IMHO you should definitely get your money back, the whole $315. They clearly did not do the job right and caused even more damage.
Suggestion: order the correct coils and connector online, wire in a new connector matching the wiring colors with those in the harness and replace the coils with the correct ones I’d replace the plug too, as there may be carbon residue down in the tibe and that can act as a resistive coating.
Then take all your odcumentation back to the dealer, including the photos and a description of the damage, and try to get your money refunded.
Sounds like a good idea. I found the part number that I need on Nissan’s website and found the box that the dealer left the old part in, and they have the same number. I had assumed that this box had been the one that the new part had come in, but could I be wrong? Or would the appearance of the part just change that much over the years? To really complicate things, the old part inside the box also has the correct part number printed across the top, but the new part in my car has no part number visible whatsoever.
Is there any other way to determine the number of the part in my car? And if it is the correct part, why would they do all that rewiring? Thanks.
UPDATE: Had it towed back to the mechanic. They’ve determined that the “unwanted acceleration” was caused by one of the older starter coils getting rusted into place. It ended up shorting out and causing the fire.
Right now they’re working on fixing it, which involves a lot of rewiring. However, they say that it’s going to need a total of four identical new coils (either three new ones that are exactly the same as the recently replaced one or four entirely new ones). I’ll probably pick them up from a junkyard when I make a trip back to the mainland next month. Initially, he said that it definitely didn’t need a new computer, but now he says that it may need one, but he can’t be certain. At first he said that he had never even heard of a car’s computer having problems while still functioning, but now he says that it could be just partially broken. We can’t know if I’ll need it until after the rewiring has been done and the coils replaced. Problem is, the cheapest new computer that I can find is around $300 and I don’t want to pay for one unless I know I need it.
So my questions now are:
- Is it likely or even possible for a computer to partially break like that?
- What’s the best way to find if the computer needs to be replaced or not? Will it damage other components if it’s not working right?
- I still need to know how to determine the part number of the new coil.
I got a call from the mechanic at the dealer who had worked on it there. I asked why he had rewired everything the way he had, and he said that it was to try and get a reading from the diagnostic machine, not to try and make a misplaced coil work. I told him that I’ve been told that changing the wring may cause the machine to give a bad reading, which he had never heard before.
Thanks!