Thinking

[Irulan]

The state of CA has some of the best consumer protection laws, especailly when it comes to auto repair, in the nation.

That being said, I rarely take a car to place that I do not have a personal referral for. I rarely take them to the dealer either; some of them are almost as bad a some independent repair facilities. We had a Toyata dealer sell us a new truck with a bone dry transmission, and I find the dealer is routinely $2-400 more on anything thing over the mechanic I've been using for 10+ years. And, it does NOT void your warranty to use non dealer service, as long as you save your receipts.

I've been using the same mechanic for 10+ years for, found him as a referral from friend who drove similar ( old but reliable ) cars. In august I took our toyota in, 150+ miles on it, for full gaskets, hoses, belts as it was starting to leak like a sieve. They had it for a while, I said it was OK to keep it as long as they needed, they've bailed me out on numerous "can you fix it today" situations, and after they'd pulled the engine, replaced everything and put the engine back in, one of the guys had an "oops" and dropped a screw down one of the cylinders. If you don't know, this essentially kills the engine for good. Rex had another toyota of the same vintage that had been in a accident, and redid the whole job on his dime, and told us exactly what had happened, and to please let him know if we had any trouble with the replacement.

I had FORD buy back a lemon back in 91, that was a real pain.

uh, just a ramble about cars I guess. WA has lousy consumer laws for auto repair, so count your blessings in that department.

Irulan