Dealership theory debunked

[Tony Radford]

I've always followed the premis that the only benefit from taking a car to a dealership for service (particularly an older vehicle) was their service department's exclusive access to the manufacturer's knowledge base. For me, this premis has been proven to be false. A month or so back, my '98 Dodge Dakota died near a local mall. There happened to be a Dodge dealership a mile or so up the road, so it was most convenient getting them to arrange towing and to perform the commensurate repair. The problem ended up being a failed fuel pump, which they immediately replaced. Per standard protocol, they searched my vehicle for any other repair opportunities that might exist and in doing so noted a leak around the brake M/C. Reluctantly, I gave them the OK to proceed (it wasn't that old and the brakes were working fine).

The following morning, I couldn't help but notice that I had almost no brake pedal. I limped back to the dealership and sat around for half a day until they determined that the new M/C was faulty. Since it was an aftermarket part (Dodge part was days away), I had to pay for the labor to replace it. Fine. The next morning I was greeted with another case of "soft pedal". After three more visits, the mechanic staff was completely stumped. Since the brake system would start working normally after a few dozen pumps of the pedal, I insisted that it had to be trapped air to which their emphatic reply was always "no air in the system". Their solution was for me to leave the truck with them overnight so they could diagnose the problem while it was at its worst. I told them that what they would find is a soft pedal and a M/C reservior that is topped off with fluid. Despite my dismay regarding their ineptness at solving what should have been a simple problem, I figured I would have to do so when the opportunity presented itself.

Fearing I would kill myself (or more importantly someone else) combined with the fact that I couldn't allow my wife or daughter to drive the truck since it required pumping the system up prior to need (really makes you aware of what's going on in front of you), I dropped it off at a local Christian Brothers repair shop that's within walking distance of my office. After a brief description of the events that had transpired to date, they went to work locating and purging a significant amount of trapped air in the system and thus returned my brakes to proper working order. The technique described on the sales receipt involved opening a series of valves in the ABS system and manually bleeding the system followed by an overall power bleed. Whatever. The system works great - finally. I got some pleasure dropping the receipt off at the dealership so they could learn the proper procedure for bleeding the brakes on one of their products.

Needless to say, I'm down hundreds of dollars and lost time as I waited for the work to be performed, not to mention the replacement of a perfectly good M/C. Oh well, lesson learned. My sales slogan for the dealership is "You can buy better, but you can't pay more"! Rant over - moving on.