The techs are getting paid, don't worry, haha. My father works at a Chevy dealership and since he is bringing the car in to have work done, he is billed less than the regular labor rate that customers get. He loves working there and he's friends with basically everyone, haha. But I'll probably still buy them a huge box of donuts or a gift certificate for a local place that has delivery. Dad occasionally brings the guys at our local A&A Auto Store a box of Dunkin Donuts because they take care of his needs whenever he calls.
I don't think I made it super clear about the circumstances of me buying this car, so I'll try to elaborate here.
My dad bought his '99 Z28 at a garage that was originally started by one of his family members way back when. It is now owned by someone else, but my dad is still friends with them and the guys that work there. I don't know if the car was owned by the garage or not but my dad bought it when it was being stored at that garage. They put a new exhaust on my dad's Z28.
After my dad purchased his, and I drove it, I really enjoyed it even though it was a little rough and still needed some work. Dad bought it as a project car, not as a pristine daily driver that didn't need any work. It does need work but he's doing it himself, besides having the exhaust installed which he can't do at home.
One day when we were out driving, he mentioned that there were four other 4th gen Camaros at this garage, and asked if I wanted to go up and see them. I did so we drove up there. I was just looking at them initially, wasn't really looking to buy another car right now. I did have the Camaro on my "wishlist" along with the Firebird and a couple other makes/models of similar cars.
The four 4th gens consisted of a black '95, a silver '97, a red '00 and my silver '98. All V6 engines I believe.
The black one had some stuff taken out of the interior and also had no interior power (nothing that had power, like the stereo, windows, locks, lights, gauges etc would power on). So those were out. The silver '97 had flat tires because it had been sitting for a while, and had scratches and more body damage than mine does; was owned by someone else who wanted too much for what it was, because "it's a 30th anniversary edition" even though it wasn't. It was just made in 1997 which was the 30th anniversary year for the Camaro. So I wasn't about to deal with someone like that. The red one was, at the very least, painted to look like a 35th anniversary edition. But you could clearly see that it had been repainted, and not well. So no for that one, too.
Which left my silver '98. Out of the four it was in the best condition, had been sitting for the least amount of time and seemed to run well when my dad test drove it (I was not present for that). It was inspected as well as had an emissions sticker. I found this out later, but before I bought the car - that the owner of the car was the garage owner's nephew who lived in Harrisburg. He had it for 6 months, didn't like the way it drove and wanted to sell it. The original starting price was $2500.
So over the next few weeks I went to look at it again with my dad. I drove it, and I knew because the exhaust wasn't secured that it made a banging noise in the back. It seemed to drive fine, maybe a little rough, but most of the road I drove it on was kinda bad and full of cracks and potholes. I didn't blame the car for it. The only thing I didn't like was the radio, the cracks in the dash, the headliner falling down. The shifter was a little hard to take out of park. Whatever, that stuff is fixable.
At this point I was pretty comfortable with buying a second car and this was at the top of my list. I also looked at a '94 that had been hit by a deer (the deer charged the driver's side and destroyed the driver's door, window and mirror), but the damage was too great for the price ($1200) so I passed on that. Wasn't worth all the broken glass, ruined body panels on the entire left side and the fact that it was a 3.4L kinda turned me off to it.
After speaking with one of the guys who worked there, who had installed the exhaust on my dad's car, for about a week, we agreed and worked the price down to $1700, plus a set of tires and wheels, and we also agreed that if I purchased the car he would fix the exhaust, which had a broken hanger and was rattling around. Simple enough fix, right? Especially for a guy who had done this before?
I did not get it on a lift, though I did ask the guy to do a pre-purchase inspection for me, which he never did (but didn't try to charge me for). I took his word that the car was in sound shape, because he told me (paraphrasing here) "Everything on this car is fine except that exhaust, which I can fix if/when someone buys it". The guy has been working on cars for years, has worked on Camaros, is my dad's friend, why would he lie to me, right? So I took his word.
So, I bought the car. Got all the legal stuff done. I informed the mechanic (the guy I mentioned in the above paragraph) and he said he'd get the exhaust done, and I could come pick it up once he got that and the tires/wheels delivered and installed. I figured, like, a week or so for him to get that done. He kept in touch with me on the tires and wheels. They had three of the wheels in storage and he said he'd pull a wheel off of the black '95 for the fourth one, since it wasn't going anywhere soon. I also asked him to look for a grille insert, the trim that goes around the driver's side door handle, some interior panel clips for the trunk plastic, etc.
Two weeks go by. Every time I talk to him there's an excuse to why it's not done or he didn't have time to do it. The tires had been delivered, but he made up some excuse as to why he couldn't jack that black car up, take the wheel off and put my new tire on it (something about needing a key?! Whatever). That took another 4 days before that got done. Somewhere in there the exhaust got fixed, too. Didn't do any of the other things I asked for.
FINALLY, I told him I was coming up to get it the weekend after. He said everything was good, "the car runs great, you're gonna love it, it rides so much nicer with those new wheels and tires". I went to pick it up with my dad. I was told the keys were in the center console and I could come get it whenever. No one was at the garage that day. I dropped my money off in the after-hours slot, I got in the car and upon startup it started VIBRATING to all holy hell. "Well, that's weird", I said to myself. Tried shifting out of park (it's an AT, just the gear selector shifter) and Jesus H Christ was it hard to move. The button WOULD NOT go down all the way. Finally I got it to though, and after that it moved freely on its own. It felt...weird when it shifted into drive. Took a good two seconds to shift, which was weird as well. Whatever, it's been sitting for 6 months, it's gonna drive rough for a while, right? Drove rough all the way home, any time I slowed down or came to a stop, the whole car RUMBLED in the most scary, angry way possible. I thought it was going to stall out or throw a piston through the hood, I had no idea what was going on. The exhaust wasn't banging around like before, though! Haha.
Get it down to town, stop at the gas station, go to shift the car out of park again, and AGAIN it's near impossible to shift. Yeesh. Probably just needs the shifter/parking cable greased up, I thought. We go to the car wash because this car sat outside all winter and needed a wash badly. HOLY CRAP was that car dirty. Dirt pouring out of every crease and crack in the body. It was actually kind of gross and I don't get grossed out easily.
After that was when I got on my belly and took a look under the rear of my new car, and saw that shitty exhaust "fix". I took a photo and showed it to my dad, and he was instantly outraged. He trusted this guy to fix his daughter's car! If I was in his position I would have been angry, too. But I'm the daughter in the situation, haha.
So, we take it home, back it onto the stands and my dad sees all kinds of hell going on under the car. He apologized for not personally going to the garage, having them put it on the lift and looking it over with the mechanic. In hindsight I wish he would have, but that wasn't his job, and I never asked him to, so it's not his fault at all. It's my fault for not having them do that. But who was I to not trust my dad's friend, who KNOWS Camaros and had worked on my dad's with no problems?
Dad gets under there and does everything he can to re-seat, tighten, bolt down everything that's loose under there, including a heat shield and the rig job exhaust hanger. It sounds way better after he does that, but the car still runs strangely and rides very rough. I fix up the interior with the things I ordered: dash pad, new stereo. Didn't put the speakers in yet because I didn't have enough time that weekend to do it at my parents' house. I live in a city and don't have anywhere to work on my car, so any work I do on it has to get done at mom and dad's, lol. Dad has his own little garage where he does engine work for sprint cars so it's a pretty good setup for a DIY'er.
I drive home expecting to come back up next weekend and have the guys at the dealership work on the car, and get parts/change fluids/do some stuff dad and I can't do at home (like fixing the exhaust), on Saturday, and hopefully that's all the mechanical work it needs. Well, boy was I wrong. I'm about an hour away from home when it finally gets too dark to not need headlights and gauge lights. In comes the panic when I can't get the lights to turn on. Like, real panic. It's dark and I can't see. I pull over and try changing fuses and stuff but I didn't figure it out until I stopped being an idiot and flicked the high beam control on the windshield wiper stalk. Fast forward to last week when I took it to the dealership and they found all the causes of my car's poor performance.
So...TL;DR: I trusted a mechanic at a garage that the car was fine before I bought it, and didn't look at it more closely like I should have, which is my fault I suppose. But I'm still kind of upset that the guy lied to me about problems he knew of and did shitty work on my car.
And you don't wanna see my fingernails; they're still recovering from installing the stereo and cleaning the interior of the car. I still have scabs on my knuckles too, haha. I think that's proof enough I ain't afraid to work on my own car. I've done lots of stuff on my Honda with Dad; last thing we did was plug wires and a new distributor cap/rotor, and cleaned the throttle body. My first time doing any of those.
I'm having Halye's Garage put him on the lift today to fix that exhaust rattle and change oil/reset the low oil switch.
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