Dads Garage, Mark Lovell Macomb Illinois
In January 2007, the head gasket blew out in my 1977 Ford LTD while driving on University Avenue here in Macomb. A head gasket on a cast iron block car like this one isnt too hard to replace, nor are they vary hard to do. I should know, I am a trained mechanic from Wyoming Tec in Laramie, Wyoming and I have 6 years with Volvo as a tech. But it was January and at 10 deg, I didnt want to hassle with it my self. And as to why I love and drive a land barge like that, all I can say its an unexplainable love.
I sent the wagon to a local shop here in town, formally known as Price Automotive, now known as "Dads Garage". As I thought, the owner of the newly owned garage agreed it was the head gasket. He gave me a price that was digestible. He had the wagon for a month. I picked up the car and as soon as I drove it home, coolant was all over my driveway. I took it back, all the cooling hose connections where loose and some of my vacuum lines where left disconnected. A few days later, my rocker arm let go in Bushnell, IL. The wagon ran off of 7 cylinders by that point, so I took it back to the garage. He then tells me that the hydraulic lifters should be replaced (I told him it should have been done originally, he disagreed with me).
So I handed over another $100 bucks for lifters. It took a month to have them replaced. He soaked them with diesel fuel (old mechanics trick) and he also broke my ignition distributor. This is where the story gets even odder.
He claimed to me the distributor was broken already (the car wouldnt have run with out a distributor) and his other claim, that Ford had problems with that model distributor (I have had 10 models like this one, never once a problem). So I get it back the second time, the engine light glows while I am at idle and when the car is hot. So I send it back. The owner of the garage then dumps oil additives into the oil, in hopes to flush out the oiling system. Little did he know, when he mixed diesel fuel and oil, it broke down the oil viscosity in my engine and took the main lower bearings out.
When I went to pick the car up, they didnt have it ready. I stood there and watched them piece my engine back together (no fender covers by the way), the owners business partner was lending a hand at this too. He was putting on the drivers side valve cover on and when he did that, he crushed a main wiring harness that goes to the distributor to the ignition module. I didnt catch that at first, till the owner of the shop tried to start the car. It wouldnt start, at this point the owner then sells me an ignition coil. I picked one up at our local Napa (awesome store, great people that work there, the owner knows his stuff) and I put in the coil, the car wouldnt start. The owner claimed it was the ignition module. It was at this time I found that the main wiring harness was crushed, this caused a no start condition.
I got the car back to my apartment, where it was leaking oil all over my driveway (you can still see remnants of it). The engine was still knocking, the engine was a quart over filled, the cruise control chain was disconnected, a main ground was disconnected, and a few other tid bits where out of place.
When the spring semester was over, I packed up the wagon with my gear and my German Shepard and headed for home. It was a warm day, about 85 deg outside, clear, and pleasant. Once I got on to I-88, the wagon overheated. Just got hot and progressively got slower. I pulled over into a safe area and had a feeling the head cracked on the top of the engine. My suspicions where correct, the valve head was blowing coolant out the side (the owner of the shop would claim to me, it was not coolant but oil and I did NOT crack the head). So I had the wagon towed back to Macomb at the tune of just under $400 bucks.
The garage had it for almost four months, where the owner did find a cracked head and then replaced it (took two months for him to figure that one out). Again, I picked it up, it would not start, and I found that the owner left the ignition module disconnected. Once the wagon started up, it ran like it was misfiring. His claim to me it was flooded, but he replaced the ignition wires and plugs to my request. It still ran like it was missing, his other mechanic tells me its now the carburetor. Funny thing is, I replaced the carburetor with a remanufactured one from a local parts dealer. But I bought another carburetor and rebuilt it my self (I have done a few in my time) and this still didnt take care of the problem. So I showed the owner, his response its a clogged exhaust system.
This is where I told him, it wasnt, that its an internal engine problem. He at this point told me to get my lawer and he walked away. Saddly, Im in college, I can't even aford a lawyer. I tryed sending a report to the state of IL, but they looked at all my information and said "Mark Lovell isnt responceable".
This guy is a total 100% con artist. Pure and simple.
Fordwagonnut
macomb, Illinois
U.S.A.