my '02 Forester with standard shift (112K miles) has for some time made a clunking noise in the front CV axles on tight manuvers like parking, etc., once driven for a while but mechanics, even ‘Subaru gurus’ have never been able to tell me what it was. Recently during an 800 mile highway trip a transmission noise developed and the local AAMCO shop diagnosed a chipped gear, requiring a gearbox rebuild ($2,500). Today they called to say the problem was a destroyed viscuous coupler at the rear of the gearbox ($2,200) “and as the gearbox is out”, clutch replacement ($290). My question is, since the problem was misdiagnosed, should I pay the labor for having the gearbox removed/replaced when in fact it had nothing to do with the geaarbox ?
Normally, I would say that step #1 is to take the car to a competent mechanic (that category almost never includes the scam-artists at AAMCO), but it appears that they do have you by the short hairs at this point. If you want to take it elsewhere, you will have to pay SCAAMCO big bucks to put everything back together. Thus, you have a major dilemma, IMHO.
Unless your car was driven for more than a couple of hundred miles with mismatched tires, it is not likely that the viscous coupler has failed. Have you ever driven the car with mismatched (different brands/sizes/amount of tread wear) tires?
I think VDC said it best, at this point your screwed… You can ask them nicley to put everything in boxes and have your car towed elseware, but who knows whats wrong at this point. I would talk with the mgr and ask him for a discount, also ask him why the viscuous coupler wsa diag bad? What did they do to Diag it? We all hate AAMCO on this board as we have seen to many bad storys about them.
+1 on dragging it out of Scaamco ASAP!