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Okay I took my 94 hyundai excel to walmart yesterday for an oil change and fuel injection cleaning. I waited for a while and the guy comes to me and says something went very bad with my car. Okay so come to find out they used a metal bar to prop the hood up. They put the bar on top of the timing belt cover and while the engine was running it got very hot and melted through the plastic and burned the belt. They didn’t crank my car up when they showed me what happened. My question is. Could they have messed up anything else by doing this? Because they are saying they won’t even have the parts in until next thursday. I have a paper saying the car ran good from the mechanic there. SO I will not pay for this! My mechanic had my timing belt and tensioner fixed between saturday and monday. I got it back on monday (this past january) So i’m wondering if they are just cutting corners by not paying the over night shipping or they really goofed up big time?
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other than the timing belt may be a little burn’t i don’t think anything ells will be hurt, this is why i would trust only reputable shops too do my oil change and not Walmart IMO.
sorry, do not understand … “your mechanic” is person at walmart or separate?
they did cut corners tho by not overnighting your parts.
at least, they are paying for the timing belt change and new timing belt cover?
(well, might be actually a feature to have a hole or two in the timing belt cover
for easier monitoring of condition of timing belt.. but that’s for another day . . . )as long as your timing belt did not snap, you should be ok since it is quite new. dont want little pieces of timing belt cover flying around in that enclosed space so hope they made sure there were no pieces or cleaned out the ones that were there.
if walmart broke it, then they should fix it and im pretty sure they will.
this does not attest the quality of the fix, but i don’t see walmart trying to stiff you on a situation where they are at fault – and you have paper from their own guy saying so.2 cents.
How does a bar, one end holding up the hood and the other end resting on the timing cover, get any hotter than the timing belt cover? The answer is it can’t. So, interesting story they told you but that is about all.
[Edit] I’ll speculate on what happened. The bar propping the hood depressed the plastic timing cover causing it to rub the belt. The friction melted the timing cover and when that happened the rod was resting on the moving belt. What happened after that could range from a scuffed belt to you need a new engine.
thanks and My mechanic has his own shop. I only went to walmart for an oil change because I thought it was conveniant at the time, lol.
that sounds about right. I couldn’t even see the belt, the plastic was melted and there was pieces of metal stuck into the plastic. it was the weirdest thing I’ve seen. I should have taken a picture
Sometimes things go wrong even with the most careful approach to getting work done.
However, starting an engine with the hood propped by a make-shift bar resting on the engine is just plain thoughtless.
One hopes that this is not the mechanic that will correct the mistake, and thus compound it with many more mistakes. I’d suggest having the car towed to the local Hyundai dealer and have it repaired by a qualified tech familiar with the service. All at Walmart’s expense.
[quote=”Rereonehundred” post=101027]Sometimes things go wrong even with the most careful approach to getting work done.
However, starting an engine with the hood propped by a make-shift bar resting on the engine is just plain thoughtless.
One hopes that this is not the mechanic that will correct the mistake, and thus compound it with many more mistakes. I’d suggest having the car towed to the local Hyundai dealer and have it repaired by a qualified tech familiar with the service. All at Walmart’s expense.[/quote]
ding! This is what I would do. Most of the “technicians” at wal-mart are barely qualified to do more than change oil and do tires. I would not trust them with this kind of repair.
they had it towed to meineke… which was a bad idea in my opinion. Its all their expense but i’m sure I could have got my mechanic to do it cheaper and faster
I know a few Walmart Tech’s and I honestly would NEVER take my car there.. The horror stories Ive heard about simple little Oil Changes and Tires is enough to make you sick.. You are one of the lucky ones to actually have them pay to fix the vehicle.. Many people do not luck out.. My best friend needed 2 tires to pass inspection and they broke 4 lugs between the 2 wheels on a Chevy Malibu.. They argued with him saying the Impacts they use are set to a specific setting and could not possibly break off a Lug.. He ended up replacing them himself.. Of all the things I could see going wrong on an Oil Change, This was not one of them.. I hope you are back up and running soon..
Don’t let them take advantage of you here. At this point I would take your vehicle to your ‘trusted’ mechanic to have it looked over. Have him fix any issues and send Walmart the bill.
Sending a vehicle from shop to shop like that is never good because the person getting the vehicle has to start by cleaning up the last persons mess.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Walmart in Canada doesn’t have quite the same horrible reputation as in America but they’re not much better. I would never ever consider letting them touch anything I own.
Its nice they owned up to braking your car but in the same breath that was a pretty careless mistake. Lesson learned: Take your car to a real mechanic when you cant do it yourself. Not Walmart.
In a similar horror story a friend of my Lady’s took her vehicle in to a cheap tire chain store to have the oil changed in early winter. Not long after it seized. No oil in it whatsoever. The shop paid Nissan to have a look and quote the repairs. They ended up writing the vehicle off.
I had a good experience at Walmart! I was traveling in another state and noticed a clicking in a tire. It was a bolt but the tire was still holding air. Closest place was Walmart. The supervisor of auto maintenance there said they could probably fix tire but he recommended that I go to a tire store about 1.5 miles away since tire was not losing air. We went to tire store and got great service, a quick repair done right, and at a reasonable cost. Walmart corporate might not like that their shop person told me of a tire store but I consider that act something Walmart should actually be proud of. Since their staff was looking out for me, I’ll be back many times to buy other stuff. And I do get my oil from them. Peace, love and Valvoline (to quote Tim the Tool Man Taylor). And thank you Walmart.
I got my car back with the timing cover still having a hole in it. Merchants said they couldnt order the part. They replaced the cam sprocket, timing belt, tensioner, and walmart covered it. Im not gonna confront them about the cover. I know how to get one for cheap and I’ll just put it on myself.
Walmart should pay for the entire job. If you do go get one on your own take the bill back to the same person you delt with at Walmart. They can afford to pay for their mistake.
A good rule of thumb is to never let someone touch your engine that isn’t qualified to rebuild it. This “deal” you got on your service work turned out to be anything but. I’m shocked they paid. Wal-Mart has a history of wrecking engines and refusing to pay for them, apparently these so-called “technicians” they have forget to put oil back in during an oil change. Just go on YouTube and type in walmart oil change. Watch and enjoy. Shouldn’t take many vids to convince you to never let the WalMart and other quick lube type shops touch your car again.
Don’t even get me started on their garbage NeverStart batteries. Ugh.
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