Toddasaurus
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2018
- Messages
- 3,299
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 113
- Genesis Model Type
- Genesis G70
Right now I'm essentially at a crossroad with my G70 ownership. I'm extremely frustrated, yet feeling incapable of finding my way out of this without being completely and totally screwed over. This is a long post, I'm sorry.
Let me begin.
Problem: Last week I attempted to install my shiny new Lap3 primary downpipes. By doing so I unintentionally sheered off one of my turbo flange studs. When removing the nuts that hold on the downpipe to the turbo itself, the nuts all evidently were totally frozen to the studs, so the entire stud came out with each nut I loosened. Anyway, on the final stud (out of 4) the stud itself broke when it was mostly out - I think this happened because there is so little room to work with, I wasn't really able to come at the nut/stud at a perfectly straight angle, and the ever so slight angle I was able to loosen it from was just enough to break the stud.
I spent a lot of time attempting to remove the broken stud; but, due to having very little space to work with, I couldn't do it. Feeling extremely frustrated and overwhelmed with stress due to not making any progress, I decided to throw in the towel and call my closest Genesis dealership. Initially they told me that their soonest opening to have it looked at would be September 10th, but after talking about what happened they told me to bring it in that same day and they'd try and fit it in their busy schedule.
I used my roadside assistance in my auto insurance to have my car towed to said dealership. As far as I can tell they covered it completely, which was really awesome. Anyway, when I get there the head mechanic comes over and takes a look. He seems really annoyed and is totally judging me - I get it, though, and I probably would too. I mean, this is a brand new car, and I ruined it. That said, I told him exactly what I did - I was straight up honest with him and he could tell how devastated I was, after which he seemed to loosen up a lot. He told me that he will try and see if he can get the stud out, but he may have to replace the entire turbo if it comes down to it. I tell him I understand, as I don't really have any other options at this point. So we go inside the dealership and they ring me up, and the service manager tells me she will call me in the next day or so and give me an estimate on the repairs.
The next day I call the service manager because I hadn't heard from her yet, so I figured I'd just see if she could give me a really rough estimate on the price. She pulls up the price for a new OEM turbo, and it's almost $1500. I figure that's actually pretty reasonable for a brand new turbo on a brand new car. She then tells me that in order to replace the turbo, they have to pull the entire engine. I assumed this would be the case, because as I was looking through the shop manual it described the turbo replacement exactly as that - pull the engine, then you can remove the turbo. She then told me that if they have to do that, that they would need a new bench or table that was capable of holding the engine and tranny, and that they currently don't have an appropriate one at their dealership and she's not sure how much one would cost. I thought to myself, "well, why would I worry about how much it would cost? it's not like I would have to pay for it..." At the end of the call she tells me she'll keep me updated on what happens.
The very next morning she calls me and tells me she has good news - they got the stud out! I breathed a huge sigh of relief thinking my troubles were over. She said they'll put everything back together (ie new studs and they'll even put on the stock downpipe back on for me) and she will let me know when it's done.
Fast forward to today. I get another call from the service manager, she tells me there is a problem. The new studs won't thread in to the turbo, so they tried to re-tap the threads and they're not making any progress. She told me that their mechanic said that the material of the turbo flange is just too hard, that he can't tap it despite his best efforts. She says that the only other way to fix it would be to do the original plan and replace the entire turbo; BUT, they still don't have this special heavy duty table/bench/engine stand or whatever it is that can handle the bigger V6 in my car. She then tells me that they're having trouble getting a hold of one, and that they'd have to buy it. She tells me it is $5,800 just for the table, and it would be on me. As I'm trying to wrap my head around this she tells me that she's trying to see if they can just rent one, or if there is another way around having to buy the thing. I tell her that I can't afford that, along with the cost of labor and a new turbo - to which she starts talking about just how difficult this process is (which I completely get!). She advises me to call my auto insurance and see if they can cover any of it. We finish the phone call.
After the call I decide to call up a few shops. I've used tap and die sets before, but not on an actual turbo flange. First place I call is a machine shop, they say that they could figure it out, but they'd need the turbo out of the car to do it (which just brings me back to my original problem anyway). He then mentions that they could probably just use a helicoil on it - NOPE. I know others have done that on ruined threads in turbo's before, but not worth the risk! I tell him I appreciate his help. I then make another call to a local shop that does performance work and repair work, along with a lot of custom stuff. I explain to him what is going on, and he seems fairly familiar with this sort of thing. I try my best to explain to him just how tight of a workspace it is, so he asks me to text him a picture of it. I hang up and send him the pictures, and he calls back and says that it's hard to tell with just the pictures alone, and that he would have to see it in person to figure it out (which I completely understand). I begin to think that it's worth towing to this other shop and see what this guy thinks. After this, I call my insurance - already knowing what they will say - and guess what? They won't cover any of it. I wasn't surprised, as I didn't expect them to.
So I call back the dealership service manager and tell her that I want to see if I can have another shop work on it. She almost kind of blows up on me! She essentially tells me that nobody else could really do the work on this car because it's so new and unique, and how her mechanic has over 23 years of experience and he's used tap and die sets countless times, he's pulled and replaced and rebuilt countless engines, yada yada yada, and I get nowhere... She is quite the talker, hardly pauses to take a breath, much less allow me to get a word in. Anyway, she then tells me she'll continue to figure out a way to get that table, and in fact, they may not even be able to fix it, so how could anyone else? Also, labor alone would be about $4500.
The total repair cost will be around $10,000. This is something I can't deal with. I could make sacrifices and pay it over time, but I am wondering if that's worth it? I'd have to use my credit card, thus racking up interest.
I want to go up there tomorrow and ask them if they can show me the difficulty they're having. Maybe if I can see for myself that they can't tap those damn threads I would be able to deal with this better, internally.
My Dilemma: Here are my choices.
1) I let the dealer do their thing, and hope the cost ends up, somehow, magically, being substantially less than 10k. If it is, I'll suck it up and pay for it. If not, I would have to sell the car - either to the dealer themselves, or whomever the highest bidder is (ie privately, another dealer for another car, etc).
2) I tell them I'm taking my car back, unfinished, and have this other local shop look at it, and hope they can tap the threads without having to pull the entire engine. This would be a big risk, as chances are low that they could even maneuver a thread tapper in there because there's so little room. If they can't do it, then I'd be back to square one - no, behind square one, because now not only would I have to pay for 2 towing trips, I would make this whole process take even longer.
3) I tell them I'm taking the car to another dealer - despite them being 4.5 hours away - and pay for a tow truck to bring it all the way down there and risk having them tell me the exact same thing, all while having me be out the same amount of money, plus the cost of the extra long tow.
Sigh.... I feel overwhelmed with guilt because this is all my own fault. I ruined my brand new, expensive car, and to fix it may cost a fortune. What would you do if you were in my shoes?
Let me begin.
Problem: Last week I attempted to install my shiny new Lap3 primary downpipes. By doing so I unintentionally sheered off one of my turbo flange studs. When removing the nuts that hold on the downpipe to the turbo itself, the nuts all evidently were totally frozen to the studs, so the entire stud came out with each nut I loosened. Anyway, on the final stud (out of 4) the stud itself broke when it was mostly out - I think this happened because there is so little room to work with, I wasn't really able to come at the nut/stud at a perfectly straight angle, and the ever so slight angle I was able to loosen it from was just enough to break the stud.
I spent a lot of time attempting to remove the broken stud; but, due to having very little space to work with, I couldn't do it. Feeling extremely frustrated and overwhelmed with stress due to not making any progress, I decided to throw in the towel and call my closest Genesis dealership. Initially they told me that their soonest opening to have it looked at would be September 10th, but after talking about what happened they told me to bring it in that same day and they'd try and fit it in their busy schedule.
I used my roadside assistance in my auto insurance to have my car towed to said dealership. As far as I can tell they covered it completely, which was really awesome. Anyway, when I get there the head mechanic comes over and takes a look. He seems really annoyed and is totally judging me - I get it, though, and I probably would too. I mean, this is a brand new car, and I ruined it. That said, I told him exactly what I did - I was straight up honest with him and he could tell how devastated I was, after which he seemed to loosen up a lot. He told me that he will try and see if he can get the stud out, but he may have to replace the entire turbo if it comes down to it. I tell him I understand, as I don't really have any other options at this point. So we go inside the dealership and they ring me up, and the service manager tells me she will call me in the next day or so and give me an estimate on the repairs.
The next day I call the service manager because I hadn't heard from her yet, so I figured I'd just see if she could give me a really rough estimate on the price. She pulls up the price for a new OEM turbo, and it's almost $1500. I figure that's actually pretty reasonable for a brand new turbo on a brand new car. She then tells me that in order to replace the turbo, they have to pull the entire engine. I assumed this would be the case, because as I was looking through the shop manual it described the turbo replacement exactly as that - pull the engine, then you can remove the turbo. She then told me that if they have to do that, that they would need a new bench or table that was capable of holding the engine and tranny, and that they currently don't have an appropriate one at their dealership and she's not sure how much one would cost. I thought to myself, "well, why would I worry about how much it would cost? it's not like I would have to pay for it..." At the end of the call she tells me she'll keep me updated on what happens.
The very next morning she calls me and tells me she has good news - they got the stud out! I breathed a huge sigh of relief thinking my troubles were over. She said they'll put everything back together (ie new studs and they'll even put on the stock downpipe back on for me) and she will let me know when it's done.
Fast forward to today. I get another call from the service manager, she tells me there is a problem. The new studs won't thread in to the turbo, so they tried to re-tap the threads and they're not making any progress. She told me that their mechanic said that the material of the turbo flange is just too hard, that he can't tap it despite his best efforts. She says that the only other way to fix it would be to do the original plan and replace the entire turbo; BUT, they still don't have this special heavy duty table/bench/engine stand or whatever it is that can handle the bigger V6 in my car. She then tells me that they're having trouble getting a hold of one, and that they'd have to buy it. She tells me it is $5,800 just for the table, and it would be on me. As I'm trying to wrap my head around this she tells me that she's trying to see if they can just rent one, or if there is another way around having to buy the thing. I tell her that I can't afford that, along with the cost of labor and a new turbo - to which she starts talking about just how difficult this process is (which I completely get!). She advises me to call my auto insurance and see if they can cover any of it. We finish the phone call.
After the call I decide to call up a few shops. I've used tap and die sets before, but not on an actual turbo flange. First place I call is a machine shop, they say that they could figure it out, but they'd need the turbo out of the car to do it (which just brings me back to my original problem anyway). He then mentions that they could probably just use a helicoil on it - NOPE. I know others have done that on ruined threads in turbo's before, but not worth the risk! I tell him I appreciate his help. I then make another call to a local shop that does performance work and repair work, along with a lot of custom stuff. I explain to him what is going on, and he seems fairly familiar with this sort of thing. I try my best to explain to him just how tight of a workspace it is, so he asks me to text him a picture of it. I hang up and send him the pictures, and he calls back and says that it's hard to tell with just the pictures alone, and that he would have to see it in person to figure it out (which I completely understand). I begin to think that it's worth towing to this other shop and see what this guy thinks. After this, I call my insurance - already knowing what they will say - and guess what? They won't cover any of it. I wasn't surprised, as I didn't expect them to.
So I call back the dealership service manager and tell her that I want to see if I can have another shop work on it. She almost kind of blows up on me! She essentially tells me that nobody else could really do the work on this car because it's so new and unique, and how her mechanic has over 23 years of experience and he's used tap and die sets countless times, he's pulled and replaced and rebuilt countless engines, yada yada yada, and I get nowhere... She is quite the talker, hardly pauses to take a breath, much less allow me to get a word in. Anyway, she then tells me she'll continue to figure out a way to get that table, and in fact, they may not even be able to fix it, so how could anyone else? Also, labor alone would be about $4500.
The total repair cost will be around $10,000. This is something I can't deal with. I could make sacrifices and pay it over time, but I am wondering if that's worth it? I'd have to use my credit card, thus racking up interest.
I want to go up there tomorrow and ask them if they can show me the difficulty they're having. Maybe if I can see for myself that they can't tap those damn threads I would be able to deal with this better, internally.
My Dilemma: Here are my choices.
1) I let the dealer do their thing, and hope the cost ends up, somehow, magically, being substantially less than 10k. If it is, I'll suck it up and pay for it. If not, I would have to sell the car - either to the dealer themselves, or whomever the highest bidder is (ie privately, another dealer for another car, etc).
2) I tell them I'm taking my car back, unfinished, and have this other local shop look at it, and hope they can tap the threads without having to pull the entire engine. This would be a big risk, as chances are low that they could even maneuver a thread tapper in there because there's so little room. If they can't do it, then I'd be back to square one - no, behind square one, because now not only would I have to pay for 2 towing trips, I would make this whole process take even longer.
3) I tell them I'm taking the car to another dealer - despite them being 4.5 hours away - and pay for a tow truck to bring it all the way down there and risk having them tell me the exact same thing, all while having me be out the same amount of money, plus the cost of the extra long tow.
Sigh.... I feel overwhelmed with guilt because this is all my own fault. I ruined my brand new, expensive car, and to fix it may cost a fortune. What would you do if you were in my shoes?
