Was mulling over something that happened to my car a couple month back and got to wondering if this is standard dealership treatment, or if these guys were just really horrible.... I had only had my new (used) 05 for less than a month, when the CE light started coming on. This happened in conjunction with some overheating issues. When I took the car to the dealership I was told it needed $1800 in "repairs." Even though i had Basecare this was "not covered," And nevermind I had only had the car 3 weeks.....

When I dug a little deeper I realized they meant they wanted to pull off my aftermarket CAI and charge me $1800 bring it back to factory spec. And fix a gauge that wasn't working. Like, what?!? No thanks. I haven't had much experience with Ford dealerships- wondered if this sort of thing was typical.

 

Sounds sketchy to me. Did you get it fixed?

 

agreed...

 

no- I wasnt paying them to rip off my upgrades And then less than a month later someone hit me and totaled the car, so I never had a chance to deal with it. I think ultimately if I had taken it to a mechanic who knew what he was doing I would have been told that it wasn't a serious issue (I'd already done a lot of research and was quickly coming to this conclusion) But worst case scenario would have been replacing the CAI with one with a tune, which is still well under $1800.

It really made me think twice about ever going to a Ford dealership for service though.

 

Lets see what they where exactly gonna repair, do you have the quote.

 

Kind of a non-issue now I suppose... If you ever need service done on a ford again I'd go to a diff dealer though...

 

Sounds like complete crap to me. Unless they could tell you exactly what was wrong and what they were gonna do to fix it, I'd have just walked away. Definately find a new dealer for future work...

 

Yep that's what I did.

 

Don't have the quote anymore but I remember it was for replacing the instrument cluster and pulling out my CAI and going back to stock. Those were the only two things on it.

 

Engines have gotten so complicated and sophisticated in todays world, that most of the service department people aren't really mechanics anymore...they are technicians. They plug the computer into the car...let the 2 computers talk to each other...and then replace what the computer tells them to replace. There isn't much good old fashion diagnosis going on, like there used to be...when Charlie ( your local Ford mechanic ) had 40 years experience of listening to, wrenching on and fixing push rod engines. It's not really the tech peoples fault....more just a sign of the times we live in. Your only hope, is that you get lucky and find an older tech, who has had all those years of experience and has managed to make the transition to the new approach. He can usually apply his years of experience, with the new tech and find a balanced approach to fixing the problem. Guys like that are hard to find though.........

 

Not quite true. The computer is not always right. In fact it usually isn't right. Still a lot of listening and diagnosing involved. The computer in a car isn't really all that smart.