Update: My girlfriend has not been driving the car to work because we know that it is not safe to drive after having it serviced at Suwannee auto repair. We have driven the car less than 150 miles after getting it back from this place. I took it down the road to Walmart today after work and could feel the car not shifting properly or accelerating properly. Upon stopping at a stop sign I tried putting the car into park and back into drive in an effort to help, and the car just shut off. Thankfully I was able to start it again, but the car was not shifting properly and I barely made it up the driveway back to my house. Suwannee auto repair worked on the coolant and the flex plate. Now the coolant is leaking way worse and the transmission seems to be malfunctioning. Save yourself time, money, and headache. Do not bring your car here.
We brought in my girlfriend's car for a cracked flywheel. They told us she needed to have multiple hoses replaced because she was leaking coolant. It cost an extra 800 dollars. We spent a total of 1900 dollars here. We did not bring in the car for a coolant leak repair. We had to put in coolant maybe once every few weeks, and we were fine with that. They originally said they noticed the leak when "some coolant dripped onto their mechanic's neck as he was working on the transmission". Later they would claim that we told them about the chronic coolant issues when we bought the car in, but we did not.
When I picked the car up it was low on coolant; The car was just recently turned on after sitting in their lot and the coolant in the reservoir was below the minimum line. The manager, Rick, said it was an "air bubble in the system". I refilled it, and a few days later, after about four hours of driving, it needed coolant again. We called them and they refused to consider that they could have made the problem worse, or that some error could have been made by the mechanic. They took the car back after the original repair and swore they could not find a coolant leak after driving it for 20 miles and running it for hours -- Rick admitted that based on the rate at which the car was losing coolant when we drove it they should have seen a loss after running it for a few hours (So why didn't they? It's certainly leaking quickly because we had to add more coolant this morning). He said it may be internal, burning up in the engine, and they don't want to "take the engine apart" to find out.
They swear they did nothing wrong but they can tell me whatever they want because I don't know anything about fixing cars. It's very possible they damaged something and aren't mentioning it, or didn't realize it. According to Rick, our car went from a minor coolant leak that we weren't even concerned about to potentially needing a whole new engine due to an internal coolant leak. This massive leak seems to have materialized while it was in their shop. Considering the coolant was low when I opened the hood at their shop, and empty again within 100 miles of driving I am fairly confident that it did happen in their shop, and not in the short period afterward.
I spoke to my local mechanic and in his opinion, if the problem was not there before we brought the car in and was there when it left their shop, which it was, then they should have at least located the problem and told us how to fix it.
Rick, took the time to answer their phone multiple times. However, after a brief consultation with my local mechanic, I feel like I already have more information on what the problem could be. Suwanee Auto Repair seems to be more interested in deflecting any potential culpability for damages than actually ensuring that the car is safe to drive. read more
