D'oh! HG dead - have to sell

[Clutchee]

Glad to see you have your rig back but what was the diag. of the issue?

As far as the dealership.....your not calling anyone-don't you think the better business folks need to know this......
The manager must already know whats going on he allowing it to happen

The next person to bring a cruiser in there may not be so lucky

 

[MoJ]

What was the independent mechanic's diagnosis and fix?


Whatever it was and if it turns out to be solid I would need to have a face to face meeting with the service manager, his boss, and most likely track down the owner/ultimate authority at the dealership. I've got a bad habit of not being able to let go of stuff like that. Again, that's only if it proves to be without doubt that they were either 100% clueless or 100% crooks. Someone should lose their job.

 

[alia176]

Just drive it over to the dealership and show the engine purring to the service manager!!

 

[e9999]

excellent!

tell us the Dealer's name! (interestingly, if they didn't encourage you to fix it but rather to scrap it, they may have been incompetent, not greedy)

better yet, tell us the independent, he's a (rare) good guy.


and dammit, you should have sold it to me for $1K as you were thinking....

 

[Ruadhrigh]

Just drive it over to the dealership and show the engine purring to the service manager!!

X2


but ask them if they can still do the work....



good job getting the second opinion. and give that mechanic some

 

[Cruiserdrew]

That needs to go to the Better Business Bureau or the Attorney General in your state. They tried to scare you and rip you off hoping you were not car savy. That, is fraud. I would not play nice with these assholes.

 

[Ambet]

Mr. Grolar, you can have a good nighty sleep now congratulations!!!!

 

[Fly Rod]

WOW! This is truely a sad statement on how dangerous dealers truely are. I would make sure the owner got a friendly letter letting him know exactly what his service department is up to.

 

[ktmracer01]

dont sell it! you will find yourself falling very short of the value for your cruiser if you sell it in this condition. people like myself look for opportunities like this one to buy vehicles cheap.

too bad you arent in the Lubbock, TX are. I'd be more than willing to donate my home garage and tools to help out a fellow mudder. if you wanted to supply the beer that'd be plenty to assist someone who shares the same Cruiser addiction. this goes the same for anyone else out there. I've always got an extra room and garage space if anyone is ever in my part of the woods.

 

[latinoguy]

That needs to go to the Better Business Bureau or the Attorney General in your state. They tried to scare you and rip you off hoping you were not car savy. That, is fraud. I would not play nice with these assholes.

x2. These guys are fraudulent. At least this will start a paper trail..a history of bad business practices....

 

[mainemike]

That's really interesting to hear you got a written report stating the compression figures were so low they recommended scrapping it. I would ask the mechanic who fixed it, who you trust, to explain how the dealer could be so far off base. Then I would visit the dealership service manager and simply ask for his explanation. Just be nice, no reason to threaten their reputation - you're just an honest customer wondering how the second opinion, and resulting low-buck repair, could be so different from their assessment. How did they arrive at their work estimate? What, exactly, did they look at and measure? See what they have to say... and of course, please let us, and the entire LC world, know.

To triple check your HG, have your new mechanic do a bubble test and send a sample of your next oil change to Blackstone.

 

[Grolar]

Yep, I just sent my e-mail. But the better business bureau sounds tempting

I'd rather not give away the name of the dealership yet, but it's the second time in a row that I have a very bad experience with my 80 in a Toyota shop, the first being in St George, UT in late 2006: the EFI fuse was blowing on and on and they couldn't find the source for the malfunction. Thanks to 'mud, I solved the problem when the rig broke down once again in Kanab, UT: a loose wire touching the driveline. Not rocket science but enough to keep seasoned mechanics puzzled, apparently. But I was quite furious then, as I was traveling with a very young kid in the Utahn wilderness and could have gotten stuck in the middle of nowhere, or even in the city of Warren Jeffs

 

[EricG]

So what was the problem that your independent found & fixed??

 

[Beowulf]

... the first being in St George, UT in late 2006: the EFI fuse was blowing on and on and they couldn't find the source for the malfunction. Thanks to 'mud, I solved the problem when the rig broke down once again in Kanab, UT: a loose wire touching the driveline.

I remember that and I believe someone identified this as your problem very early in the thread. Seems you had trouble getting internet access to read our replies and that delayed your repair a day or so.

It is good to hear you may have dodged a bullet. I agree 100% with mainemike's post suggesting that you get a Blackstone and a bubble test ASAP. If those both come back clean then you are pretty safe to assume your truck is OK.

-B-

 

[M-80]

Yep, I just sent my e-mail. But the better business bureau sounds tempting

I'd rather not give away the name of the dealership yet, but it's the second time in a row that I have a very bad experience with my 80 in a Toyota shop, the first being in St George, UT in late 2006: the EFI fuse was blowing on and on and they couldn't find the source for the malfunction. Thanks to 'mud, I solved the problem when the rig broke down once again in Kanab, UT: a loose wire touching the driveline. Not rocket science but enough to keep seasoned mechanics puzzled, apparently. But I was quite furious then, as I was traveling with a very young kid in the Utahn wilderness and could have gotten stuck in the middle of nowhere, or even in the city of Warren Jeffs

The blown EFI fuse is a problem my 80 had. It really sucks and is scary as heck when your truck DIES right in the middle of morning traffic in Dallas. Mud helped diagnose that one for me, and I have been hooked every since.

As far as the dealership goes, I would follow through on the complaint. I regret that I didn't push my bad dealership experience further. I filled out the customer satisfaction survey and added several pages of comments. I was really discouraged when I never received a reply or a call back from anyone. I HAVE convinced five or more people NOT to do business with this particular dealership. Several of these people were potential buyers of Tundras, Sequoias, etc and would have serviced them there and were already servicing there then present Toyotas at that service deptartment.

On a positive note, I can still hear the dismay in the service manager's voice when I informed him I could get the exact OEM part that he just quoted me a price of over $1000 from C-Dan for $400 or $500.


We still want to know what your ace mechanic diagnosed.

 

[fj80toyman]

Grolar, I read the whole post with interest. I'm glad it worked out for you. You know, this sounds a bit like something my parts guy told me the other day.

Apparently, there's technicians at dealerships on the lookout for different rigs for their 'customers', so they pronounce the death sentence on a particular rig, buy at a low-ball price (recycle it?) when the customer just wants to get rid of it, get it running right and make a profit on it. Unscrupulous but reality I guess. It's always worth getting a second opinion.

My driveway is full right now, but you're always welcome to ring me up if you need some help or just want to bench 'wheel. I keep threatening to arrange a local meet-n-greet, but that all takes time.

On the EFI fuse issue, that happened to me as well, in the middle of an intersection down here - crap! Took me a couple days to figure that one out, but I think I fixed it for good. It's the power wire for the O2 sensor.

Dan.

 

[mainemike]

I'd rather not give away the name of the dealership yet, but it's the second time in a row that I have a very bad experience with my 80 in a Toyota shop,

I was more interested in the reasoning for the misdiagnosis the service manager may offer, not the specific dealership. I don't like to see shops get slammed on the internet - that info spreads fine on the non-internet local community network. You remember the old ways, when we talked over beers and wrenches?

 

[Mr. Toad]

So what was wrong with it and how was it fixed?

 

[Grolar]

Reviving a semi-old thread. Long story short, I got sick in the past few weeks, couldn't deal with my Cruiser bug. My 80 was resting and taking dust in the back lot.
Even after passing the smog, I noticed that the rig was still running rough when hot.
Anyway, the (independent) mechanic now says that the injectors need to be replaced, as well as some engine and tranny mounts. Then I'll have a rig that will be ready to rumble, hopefully. It'd better be as I'm heading to lake Powell next week with six people on board. Road assistance subscribed as confidence rebuilding will be a long process. But still no HG failure in sight

 

[24HOURSOFNEVADA]

Keep your head up. I bought what I thought to be the cleanest 80 I could find. Two weeks later the HG went (While I was 800 miles from home trying to compete in the Expedition Trophy). It had been at LC Engineering for four months, before a couple of weeks ago when I brought it back. They did the hg replacement but didn't change the rings that had scored the cylinder wall. So much for the hg replacement.

This was after the toy stealership in PHX wanted 6500.00 to 8000.00 to fix things.

They also offered me a "Great Deal" on a tacoma "To get me home."

I could go on, but I won't. Hang in there, there's a lot of great people on this board to help you get by with a little help from your friends.