So... Here's my uncool car story, Auto-Bore:
Bought a car from a friend of mine's boyfriend. She's since broken up with him, so I can't even say he's a FOAF anymore. But at the time, I didn't think it was important to do a pre-purchase inspection. Now I think it's more important for friend-, FOAF-, or family-purchases. Just to avoid bad blood.
Car had $4K bluebook, if it was in awesome shape; it wasn't though, so I paid $3500. Nearly immediately afterward I put in $500 for new oxygen sensors, and then had a full inspection done. The inspection showed a need for another $3600 dollars of work -- holy fucking shit -- but the garage said if I did it, I'd have a safe, reliable car which I could "drive across the country." I bit the bullet, let them keep the car for four days, and paid for it. I've got 7 pages of receipt describing the various things they repaired.
The day after I picked it up, it started overheating. It had never overheated before. I took it back to the garage, and they found out it needs to replace the head gasket. That's normally a $3200 repair for them. They feel frustrated that they didn't catch it in the initial inspection, which was supposed to be EVERYTHING. They're willing to do the labor on the head gasket for free, if I'm willing to pay for parts and the out-of-house machining. That's $900.
Honestly, I was livid. I was super angry, after already considered putting the car out of its misery with the initial $3600 fee. Here comes another $900 fee in addition to it. But if I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound. I give the go-ahead, and live without my car for another week.
When I pick up the car and drive off the lot, the power steering seemed choppy. I got a couple miles away before I realized the steering was feeling really rough and, worse than that, the steering didn't straighten smoothly out of a turn; it was like the wheel was locking up. That was last Thursday. I had a Friday-to-Monday trip to Los Angeles, and I was angry about that steering the whole time. Here are two trips to the mechanic which should have fixed everything-everything-EVERYTHING, and instead I've got unsafe steering. They told me they drove around the block to check out the head gasket repair, but I can't imagine anyone driving the car and NOT FEELING the messed-up steering.
I took it in today during lunch. They found a small hole in the hose which they'd missed when they flushed my power steering fluid during the first repair. They replaced the hose, re-filled the fluid, burped it, and sent me on my way with no charge. I'm happy they stepped up to correct something they missed, but this whole experience has destroyed my confidence in this car.
