It's not that this guy is not a good vanagon mechanic. this guy is not
a good mechanic. In fact, he is not a mechanic at all.

It doesn't matter what you bring him to work on.

Jim

On Aug 19, 2005, at 6:09 PM, Edward Duntz wrote:

> On the advice of several on the list, I decided to let a local
> mechanic tackle my '85 Westfalia's exhaust instead of doing it myself.
> I went in with both header pipes, and the connector to the cat, as
> well as all the hardware and gaskets. All were purchased from
> Volkscafe. Pipes were good used ones.
>
> I got an estimate of about $150 to do the job. I dropped the van off,
> and came back four hours later, to be told that one of the head studs
> broke off, and it would be a while longer. This was no surprise, as I
> have heard plenty of stories of troubles with getting off the bolts
> and studs.
>
> What was a surprise, however, was how the mechanic dealt with the
> problem. I hung around for the last three hours of the work. At one
> point I saw him pouring in coolant. This naturally got me worried. He
> said he had to take off the lower thermostat housing in order to get
> at the studs to drill them out. But he still wasn't successful. He
> said that the drill bit slipped, and he ended up hacking off a piece
> of the exhaust head. And there's a new stud, put in on an angle, with
> about four washers and a nut on it. Next I saw him banging on
> something with a pry bar. He said that the flange on the exhaust pipe
> wasn't straight and he had to bang it in place to get a good seal
> against the head. He also had trouble getting the thermostat housing
> back on. It leaked several times.
>
> I didn't discover how badly he whacked the exhaust head until I got
> home. I guess after leaving he van for four hours and sitting there
> for another three, I was ready to get out of there. He also added an
> eshaust hanger that is bolted to the frame, connected to the pipe
> before the cat. I had asked him to replace a broken support that was
> there, which he didn't do. He also didn't put the heat shields back on
> correctly.
>
> So I know that these things can be troublesome. But do you really have
> to remove the thermostat housing to get at the studs? And is it his
> incompetence that he wasn't able to remove the stud without messing up
> the head?
>
> I also told him that two of the heads have studs and two have bolts,
> as Volkscafe told me. He said that there was a different mixture of
> bolts and studs, and replaced them as he found them. It also looks
> like he left at least one old stud in there.
>
> So was this guy negligent? Advice? Oh, yeah, total was seven hours for
> a total of $439.00. This is a local place that does a lot of exhausts.
> There is just no good Vanagon mechanic locally, so an exhaust shop
> seemed to be the next best choice.
>
> Thanks,
> Ed
>