Expert Car Care

Reviews 3

ST

Steve Gregory

Misdiagnosed misfire as a bad coil and installed spark plug wires that didnt fit my car. After a day and a half they called back telling me they found out it was a broken spring in the head and it would take another two days to fix now its taken 4 trips back for fixes to their repair. By the by, click on the user names of the 5 star reviews, why do they only have one review each to their name? Hmmmm. . . I picked the car up and immediately noticed a static "ticking" noise coming from my radio that went up and down with engine RPMs. As a guy that worked installing car radios through college I immediately suspected spark plug wires that were improperly grounded. I popped the hood and was surprised to see my Ford wires were missing and had been replaced with some no-name off brand wire. I returned the next day and asked them to look into the problem. They told me there would be a $40 diagnostic fee for the electrical system. I told them that was unacceptable, as Im only asking them to look into a problem that started after they made an $1,100 repair. After talking with the manager they agreed that they would "rule out" the spark plug wires as the cause for no charge. After waiting for over two hours they pulled the car into the garage and checked it out in less than 10 minutes telling me the wires are fine and they didnt hear the ticking noise. I went to my car and was surprised the noise was gone. Unfortunately less than two blocks later the noise was back. I returned two days later and asked them to check again. After another long wait they again told me everything was fine and it was definitely not the wires, likely a bad alternator or bad ground on the battery. I decided to take a peek myself that weekend. With my wife sitting in the car listening to the radio I touched each wire on the coil. I found one wire just barely seated itself onto the coil and when I touched it, it immediately made the radio either staticky or crystal clear. Why couldnt these guys find this? I returned and showed the shop the problem, after much more debate than should have taken place and hours of waiting I got them to install a new set of wires. When the manager handed me the keys he said, "these dont fit great either, you probably will want to buy some better wires on your own." Long story short, I gave him a piece of my mind about secretly installing $20 no name wires that dont fit and then telling the owner to deal with it after a $1,100 repair. To top it off, 6 months later, the head gasket they installed started leaking. Had I not been on the ball about the leak they could have easily ruined my entire engine. New head gaskets failing is very rare, just about the only cause is improper install in that the head bolts werent torqued in the proper order but thats just an educated guess. To their credit they did install a new head gasket under warranty - but it did take them nearly a week to get it done.

ZA

Zack Shanklin

So I had my 2004 dodge neon towed to this shop because it was misfiring and which caused the car to have a loss of power making it undrivable. Even though it was undrivable THE CAR WOULD START WITHOUT ANY ISSUES. After a 50$ diagnostic, I was told at that they would need to replace the ignition coil, spark plugs, sparkplug wires, and clean the throttle body for around 500$. I got a quote from another local mechanic for this same work for 360$ but decided it wasnt worth the hassle of having my car towed from one mechanic to the other. So after about 6 hours I get another call saying that they had the car working at one point, but it went back to how it originally was and they concluded that I needed to get and new vehicle computer and have everything rewired for 2500$-3000$. After saying no to that they agreed to take out everything new that they put in to "save me money" other than the spark plugs. So they charged me 100$ in the end and said the car was in the same condition as when I first brought it in which was only two cylinders were firing, but as I was waiting to get the car towed back to my home I went to turn on the ac and THE CAR WOULDNT EVEN START ANYMORE. So I had to pay a these people 100$ to get a car back in worse condition then when I first brought it in, and as far as them saying I need a whole new vehicle computer I just dont believe them. I had a full safety check done on my car only 4 months ago and nothing about messed up wiring to the vehicle computer came up. I think to further prove these people are liars is when talking to them on the phone they were saying multiple error codes were coming up for the ignition and for some reason the catalytic converter, but when I asked to see the technician notes there was only one error code written down "P2302" which is a fault in the ignition coil. DO NOT USE THESE PEOPLE AS YOUR MECHANIC, you will only get inflated repair costs and possibly a car in worse condition than when you first brought it in. EDIT: A few days later and I got a full refund but keeping the 1 star review because I did bring in a running car and left with one that wouldnt start. EDIT 2: After bringing my car back to my Fort Lauderdale mechanic it was determined that my car computer did need to get replaced. It only ended up costing 600$ for a brand new car computer + installation which is way better than the estimated cost of 2500+$ from expert car care. It was also strongly suggested by my usual mechanic that my car engine wasnt misfiring because of a fried car computer, and that it was very likely that the mechanics at expert car care shorted out the car computer while trying to replace the spark plugs or ignition coil. End story... Dont bring your car to expert car care for anything more than a tire or oil change.

A

Anonymous User

I have a 1963 Chevy C20 pick up that had some rust problems that I was looking to get fixed before they got too far out of control. I had looked at having a few different shops do the work on the truck before Expert Car Care was recommended to me by a friend. I was hesitant about having the work done there because I live in Fort Lauderdale and their body shop in Oviedo was going to do the work. All of the other shops that I had checked out were local, and using a shop four hours away from my home seemed a little crazy. After speaking with the owner of the shop, James, and Manny the body and paint guy, all of my concerns were put to rest and I decided to have Expert do the work. My wife and I made a vacation weekend of it and each drove a vehicle to Orlando to drop off the truck. From there they handled everything very professionally. As the work progressed, they emailed pictures to me so I could see everything that was being done. This really pleased me as it made me feel as though the shop was local because I could see how things were progressing at any time I wished. It also created a pictorial log of the paint and body work that I have added to my restoration log. The work was completed in a timely manner and is beautiful. I get compliments on the truck every time I take it for a drive. James went way out of his way to get the truck to me after the work was completed. When James called me to let me know that the truck was ready to pick up, I let him know that I was not going to be able to make it up to Oviedo to pick it up for a week or so. James called me back in about an hour and asked me what I was doing later that evening. He put the truck on a trailer and delivered it to me. I am so happy with the work that was done and the personalized service that I received, that I am having Expert Car Care do restoration work on my International Scout as well. Thank you so much James, Manny, and everyone else at Expert who played a part in getting my truck looking good once again, and I am looking forward to seeing how nice my Scout turns out.

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