The most expensive car carnage?

[Carnage Head]

Having just been hit with a £1710 bill caused by the failure of my car's timing belt (whatever that is)*, I was hoping someone out there could make me feel better by offering an even more sorry tale of car-related woe.

*Yes, I did have the car serviced annually, and yes, I admit, a second-hand Astra may not have been the most sensible choice of car.

(Before I get lambasted by fellow 'environmentalists', I did car share, and I did limit my driving, but I do admit that I have fallen into virtual car-reliance.)

[DesignatedDriver]

£1700 to replace a car door.

my own fault. too fast coming round a corner, car swapped ends a couple of times, and hit a lamppost.

thankfully company car. company insurance. so no problem.

[UncleDickie]

Some of you may remember that the faithful green Audi stripped the teeth from his 'belt on the way to the JK last year (2004, Graythwaite). Just to buy a new cylinder head for a 1.8 petrol Audi was going to cost £1700. That's not including the cost of replacing all 20 valves, the tensioner, the offending belt and putting it all back together.

I rang up the service manager to whom I had been entrusting my car and asked him when the belt should have been changed.

"80,000 miles. Why do you ask?"

"Because you told me it didn't need doing when I had the 80K service. I guess that means you are admitting that you fucked up and that you're going to fix my car free of charge and lend me a courtesy car for 3 weeks while you faff with it?"

"Errrr..."

Amazingly, they did just that. I don't think the service manager cared, because he'd already been offered a new job with Mercedes...

[Carnage Head]

Thanks for the tales. But both of you effectively had it done for free. Goldang it.

An interesting point is the repeated usage of £1700 as a quote from the garages involved.

My garage seemed to have a strategy to broach the subject of the huge cost. It was to initially say that the repair may cost as much as £2000, in order to soften the impact just a little bit in time for when they came back to me a day or two later with the 'actual' cost of £1700.

Or am I being too cynical? (I don't think a 'cynical' emoticon exists, but if it did, I'd use it.)

[DesignatedDriver]

yeah, company cars kick buttocks!

most i've done to my own car was £700. new front bumper, wing and headlights. crashed into the back of someone! oops.

boy racers mucking about in the road, car in front braked, i didn't. worse still, my mum dad two brothers in car!

[frodo]

well my car got stolen by some schemies last week, police recovered it but still waiting to find out the damage to my rather empty pocket. apparantly its not a burnt out wreck which is one positive. thieving scumbags they have round here, this wouldn't have happened where i come from, and not just because they still only use horse and carts. +end of rant+

[Matt p]

I got quoted £3000 'mates rates' to have my car fixed at a well known car dealer. I opted for the go to a less well known garage and pay £1200 to have a reconditioned engine bought and fitted. Don't quite know what was going to happen for 3 grand - take the engine apart and rebuild it with new parts I suspect resulting in some ridiculous labour charges.

Granted I then sold it for £1200 but at least it worked.

[Kitch]

I had a timing belt fail.

cost me about £30