Recently finished up with a full rotisserie restoration on a 70 challenger earlier this summer. Hired a professional shop to put the car back together and now there is about 700 miles on it since completion. Motor is a new built 440 six pack bored and stroked. 727 torqueflite with reverse shifter freshly rebuilt, 430 gears in the rear. Had some issues with the neutral safety switch shortly after completion of the project which was cutting out the ignition and causing the car not to start. Took the car back to the shop on three separate occasions to fix the problem and finally they replaced the neutral safety switch which made the trouble go away.
Also it's worth noting about a week or two before I brought the car in for the safety switch problem, I had a stereo system installed from an interior shop. The interior shop drilled a hole in the front of the tranny hump and ran a large power wire directly to the battery to power the head unit as well as the separate power amplifier. After the defective safety switch was replaced I drove the car on several occasions. One day I went to pick up my wife from work with the car and on our way home, the transmission began to slip badly and suddenly lost power on a busy street.
I had the car towed back to the shop and a couple days later, they had the tranny pulled out so I picked it up and brought it back to the tranny shop who built it as well as the engine. Upon inspection, the tranny shop discovered the fluid was badly burnt and the converter was also damaged. They were unable to repair the damaged converter so they sent it in to a specialized company to have it rebuilt.
The tranny shop did a complete analysis on all the parts of the transmission and found extensive damage to the entire unit which they determined had been caused by a disconnected cooler line. The result was catastrophic overheating. The tranny shop stated this would not be covered under warranty and I would be liable for repairs. At first they said it was going to cost $200 then they came back a few days later saying it would be well over $1000 plus the cost of labor for the restoration shop to remove and reinstall the tranny.
My biggest concern was how the heck did the cooler line get disconnected? The tranny shop owner and the restoration shop (these two parties have a close business relationship) claim the cooler line became disconnected somehow when the sound system was installed. When the interior shop ran the power wire to the battery, they tie wrapped it to one of the cooler lines to keep it away from the exhaust. The blame was placed squarely on the interior shop with the thought that the installer bumped one of the Jiffy tite fittings causing it to disconnect from the line running to the cooler. They also blamed the power wire tie wrapped to the cooler line. My thought is no way can you disconnect a jiffy tite fitting from simply bumping it or by tie wrapping a wire with little tension on it to the cooler line. If they come loose that easily, such a fitting should never have been used in the first place.
My reaction to this theory was of complete disbelief. For one thing, The stereo was installed before the neutral safety switch was replaced so the last person to work on that part of the car was the tech from the restoration shop. At that time, there was nothing at all mentioned about the tie wrapped power wire being a potential problem of which was in plain view with the car up on a hoist. If the stereo guy had somehow caused the cooler line to disconnect, it seems to me it would have easily been spotted during the safety switch replacement and the restoration tech might have even pulled that line off himself to get it out of the way to replace the safety switch. The most suspicious fact of the matter is the restoration tech did not say a word about finding any loose or disconnected cooler lines when he pulled the damaged tranny. If a line was loose or disconnected, I think he would have noticed right away and said something about it due to the fact he knew I was extremely anxious to find out what caused a major transmission failure on essentially a band new transmission. Nothing at all was said about a disconnected cooler line until the tranny shop did their inspection of the damaged transmission. Also worth mentioning the restoration tech did not want to blame the stereo guy. He said he really didn't know how that line came off but like I said, he never mentioned finding the disconnected line until the tranny shop announced their discovery then he went along with their story.
My thought is the restoration tech must have disconnected the cooler line himself when replacing the neutral safety switch and then simply forgot to reconnect it when he was done with the switch repair. The jiffy tite connector has a one way valve in it to prevent tranny fluid from leaking out so that's why nobody saw any fluid and the fluid level always showed full on the dipstick when I checked it. Of course he didn't say anything when he discovered his mistake upon the transmission removal because he would have implicated himself since he was the last person to work on the car before the tranny got toasted.
I need some advice on how to handle the situation from here on out. Obviously the tranny shop is trying to protect the restoration tech from any wrong doing and now they're trying to stick me with the bill to make everything right again. I'm considering filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and possibly some sort of small claims lawsuit as well.
Really would appreciate your thoughts on this....thank you in advance!
