DEAR CAR TALK: I have a dealer repair bill for $3,751 for replacing 12 hydraulic valve lifters in the six-cylinder, 200-cubic-inch engine in my 1966 Ford Mustang. The dealer's shop people insist that the head was taken off, for $1,100 labor. The rest was for new gaskets, antifreeze, engine oil and filter. The problem is, I don't believe they ever removed the head from my car -- so the work was never done. I complained, and finally the owner of the dealership sent to me a check for $315 for reducing the labor cost. I took it to several other mechanics, who all agreed that the head on this engine has never been removed. I've thought about going to small-claims court, but if Fred Goldman can't get O.J. to pay the $31 million judgment, what chance do I have of recovering my money?
-- Don
DEAR DON: Your odds are actually a lot better than Fred's. Because unlike O.J., the dealer probably has $3,700 in the bank you can go after.
It's unusual for the hydraulic lifters on this engine to need replacing. Normally, they're self-adjusting. But they can get to the point where they require some manual adjustments, or they can fail and need to be replaced altogether.
If your mechanic wanted to be dishonest, he could have told you that the lifters needed to be replaced when in fact all they needed was adjusting. To adjust them, the mechanic would remove the valve cover, which is a very simple job. Then he'd tighten down one adjusting nut at a time until they were all nice and quiet. Once they were all quieted down, he'd put the valve cover back on and send you on your way.
That's probably a $200 job, at most. So it's possible that that's all they did. That would be unfortunate, because it would perpetuate the image of car mechanics as unscrupulous sleazebags. We hope that's not the case. Being unscrupulous sleazebags ourselves, we don't want any more competition.
The only way to actually replace the lifters in this car -- if, in fact, they needed to be replaced -- is to remove the cylinder head.
So if you have several independent mechanics who will swear in writing that they've examined your car and that there is clear evidence that the cylinder head has never been removed, then you absolutely should go to small-claims court and ask for your money back.
That evidence would include looking for the edges of the new gasket where the cylinder head meets the block. If the gasket is clearly old and dirty, the cylinder head probably was not removed.
More-definitive evidence would come from removing the valve cover and looking at the head bolts. If they're covered in 50 years of undisturbed sludge, then the head was not removed. Any professional will be able to see right away if the head bolts have been removed and replaced recently. And pictures of that should serve as definitive proof.
It's possible that there was a misunderstanding, Don. Maybe your mechanics, upon removing the valve cover, will see that the cylinder head was indeed removed. Or maybe they forgot to mention that the bill also included a $3,000 contribution to your 401(K). For the sake of mechanics' reputations, we hope so. But if not, you should take the bloody glove to small-claims court and get your $3,700 back.
DEAR CAR TALK: My son, who is going to college, bought a 1997 Nissan Altima for $5. The car will stall, and then you can restart it and it's fine -- it will start right back up. But this can be a problem, because people waiting behind him tend to be impatient. It does this especially in cooler weather. We had the distributor replaced. Someone advised us that it was the EGR valve, but we replaced that, and it seemed to make things worse. So we put the old one back in, and it now runs better, but it still will stall. Now when it stalls, if you put the car in park and floor the gas, it seems to make the engine run better after that. Do you have any suggestions as to what it might be?
-- Sarah
DEAR SARAH: Sounds like your son overpaid, Sarah.
I think you may have been on the right track with the EGR valve. Here's a possible scenario: Let's say your existing EGR is gummed up and doesn't open all the way. The EGR shouldn't be doing anything when the car is at idle. If the EGR opens up when the car is at idle, it'll make the car stall.
So let's say your EGR valve is getting an errant vacuum signal. It's opening up as much as it can, causing the car to stall. And when you put in a new, working EGR valve, it opens up all the way at idle (i.e., it actually works), and makes things even worse.
So one possibility is that there's vacuum going to the EGR when there shouldn't be. That could be the result of something like a faulty EGR solenoid, or vacuum hoses that are improperly routed.
So you can experiment by temporarily taking the EGR valve out of the equation. Disconnect the vacuum line that goes to it, and try driving the car without it. If the car doesn't stall, that'll be a huge hint.
Then you'll have to track down the cause and fix it. You don't want to leave the EGR disconnected, because the EPA fines for that cost slightly more than a four-year college education.
But that's a reasonable place to start, Sarah. And if that doesn't work, maybe your son can sell the car for $4 and recoup most of his money. Good luck.
Ray Magliozzi dispenses advice about cars in Car Talk every Saturday. Email him by visiting
cartalk.com
HomeStyle on 11/26/2016