Ok, latest update for those following this thread, which is turning out to be a blog of sorts.
(It's a long one).
Took the car to the second shop after work yesterday....
I was/am more than a little nervous to be honest.......I even took a ride on the motorcycle last night at 8pm so I could get gas.....but really the reason was so I could drive past the shop to be sure my car was inside. I feel foolish for doing that now, but I wouldn't have slept had I not...LOL It was tucked away inside with a big wrecker blocking its path. Snug as the proverbial bug in a rug.
When I dropped off the car the guy said he was going to drive it a bit and see what was going on and that we should know something by wed. I am crossing my fingers that its something the first shop screwed up or missed.
But here is the real reason I am posting....
The tech from the first shop calls me last night at 7pm. Well after shop hours, from his phone not the shop's.
He said that he had been out sick for a few days with the flu and that's why he had not gotten back to me since we talked last wed. He said he was trying to catch up and wanted to make sure he talked to me.
Later in the conversation I questioned why the owner hadn't called me back seeing as he was the first guy I worked with on this job. The tech agreed and said that's just the way the owner is.
Anyways, he goes on to say that he called transgo and they told him that they can't take him any further now until he performs a pressure test at the governor port on the car......then he procedes to explain that the shop is too busy to have my car tying up a lift and that it would sit outside , etc and how there is a bar next door.....and then he says that he wants to work on the car on his own time to make it right, either in my garage/driveway or in his because he knows how important the car's safety is to me. He also said that the owner "is fed up" so he wants to take care of this on his own time.
Aside from the huge amount of liability issues involved there, I think that's highly irregular. I also don't think it says much for how his shop operates and I am getting a generally bad gut feeling about this.
I told him that. I also asked a few questions, like why is he just checking the pressure now? Wouldn't that have made sense to be checked before all of the effort of the second rebuild? He didn't really seem to have an answer for that.
He was saying how if there is (or isn't...I can't remember) pressure at that port in idle in neutral that "we have major problems.....maybe a cracked case or warped something", etc.
So I asked him why he hadn't checked/measured for crackes/warpage during one of the two last rebuilds? Wouldn't cracked cases and parts and warpage all be things that would be looked for during a rebuild?
Again, didn't seem to have much of an answer.
He went on to say how he has been doing this for 30 years and has rebuilt "hundreds of these" and never had a problem before...saying this is the first time he ever had a problem like this with a torqueflight. He said that this was the first he had done with a shift kit and alluded that the kit was the problem. I told him that I had installed a couple shift kits on other cars myself over the years and never had issues, albeit they were not torqueflights.
He got back on to the "I think maybe its partically the kickdown setting" again and I stopped him there and said I didn't think it was...that I had adjusted that up and done the scale and all it did was change ,y shift points a bit.....
Then he says that he is convinced all he has to do is crank up that pressure adjustment on the governer, even though Transgo doesn't think that....but that then the tranny would be running at full pressure and he made it sound like THAT would be a problem. So why would he even mention it?
I asked why, if he felt that way, why he hadnt cranked up the adjustment some during this second rebuild.
Then he started going off on a tangent about "stupid Chrysler ****" as far as how Chrysler builds things. I stopped him there and told him how I have talked to a number of folks since the beginning of this and I have learned a bit and that some of the things I have been hearing isn't making sense. I also said that I have had enough experience over the years with car stuff ...both doing work myself and dealing with shops....to know what feels right, what doesn't and when something isnt right with how things are going done...and I told him I go that bad feeling about all this.
We moved on to the converter refund I had asked about last week. He said that the owner said that he won't be able to give me a refund because their vendor won't give HIM a refund. He said the owner told him "You know it doesn't work that way". All I can get is another converter. I mentioned the bad switch I replaced and the two cases of tranny fluid too. He said I would have to talk to the owner about that. I reminded him that I replaced the converter on my own...h never gave me the option of 'hey, we will have a new converter here for you tomorrow to try." I was left hanging.
It was a long conversation and we went round and round. I finally said that I had to think about it a couple days and would call the owner at the shop.
I am now debating when to call the owner....today sometime, before I know something from the other shop, or to wait a day or so, to get a full picture of what is going on.
I just thought that the whole conversation was sort of bizarre.
