confident it is never overheating.
It’s not that unusual for a repaired car to develop problems it didn’t have before. It might just be a coincidence is all. And sometimes it isn’t a coincidence. It could be during the prior repairs something went slightly amiss or didn’t get put back together quite correctly. Whether this is the case in your situation it is hard to tell over the internet.
I have a 40 year old Ford truck and more than once when I replaced the ignition rotor doing a tune-up, I broke the new one the first time I try to start the engine. It’s b/c I didn’t push the rotor down quite hard enough onto its shaft. I should know better, after all who’s more an expert than me at fixing my own truck? But it still happens. I just buy another rotor and try again. It’s just part of the older car repair process.
Somewhere on this Car Talk website there’s a good list of objectives for DIY car repairs according to Tom and Ray. Goes something like (1) Don’t hurt yourself; (2) Don’t break something else on the car; (3) etc etc … you’ll have to look up the other two , can’t remember … lol … but the idea is that breaking something else isn’t that uncommon when repairing older cars …
About the best you can do is to find an experienced mechanic who has the appropriate tools and expertise for repairing your specific make/model/year of car. And if the shop is good and honest, stick with them. Ask if they offer a maintenance program, where you bring the car to the shop every 6 months say, or every certain number of miles, and they do all the routine maintenance needed to keep it up to date with the owner’s manual recommendations. That will get the shop on your good side, as they’ll know your car is well maintained and won’t likely develop symptoms due to several problems at once – to be avoided, as this is a time consuming thing to diagnose. Best of luck.
I am reading between the lines here and it would appear that the first mechanic taped up a leaking intake pipe. That might be considered a patch job and not a repair and the customer should have been made aware of it.
You are correct, Rod, on what was done and your words are exactly what the new mechanic stated. My concern is, I just can’t trust what the old mechanic stated. At one point, he stated that they accidentally got some kind of liquid where the spark plugs are, but they cleaned it all up. No clue if that is what caused the coils/etc… to go out or if it was just their time. Lessons learned. Hopefully, I have a more competent and straight forward mechanic now.
Please let us know when your car is running properly again and the total cost to make that happen…
Will do
Yeah sounds like your engine is trying to burn coolant. That would make it stutter and run rough. Unfortunately our cars dont run on water yet! Coolant is leaking through a head gasket into a cylinder Id bet. One thing you can do relatively easy to determine this is check your coolant level (when engine is totally cold). Its probably low. Of course another symptom would be smoke out of the tail pipe.
The car is repaired and operating normally now, all under the day long test of a hot summer day in Texas. The culprit was bad ignition coils which lead to bad spark plugs, not that I have a clue as to what any of that means. The intake tube, the one that was taped up by the previous mechanic, was also replaced. Thanks for the various insights.
Thanks for posting back and closing the thread…it makes sense…When the radiator blew, it drenched the coils (COPS) with hot coolant. These coils simply will not tolerate that.
I like stories with happy endings. This wasn’t exactly THE QUIET MAN with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara living happily ever after, but it was nice!