The vehicle came into our shop with several complaints: hard start when cold, misfires and stall with a Check Engine Light on. This has been an ongoing complaint, and she has been bouncing around from BMW dealerships and other Independent Shops. So, when we finally got the car, we told her that we have to do a lot of testing since this complaint is intermittent. We did cylinder compression test, cylinder leakage test, and all cylinders passed. She keeps insisting that we should just replace the Headgasket since she had an extended warranty, but we told her that we would have to verify to Headgasket to be bad before we can replace it. So, out of courtesy, we performed a Headgasket Co2 check using a Sniffer, and the vehicle passed. Tested fuel pressure, we removed all Spark plugs and inspected it, and everything looked good. We charged her $99.00 with all the work that we did, and told her that there was a charge prior to performing all of the w ork that we did. We spent a good full day driving, testing, and we have told her that we have to recommend a Fuel Induction service first, but could not guarantee that it would cure the problem, but she did not approve the work, so we did not perform any work. Also, she complained about clunking noise when braking. After checking it out, we have found that both front lower control arm bushing were severed, and we have recommended to replace it. Her extended warranty approved that work, and never heard any clunking noise after replacement, and no other complaints from the customer that the noise was still there either.
Basically, our policy is to not place a part on the vehicle (based on customer request or a personal hunch) if all our diagnostic tests indicates otherwise. We had 2 Master Technicians working on her car for approximately 6 hours, and even at the end, after warranty work covered control arms, plus the courtesy work diagnosing her head gaskets, she still wanted a refund of the $99 dollars we charged her for diagnosis.
