For those that need a good laugh:

At the start of April, the beast is approaching 30K miles, and going on the road race course mid-April, so I figure I'll get a number of things done. I can at least do a FEW things myself. So I change out both air filters, top off fluids, and replace the brake fluid with fresh Motul 600.

Then it's off to a local Corvette specialty shop (DFW area) to get the trans fluid replaced. Even though they charge a bit more, I want experts doing the work. When I get the car back, it's shifting a bit weird, so after a few days, I take it back, tell the owner how it's acting, he thinks and says "Hmmm, sounds like it might be overfull". So they let it cool down, and check, and yep, a QUART overfull, and tell me so, and fix it. Though of course, it would have been nice to have had it done right the first time.

Then off to get an alignment. I take it to another pricey race shop that mostly does Porsches, but is recommended. They charge me nearly double what the dealership would charge, but again, I want "experts" doing the work. I get the car back, and a few days later, go racing.

About halfway through the day, the brake pedal suddenly goes soft, I get it back in and jack it up and take a look, and brake fluid is leaking from the bleed nipple on the left front. SOMEBODY had not tightened it back sufficiently when replacing the fluid. Quickly tightened it back up and got back racing.

A couple days after the HPDE, a "SERVICE ACTIVE HANDLING" light comes on. Nothing is happening with the car, and I push the traction control button twice and it goes away. But now it won't go into comp mode. It's not there when I restart the car, but about ten minutes later, it comes back on. I've had stray lights show up and go away with this car before, so I give it a few days. After a week, it's still doing it, each time about ten minutes after start up. So I'm thinking I'll take it to the dealership and let them run the code, see what the deal is. I'd also noticed, rather suddenly, that the steering wheel wasn't straight, but instead pulled down to the left 5-10 degrees, when driving straight. I let go of the wheel, a slight right pull, but doesn't seem too much. Weird. But I need to make a road trip to Austin, three hours away, so I figure I'll do that first, THEN hit the dealer the next morning.

When I have driven most of the way there, I run into some rain. The Vette handles rain just fine, so no big. Until I hit about an 1/8" of water on the road, little thin, thin, spot, and the the back of Vette launches right, hard. I catch it, with appropriate expletives, and it immediately jumps back left, almost hitting a car. I'm slowing it down, and the back just keeps jumping right, left, right, very randomly. At first I'm thinking there is something on the road, but everyone else is driving along busy I-35 with no issues at all. I'm barely going 40 and can hardly keep it in a lane.

I take the next exit, look the car over, can't see anything obvious, cancel my Austin business, and drive it back home, before the entire drive back is engulfed in rain, which it would have been hours later, when I was originally planning to return. It is also now REALLY making some road noise at the tires. Freaky. And more fun dancing on the way home.

I take it into the dealership the next morning, and as I drive it in, you can hear the tires scrunching viciously, as if I'm turning the car tightly, yet I'm pulling in straight. I ask the service guy to back it up and pull it forward, and it is still doing it, and it is clearly the two back tires.

They call me a couple hours later, the rear alignment is WAY out of whack. Both rears at around 2.5 degrees toe-in!! And the rear tires are trashed, probably a fourth of the tread toasted in a couple weeks. SOMEBODY didn't properly tighten up the fittings when they did the alignment.

While it is at the dealer, there is a little unrelated warranty item to fix, a stray noise in the left rear hub. They say they'll take care of that as well, when the part arrives in a couple days. So a couple days later I take it back to the shop, and they do the work quickly and promptly, and give me the car back. They also mention the rear pads are getting pretty worn, might want to change them sometime soon, and I knew that, no problem. But the next day, I hear metal-on-metal grinding from the left rear. Sheeesh, the bolts hitting the rotor, time to fix that! And I was going to replace the rotor as well, so I pick that up Saturday morning. I WAS going to do all the work then, but the wife decides it's a nice day, we are all going to the zoo and then out to eat. By the time we roll back in, it's late, I'll do it THIS morning.

Jack it up, pulled the wheel, start to loosen the caliper bolts to get the pads out, when I notice the entire caliper assembly is moving! I feel in the back, the bolts that hold the caliper to the brackets are not tightened!! Indeed, the bottom one is gone, the upper one is just sitting in the hole, no threads engaged at all. The metal on metal sound was the bottom of the caliper dragging on the side of the rotor. If that had fallen off, the next time I hit the brakes the piston would have blown out the pad, and likely the piston as well, draining the brake system, or at least the rear section. And of course no place to get one of those fat bolts on a Sunday, so now it's just sitting around on the jack for a day. HOPEFULLLY the dealer will have a bolt handy. Heck, maybe it's still sitting around the shop there. . . .

So, in no particular order, so far in April I did some of the work, and did something stupid enough to have got me killed (failure to properly tighten the bleed nipple); one specialty shop just did a bad job, the other nearly got me killed on the highway (failure to tighten up everything after the alignment); and the dealership failed to reattach an ENTIRE CALIPER.

So, since NO ONE can work on my car without trying to kill me, I suppose the next time ANYTHING goes wrong with the car, I'll just go purchase a new one. Personally, I can't wait for my lucky April to wrap up and move on. Lordy.

 

Just WW. I've had those months before.

The only way I have over come this is luckily to get to know the shops with all my vehicles. I am under the car just about the whole time it's on the rack looking and watching.

I actually use the dealership and Big10 tires shops for a lot of work. I know the managers and most of the workers. I have never had to pull the azzhole card with the Vette.

About 1 out of 3 or 4 times I caome in they ask me how to work the bartec again. I have went in and used the rack for some personal usage from time to time. Now if the people left the shop I would hate to start again.

 

Wow...talk about a series of incompetent events. It gets to the point where the only one you can trust is yourself. That is why I try to do as much on my car as possible myself in the way of maintenance and tuning. At least if I make a mistake or get into something over my head, I know about it, can get advice, the right tools, or mechanic friend to help me out. When you don't know about it, that's when the real problems occur. Good luck with the month of May.

 

It is truly amazing that people do not take pride in their work, when I had alignment done last month, I watched every step so it is good. I had a shop install my NPP and they took off the tunnel plate to run the vacuum hose, my vert had a strange creaking noise after hitting some bumps so I checked the bolts on the tunnel plate and they were all loose, I tightened them to the proper torque, now the car is back to normal. At my age I do not want to get under the car so I try not to. It's terrible that you cannot trust to leave your car at a shop, now I stay and watch everything they do.

 

For the problems mentioned above, I do everything that I can on my car. Some things, of course, need to be done on a lift and for those things I have a very small list of places to which I go in order to have them done, but in every instance when it's up on the lift, I'm there like white on rice so I can observe exactly what's done.

Fortunately for the OP, nothing tragic happened through all the oversights that occurred.

 

Since I've had flywheel bolts I could remove by hand and bolts flat-out just not put back which held pretty important parts together... A lift was bought and I've done all work myself.

I've got to give a little credit to the shops out there though cause, I work on my own cars and even I forget something once in a while

If a shop touches the car, it's a race shop where they know everything needs to stay together in the very worst environment.