Garage wrecked my Range Rover engine… please help

[Volvo1956]

That's fair enough. Assistance and advice no longer required.

Leave it with the private mechanic/ expert witness at garage number three.

[rottenegg]

nosha123 said:

thank you (I think) for the response so far...

So garage 1 was about 10 min drive away from garage 2.
So it wasn't that far to drive it.
The engine warning light was amber not red - which lead me to believe that it wasn't a 'stop driving the car now and pull over' situation. SO I did what felt like the most sensible thing and took it straight to a garage - I just didnt realise that first garage was not going to be able to do the repairs.

The engine was running when I arrived. and when I left it there.
The engine still ran during their own inspections - albeit they knew it was now a timing chain issue - so they COULD have chosen to not start the engine if they knew the seriousness of the issue.

The engine seized, according to my own private engineer, because they manually rotated the engine backwards whilst it still had the slack timing chain installed....
The pistons and valves all then smashed on the cylinder head and broke off leaving the engine completely seized.

My private engineer had to remove the cylinder head to pick out the broken pieces... and said there is no way that I could have caused that damage as I was able to drive it and the engine seizing would have been instantaneous

Bit of a sketchy one to be honest as you are both responsible for the damage.

Not doing their own diagnostics first and immediately removing the engine off the back of "Customer stated....." rarely ends well for either party because it quickly escalates into "Repair costs tripled...." and 1 star Google reviews.

Cars being returned to customers from dealers and indies with a boot full of parts is a growing problem. The whole industry is a complete mess.

Now how the hell can privateer prove the engine was rotated backwards? And for how many degrees was it rotated backwards? Most engines post 2000 with spring loaded chain tensioners don't simply break when rotated backwards. If private man is implying the chain slipped off a sprocket or two, again, he needs to prove Garage 2 did that.

[rottenegg]

Responder.First said:

idealstandard said:

This forum is becoming a really sad place - people just come here to mock and belittle others and relish in others misfortune, pretty awful really.

Agreed there is a pack mentality and people do seem to bang on being negative, even after you have conceded.

You can see that in many of speed plod law threads, sadly people seem to have very little time if you have made a mistake or gotten a situation wrong.

I do think the OPs case does sound very difficult, I would be gutted too if I had a 10k engine bill, I just think its going to be very hard to prove the garage made it worse while trying to work on the vehicle.

Yes there definitely is a massive pile of miserable old middle aged grumpy gits on this forum, however, in this instance, the responses are realistic, rational and reasonable. So it's more a case of sensitive flowers not liking the truth that is the issue here.

[blue_haddock]

nosha123 said:

thank you (I think) for the response so far...

So garage 1 was about 10 min drive away from garage 2.
So it wasn't that far to drive it.
The engine warning light was amber not red - which lead me to believe that it wasn't a 'stop driving the car now and pull over' situation. SO I did what felt like the most sensible thing and took it straight to a garage - I just didnt realise that first garage was not going to be able to do the repairs.

The engine was running when I arrived. and when I left it there.
The engine still ran during their own inspections - albeit they knew it was now a timing chain issue - so they COULD have chosen to not start the engine if they knew the seriousness of the issue.

The engine seized, according to my own private engineer, because they manually rotated the engine backwards whilst it still had the slack timing chain installed....
The pistons and valves all then smashed on the cylinder head and broke off leaving the engine completely seized.

My private engineer had to remove the cylinder head to pick out the broken pieces... and said there is no way that I could have caused that damage as I was able to drive it and the engine seizing would have been instantaneous

so you driving it 10 minutes down the road didnt do any damage to the engine and yet the garage doing 100 yards to turn it round killed it?

There is no way on this planet that manually turning the engine by hand had enough force to smash pistons and valves.

Get it repaired by your 'private engineer' pay the bill and suck it up.

there is a good reason why JLR are the bottom of every single reliability survey.

[blue_haddock]

rottenegg said:

Yes there definitely is a massive pile of miserable old middle aged grumpy gits on this forum, however, in this instance, the responses are realistic, rational and reasonable. So it's more a case of sensitive flowers not liking the truth that is the issue here.

This post seems very similar to another one from earlier where the post wasnt going the way the OP wanted and so he deleted his post and said he was going to commit suicide.

[normalbloke]

Is that you Katie?

[t.boydy]

Why through the 'female' card into it?

Don't think anyone knew if you were a man/woman etc....

You have been given advice on here that you didn't like due to people not agreeing with you so dummies out and everything and stormed off

As others have said, get a 2nd hand engine fitted

Valve heads would NOT snap off by turning the engine by hand.

Most likely terminal damage occurred when travelling to garages, sorry

[NortonES2]

Thought the 5.0 was supercharged?
Apologies, should have read the whole thread.

Edited by NortonES2 on Thursday 27th June 20:49

[FMOB]

I feel for the OP, they are in a quite a big hole.

I wonder if garage 1 told the OP whether it was driveable or not? Personally knowing a little bit about cars, driving with a suspected engine timing issue is high risk and could go badly wrong.

I suspect by the time it arrived at garage 2 it was probably too late to save the engine, the video mentioned by the OP of it running and sounding like a tractor were probably the engine on its last legs and running it for a compression test was the last gasp.

Unfortunately I think this falls into the 'st happens' category and it was too late to save the engine. If the OP had told garage 2 not to run the engine, push the car into the bay and just strip it down for repairs and they ran it I think they may have a case against garage 2.

As it stands I think the car will owe £38k+ by the time this is done.

[swisstoni]

Presumably the £10k estimate is for a replacement engine plus fitting.

There must be some outfits able to rebuild the existing engine?
It won’t be cheap but I’d hope it would that could come in at less than £10k?

[Pistom]

I feel for the OP for several reasons, the primary one is that they're failing to recognise good advice as it isn't what they want to hear.

They probably won't return to this thread now as they seem to have wanted help in how to get out of an impossible situation which wasn't going to cost them a third of what they still owe in finance of the car.

Really not sure why people do that - ask for advice and then shoot the messengers for giving it.

I've always received good advice on these pages - this is a car forum after all and there's always someone who knows better than you. I might not always like what I learn but in learning, I'm better off than not receiving the advice in the first place.

[eldar]

swisstoni said:

Presumably the £10k estimate is for a replacement engine plus fitting.

There must be some outfits able to rebuild the existing engine?
It won’t be cheap but I’d hope it would that could come in at less than £10k?

If the pistons hit the valves with enough force to snap the head from the stem, you'd need to be wary of damage to conrods and the crank and some pistons. Parts could cost a lot, plus lots of skilled labour.

£10k could be the ballpark for either option.

Horrible position to be in.

[B'stard Child]

normalbloke said:

Is that you Katie?

That took a while………

[gazza285]

Am I the daft one? I presumed that when the engine was rotated backwards by hand, the first bank of cylinders became out of timing, then when the garage tried to run the engine for the compression test the damage occurred. It wouldn’t only have the starter turning it over, but the other four cylinders would be driving it as well, more than enough force to break the valves…

[ATG]

gazza285 said:

Am I the daft one? I presumed that when the engine was rotated backwards by hand, the first bank of cylinders became out of timing, then when the garage tried to run the engine for the compression test the damage occurred. It wouldn’t only have the starter turning it over, but the other four cylinders would be driving it as well, more than enough force to break the valves…

That's how I interpret what the OP said. OP is not very technical (which is fine) and didn't explain this particularly clearly, but the two comments she relates from the 3rd garage say damage caused by turning engine back by hand AND revving it hard. Add in that the 2nd garage at some point said they'd replaced the timing chain and it may have been something like 2nd garage turned engine back and misaligned it while fitting new chain, ran engine and borked it, removed new chain and chucked old one in boot along with rest of engine. Didn't charge the OP for the new chain. Why put the old chain back? Keep bill down for OP if they're not total bds. Or to cover their tracks if they are total bds.

[NRG1976]

The exact mechanics of what has happened who knows, it can be debated until the cows come home. The crux of the issue is you will need to prove negligence of Garage 2, should such negligence have taken place.

There are set ways to approach this from a legal perspective. Suggest you exert your efforts on what that approach is rather than trying to justify or not the garage was negligent on here.

This can be a costly and time consuming process, with success not guaranteed.

[M_A]

1) Supplied and fitted SVR engine is £7k from eBay.

2) Seek legal advice and a solicitor will let you know and charge an hour's fee if it's worth pursuing a claim. However, I imagine it will be difficult to apportion blame between OP, garage 1 and garage 2.

[ChocolateFrog]

nosha123 said:

I think I'm done thanks chaps... thanks!

I can tell I'm in a very male dominated environment by the tone of the majority of these posts... (not all I hasten to add but the grown ups seem to be in the minority here)

A lot of you seem to come on here to take the piss and belittle people, in an effort to make you feel better about your own day and to boost your egos.

That isn't an environment I enjoy being around... so thanks for your contributions... I was hoping - given the name of the site - that some of you might have technical engine experience and could verbalise that - but a lot of you resorted to cheap shots and sarcasm.. which I think says a lot about you...

Byeeeeeeee

(oh and just a little tip from a female who you probably perceive as dumb and stupid, and out of my depth... if you have nothing nice to say.. then shut the fk up)

Aw diddums. You didn't like what you heard.

If you come on to a car forum and expect people not to be pedants when you get basic details wrong then you're sadly mistaken, for better or for worse.

You've only got 2 options, none of them involve getting any money back from any garage.

Either pay for a secondhand engine and someone to fit it or sell it for spares.

Neither is palatable and I do sympathise there but JLR products don't come bottom of the reliability surveys for nothing.

As an aside I would be mildly interested to know how many oil changes the car had had before the chain stretched.

[A.J.M]

Am I the only one wondering why a “Land Rover specialist” would take the word of a non Land Rover specialist garage as 100% gospel without doing any investigation work themselves to make 100% they were correct?

[ChocolateFrog]

swisstoni said:

Presumably the £10k estimate is for a replacement engine plus fitting.

There must be some outfits able to rebuild the existing engine?
It won’t be cheap but I’d hope it would that could come in at less than £10k?

Personally I think that would be the biggest risk of all.

Finding someone competent to do it properly would be a challenge and the parts will be eye-wateringly expensive (assuming genuine parts, and you'd be mental to use cheap parts unless you were going to sell it immediately)

Edited by ChocolateFrog on Thursday 27th June 20:21