My seal repair at Ford

[PekingMan]

That is a load of crap!!!!!!!! BradE. called it. They most likely, as yob_yekom had mentioned, just put the driveshaft in out of balance. It's an easy fix; just unbolting, rotating it and rebolting. Ridiculous.

 

[zavetsky]

Similar story

I went thru a very similar experience with a couple different cars, but most recently my motorcycle at a local shop called Norm's Cycle Salvage (NEVER go there!)

I needed a new engine due to a trashed tranny in my Honda Shadow. The guy had one, so I scheduled to come in in 2 weeks......the engine was supposed to have 10k miles on it, but he couldnt find the title to the old bike..but said he would before I bought it.

Came back and dropped bike off...he didnt have the proof of mileage on the engine like he was supposed to.....but I decided to go for it anyways.

Well, it was supposed to be a week. Stoped by a coupel times and checked it out in progress and all was going well.

End of the week, I stopped by and bike looked done. But I was told it wouldnt start. They claimed it was battery.......I listened to it as it cranked (dead batteries dont crank) and it made a wheezy sound.......but I figured ok you are the pros (sic).

Gave them a few days and decided to drop by....unannounced this time....

The engine was out of the bike again, and the mechanic was pulling the engine from a bike that had 50k miles on it!!!

I raised holy hell and wanted to know when they were planning on telling me this....

So, the guy in charge (the owner) and I get into it and he accuses me of being a pest for stopping by unnannounced all the time and that I am accusing him of trying to pull something......So, I say put my old engine back in the way it was and I'll take my bike.

They reassemble, and I pickup...but it wont start at ALL on its own...WTF!!!!!!! I take it home that night after being push started and find the exhaust all loose and the battery is fine....so I take it back the next day and insist they repair it right this time.

So, a few more days I call and he says its still not ready....I drop by NEXT DAY and same thing...bike is back together but it wont start...

So I raise hell again, leave and come back in a couple days......bike still isnt ready......I say I'll take it as is, and the ******* owner obliges...he bolts a part back on and whaddya know...it fires right up!

I went to the BBB and complained, and he wrote a letter to the BBB saying I was delusional, etc.....

The whole tale is quite a read and I have a website dedicated to it at http://home.attbi.com/~scumbuster/norms1.html

Long and short is DONT TRUST anyone....And if you dare piss off the guy in charge LOOKOUT...you are in for a rough ride.....

WHen you stopped by with your cell phone, you bought the farm righ tthere.....the guy figured that he would give you as rough a time as possible......

Report them to the BBB.

Originally posted by 99explorer5.0
I just recently had the rear main seal which connects the engine and the tranny replaced. The ford dealership my explorer for exactly one month. They told me that it was going to be a 2 day project. One day to pull it all apart and one full day to put it back together. That was kewl because i figured i could borrow my parents car while it was being serviced.

This is going to be a long story so bear with me. This story is going to be long and this isnt the full story. This is the edited version of the story. There is alot of stuff i am leaving out.

First of all i had ordered the parts for them to do it and told me to call when the parts came in. They called me 4 days later to tell me my parts came in and i asked them when would be a good day to drop it off since it was going to be a big job. They had told me to drop it off on monday at 4 oclock when the second shift comes in.

Well i dropped my car off exactly at 4 oclock so that they could get started on it right away. At 4 oclock i had no ride home so i walked home from the dealership. Had i waited until 5 oclock to drop it off i would have had my choice of 4 people to give me a ride but i wanted to give them all the time possible to work on it so i dropped it off at 4. Well anyway i passed by the dealership at 10 oclock at night with my friend in his car and i had noticed it was in the same exact spot with the wheels pointed in the same exact position in which i had left it.

So i called the dealership from my cell phone and i asked them if they had made any progress on my truck. The service advisor had told me that they have been working on it all night long but came up with a few problems but it was in the garage being worked on. I had asked him if he was talking about the white explorer and named my liecence plate and he said YES in a stern voice. Because he started popping an attitude with me i walked into the garage on my cell phone and looked directly at the guy on the phone and said show me my F**king truck in the garage you piece of $hit.

Then i ripped him a new a$$hole telling him that i had walked home at 4 oclock and if i knew that they werent going to work on it until 10 i could have waited until i had a ride and argued with him for about 10 mins. After screaming i hopped in my friends car and went home. The following day i did the same thing. I noticed that my explorer was in the parking lot and not in the garage so i called them again. The service advisor told me they had worked on it earlier but they had ordered the wrong parts and had to wait until the new ones came in.

I told them OK since you guys ordered the wrong parts i want my truck back and i will drop it off when the parts come in again. He said that would be impossible because they had already dropped the tranny and my explorer was in pieces. After *****ing at that same service advisor again he agreed to give me a loaner vehicle at their expense until mine was ready. It took about another week for the correct parts to come in.

When the correct parts came in they had called me to let me know they were working on my truck again and that it was going to be ready the next day. The next day came around and they must have forgotton to work on my truck because once again it was parked in the same spot outside again. At that point i demanded that they give me a better rental. I gave them my explorer and they put me in a taurus. I *****ed at them for a while and they decided to put me in a 2003 Jeep Cherokee with 800 miles on it. I was happy at the time because i got to kick the **** out of a bran new jeep.

The next day after that when my truck was supposed to be done they called me and told me that they had broken some manifold bolts or something on my explorer and they needed a torch to get them out and their torch ran out of something so they had to order it. It took them about 5 days to recieve the shipment of gas or whatever it was the torch needed.

Once the shipment they were waiting for came in they sat on my truck for a while. i would drive by everyday and i would always see it sitting in the parking lot and not in the garage. I called them up everyday and they said it will be in the garage in 30 mins and when i would drive by an hour later it would still be in the parking lot.

After one month of constant phone calls to that ford dealership they finually told me that my truck was done. When i had gone to pick it up i walked up to my explorer and noticed that my PAINTED brush guard was all scratched and chiped up and was pushed off to the side. I called the manager outside and showed him the damage to my truck and his explanation to me was that when they took the tranny out they had to push it in and out of the garage and one day when they were pushing it there was nobody sterring it or hitting the brakes and my truck rolled down a hill and rolled into a chain link fence.

Well i am sick of typing and i am sure you guys are sick of reading. To cut this story short when i picked up my truck it had greese stains on all 4 corners of my truck where they pushed it in and out of the garage my brush guard was bent and severly scratched and FORD is paying to repaint it and it took 1 month exactly from the time i dropped it off for me to recieve my truck back.

I cant wait until they send me one of those survey cards asking me how satisfied i was with my experience. A two day project turned into a 1 month nightmare.

 

[dogfriend]

Re: Similar story

Originally posted by zavetsky

WHen you stopped by with your cell phone, you bought the farm righ tthere.....the guy figured that he would give you as rough a time as possible......

Report them to the BBB.

Yes, but any guy who would lie to you on the phone and claim that they were working on it and giving a (phony) progress report couldn't be trusted in any event.

In hindsight (which is always 20/20), as soon as you confronted the guy who lied to you on the phone you should have taken the truck back then and there. Of course, if you had, then your story wouldn't have been as good but you wouldn't have wasted as much time and they wouldn't have screwed up your truck.

Live and learn, but its better to learn from others mistakes whenever possible.

 

[dogfriend]

Originally posted by topo4u2
Man, this gets worse and worse. Dealer tells me today that it may need a transfer case due to the vibration! I hardly doubt that! Anyway they are seeing if the warranty company will pay for it because one thing is for sure, I'm not!

I will keep you posted.

Is this the vibration that started after they worked on your truck?

Sounds like they owe you a new transfer case. They have insurance for this (screwing up a repair). Don't let them talk you into paying for this.

I think they are full of crap.

 

[99explorer5.0]

Oh and that vibration reminds me .... my explorer acted like like a 4500 pound vibrator when they told me it was ready and i picked it up. I retured it and they put a new front driveshaft and something else up front.

If the service advisor had told me strait out that they had not worked on my truck at all because they had a few big jobs and were busy that would have been fine. I fix PC's on the side as a hobby and i know that unexpected things happen and you fall behind schedule. The thing that aggrivated me was that i asked him if they were working on it and he said yes and i gave him a few chances to tell me the truth and he insisted that they were.

Seems like many companies do not care about customer satisfaction anymore. If i go to my local dept store and want paint mixed or need something from the stock room seems like nobody is ever around and when they are around they act like you are keeping them from doing something else.

 

[dogfriend]

Originally posted by 99explorer5.0

Seems like many companies do not care about customer satisfaction anymore. If i go to my local dept store and want paint mixed or need something from the stock room seems like nobody is ever around and when they are around they act like you are keeping them from doing something else.

What is really bad, is when you need to ask a simple question (Do you have any of these in the back?) and the supposed customer service people see that you want to ask a question and walk the other way pretending that they didn't see you. But you know that they did because they made eye contact for a split second just before they changed course to avoid answering any questions. Last time this happened to me (at Fry's Electronics, which has a least a couple of hate websites devoted to documenting bad customer service) I literally had to chase a guy down and follow him around the store just to get him to check to see if they had the product I wanted to buy.

My advise is to let management know when you get bad customer service. If they care, maybe they will do something about it.(Its already been well established that Fry's doesn't care.) If they don't, maybe you should take your business to another place.

The huge home improvement store vs. the local hardware store is classic for this. I'm willing to pay slightly more to buy items at a local hardware store because they almost always have what I need or know where I can find it. I also buy from the huge home imp store, but only when I know that I won't need any help.

Unfortunately, over the long term, bad customer service seems to be winning.

 

[99explorer5.0]

You want to know the funny thing. When i was 16 and for a few years after that i worked for a dept store and i used to do the exact same thing you described and your post brought back memories of running away from customers and when they asked if i had something in the back i would have a football behind those swinging doors. Then i would page a friend over the intercom have him meet me to play catch for a few mins and after a few dives to catch the ball and got myself dusty i would go back to the sales floor and say look at me i am filthy i looked everywhere and i did not see it. Thanks for making me laugh hysterically and bringing back those memories for me.

Its funny how i am on the other side if the fence now.

 

[dogfriend]

Yes, this is probably pretty funny when you're 16, but is really annoying when you're older and trying to find a pipe fitting to fix the one that just disintegrated in your 40 year old bathroom sink and you want to find something to replace it so you can fix it and turn the water back on before midnight because you want to be able to take a shower before work tomorrow morning.

Of course part of the blame for this are the companies that hire 16 yr olds to do this kind of work. They work more cheaply than someone who is older but usually don't have very much knowledge and sometimes would rather hide in the back room than deal with answering questions that they may not know.

I am old enough to recall a few heinous customer service stories, but this is getting a ways off topic.

I am really pissed about the treatment that topo4u2 is getting. I don't know anything about Canadian business laws and practices, but if I were him, I would be plotting my revenge on the shop with his truck.

 

[topo4u2]

Me again, the original poster!
Here is an update on that crazy 95 X of mine. Today I have ended up talking to the service advisor, service manager, the owner of the dealership, the guy I bought the truck from, the warranty manager, and even the guy the used to own the truck.
As you can tell it was a busy day. I asked the dealer this morning what I would owe them if I was to just take the X the way it is.....that is with the new yoke in it and seals done and my vibration still not fixed of course. They said $640. 24. I said WHAT! You have to be kidding. No it was all diagnosis time...that is what made me call all those people. Anyway to make this short, the service manager called me tonight and said that he would scrap the labor and I would just have to pay for the part(yoke) $115.00. I did not have too much trouble with that but the last problem is my transfer case. They swear up and down that it is bad. They want another 1000 bucks to install a used one. The warranty people do not sound too positive about forking out that cash but the regional manager is going to look into it in the morning.
This is still an ongoing nightmare. The guy I bought the truck from says that if I take it out of that dealership he will take my truck to a reputable transmission shop and have it looked at. That does not sound like a bad idea but I must give them a chance to see how much they will pay.
As usual I will keep you all posted.

 

[dogfriend]

Let me list the events as I understand them:

1. You originally had a leaking front seal in the transfer case, but no other problems with transfer case or vibration.

2. Dealer gives estimate of $175 to replace seal.

3. Dealer delays repair because "We have never done one of these before, we need the special tool"

4. Dealer performs seal repair (eventually) and returns vehicle.

5. Immediately upon driving, you discover bad vibration and return vehicle to dealer.

6.Dealer now claims front yoke is worn and must be replaced.

7. Dealer replaces front yoke for $115, but claims $640 for diagnosis of vibration (in other words, front yoke did not fix vibration problem)

8. Dealer now claims that transfer case is bad, must be replaced at $1000


I now have some questions:

1. If dealer has never replaced transfer case seal before seeing your transfer case, what makes them think they have the expertise to diagnose and replace your whole transfer case?

2. I contend that the bad repair that they did on the front seal caused the vibration and the damage to the transfer case (if it is really bad). I'm curious, what explanation have they given you to deny that they caused the vibration problem?

3. Why are they charging you for replacing the front yoke when it is obvious that it isn't the problem? Did they give you the old yoke so you could inspect it? Is it really worn or did the knucklehead who worked on the truck originally do something to damage it?


I don't think that youre transfer case is bad, I think they are fishing because they don't know what the problem is. They probably put the driveshaft in wrong (not indexed) to cause the vibration.

 

[topo4u2]

Thanks for the reply dogfriend,
I will answer what I can and then off to bed.
Im not actally sure what expertise they have in making a diagnosis. They used some new tester to locate vibrations like a meter of some kind.
They really are not sure what is causing the vibration but can only figure that it is in the case. Even I find it hard to believe that it could get that screwed up just by changing a seal.
They were going to charge me 78.00 to just change the yoke but they have waved that cost.
They inspected the old yoke and so did I and we do agree that it does not look like it would cause a leak but the leak did stop after replacement we were just left with this vibration.
I agree, a driveshaft out 180 is most likely. Man, what a drag it would be if another case is installed and the vibration was still there. Anyway see what happens tomorrow.

 

[dogfriend]

I just had another thought: They may have drained (or partially drained) the transfer case when they changed the seal. Did Moe, Curly or Larry (maybe it was Shemp?) remember to refill the transfer case before giving the truck back to you?

Do they even know where the fill port is?

 

[topo4u2]

Hi Gang!
Well, finally my story has come to an end, for now.
The dealer installed a used transfer case today and put new shaft seals in it and installed thay new yoke just in case.
The warranty company paid 60% of the costs but I had to pay the 100.00 deductible plus 300.00 plus yoke. Total cost to me $544.00. I just got it home and so far no seals leaking and no vibration.
The good side is that the guy I bought it from is going to pay half the 544.00. He is a small dealer but it way too cool. He really does not have to. I also found out from the oringinal owner that the old transfer case was rebuilt by Mr. Transmission in January and he had nothing but trouble..that is why he traded in the X because no one could fix case. Lucky me eh?
Anyway this story has gone on long enough, glad it is over..now just wait and see what else can go wrong...but I still love my 95!

 

[dogfriend]

Sounds like Mr. Transmission needs to call Mr. Transfer Case next time

Glad that it finally worked out.

 

[topo4u2]

Thanks for the replies Dogfriend!

 

[topo4u2]

Hey Dogfriend, you will like this one.
I was cleaning my X this afternoon and thought for a moment, maybe for fun I should check the level in that used transfer case Ford installed the other day. I crawled under and undid the fill plug. Wow! oil came flying outa there and it was a horrible dark brown in color. I knew what I had to do. Out with the bucket and a complete drain of all fluid. Installed nice clean new Mercon and capped her off.
Wow, those Ford tech's are too much! Dont you think they should have at least changed the damm fluid before they let it go????
And No, Im not going to call them..I give up with those boys.

 

[dogfriend]

They didn't drain out the old fluid before installing it??? Incredible.

I wouldn't take it back there ever again if I were you.

I drained my t-case about a month ago because I had to replace one of the driveshaft sensors that was leaking. I replaced the fluid with AMSOil ATF. I was on some j**p trails last weekend and the transfer case seemed a lot smoother than I remember in 4wd Lo. I would recommend either Mobil 1 or AMSOil ATF for the t-case. Synthetic should last a long time in a differential, manual trans or t-case.

 

[topo4u2]

Yes, I would love to install all synthetic but budget is not allowing it yet. I have some good history on my X as far as repairs are concerned....just have to look and see if he was using synthetic in the engine. I have already done 1 oil change...5/30 (not syn) but if he used syn than I will switch right away. The last guy owned it for 6 years and never had to do any engine work so it must have been good oil...too bad everything else was replaced..he he.

 

[topo4u2]

Well people, this nightmare is not over yet! As I mentioned in another thread and Dogfriend was replying....a couple of days ago I decided to try the 4x4. When I shifted on the fly I would have to wait about 10 seconds, and then the 4WD and 4Low orange lights would start to flash. If I was stopped just the 4WD light would come on....but either way I had no torque from the transfer case, only the front axle was locking at the vacuum modulator. What a bummer. I was told by several people that it is very likely one of the speed sensors in the case.
To my disgust I called the Ford dealer this morning and told him about it. I dropped it off and waited for the dreaded call.
He called me and said that they had switched all the speed sensors over from my old case today and it made no difference so they started a diagnosis and discoverd that I need a new 4x4 dash switch. $32.00 for the switch and an hour and half testing time. WOW!
Screwed again......unfortunately I have no warranty for electrical parts so I have to get it fixed but it damm well better work when I pick it up...

 

[dogfriend]

Ask them to save the old dash switch for you. There is a simple test with an ohmmeter to verify whether the switch is good or bad. I can give you the values for the resistance at each position from my factory manual.

I think they are full of it.

If the switch is the problem, why is the vacuum disconnect shifting? The switch connects directly to the GEM. The GEM tells the vacuum disconnect to engage and then engages the transfer case clutch (possibly the order is reversed, but that doesn't matter for purposes of this arguement). If the switch is signalling the vacuum disconnect, then it can't be the switch.

I would only pay for the switch if it really fixes the problem (it won't). I wouldn't pay until they demonstrate that the problem is fixed by putting it on the lift and making sure all wheels turn in 4wd Auto.