The enclosed photos are of the bolts used to secure the main motor mount on my 2010 Honda Civic. The picture of the two bolts show how they looked when I picked my car up after CLN Auto Service had replaced all the motor mounts and "dog bones" at a cost of $627.32. I did not find this out until about three months later, when a mechanic who was putting freon in my in my car called me over and asked me "Did you recently have someone worked on your motor mounts?"
When I took the car back to CLN, Cliff the owner, said leave the car over there and they would take care of it. When I picked the car up the next day, he said the problem was "It was the wrong motor mount." Well, the motor mount looked the same, but the bolts were tightened up so I figured everything was okay. It wasn't.
Almost immediately I began hearing rattling sounds coming from the engine compartment. Previously, I had another shop replace the CV joints and they had some problems doing the work too, so I thought that may be making the noise. The noise got worse, so in March of the same year, I took my car to a shop in Fayetteville that specializes in Hondas. What they found was shocking. What CLN's mechanic had done when I took my car back to them was to turn their impact wrench to the maximum torque and tightening the bolts stripping the threads of the two bolts. A third bolt was also tightened to the point that the bracket was actually torn loose from the frame and the welds broken. That is the third picture shown. The vertical bolt assembly was so damaged it had to be replaced and they had to take the front fender off to fix it. The total cost to repair CLN's poor work was $697' it should have been over $1000, but they gave me a low estimate to start with and were honest enough the stick with it.
What was most disappointing was the fact that CLN never took responsibility for their poor work. read more