Howdy

	Disclaimer:  While this is not exactly a VW-related story, the shop
mentioned herein does advertise themselves as VW shop.  Alsong with Mercedes,
BMW, etc.

	My SO took het '78 530i to the shop a few weeks ago because it was 
running poorly and running hot, and getting steam out the exhaust.  The
shop confirmed our fears that the head was cracked.

	So she has them do the work.  They took three weeks to do whatthey said
was gonna take a week, but kept it within $40 of the estimate.

	She gets the car back Friday, and I drove it home.  Here are the problems:

	Smells like antifreeze inside - turns out there is something leaking into
the car, like the heater core.

	Idles like sh*t.

	Awful gas mileage - used 1/4 tank to get from downtown Sacramento to
Carmichael!  (That is really, really bad!  _it about 8 miles!)

	Car runs hot, still!  and ...

	I tried to bleed the system, just in case that was the problem, and it
was fine, but the antifreeze was this sticky, greasy YELLOW stuff I've 
never seen before.  Have any of you?  I left big yellow stains everywhere it
landed!

	They scraped the crap out of the roof, and there are huge greasy drips
on it, looks like they put one car on the lift and then parked this one
under it.  There are greasy handprints all over the car, and big gouges
in the paint from where they prolly put all the parts from her car while they
were working on it!

	Any ideas what the path of recourse should be?  She is going to take 
the car in tomorrow to have them look at it again.  I'm thinking of telling
her to cancel the VISA until they do it to her satisfaction.  

	She had a similar problem last fall with a different shop, which yanked
her chain pretty hard until she pulled the plug on the VISA.  People pay
more attention when you have them by the short and curly's!

	Any comments would be appreciated.  I think for $2500+, you should get
a better end result.  I wonder if its just because she's a she?

	The shop is European Automotive on 16th and T in Sacramento

Thom
-- 
> The beatings will continue until morale improves. 
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:    Thom Fitzpatrick                             Transamerica Info Mgmnt  :
:  Systems Administrator                          1860 Howe Ave            :
:  tfitzpatrick@tim.com                           Sacramento, CA 95825     :
:   fax (916) 921-6781                            (916) 565-3346           :
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