A warning about a shop in Fort Collins, Colorado.

[dwd1985]

After having my SVX for a month, my alternator died. I took it to a place in Fort Collins, Colorado (where I live and go to school at) called Nice Car. They are an independant Subaru specialist, and said they knew everything about the SVX, so this was my natural choice. Anyways, they replaced my alternater and battery, but the problem was that replacing an alternator takes about 2 hours to do (I have done a few since then), so as soon as it was diagnosed, I should have had it back pretty soon. But not at this place. I understand they have other customers and work to do on other cars, but it took them nearly a full 2 weeks simply to get the alternator and battery and put them in. It was ridiculous. They also charged me the MSRP on all the parts, and I have since discovered that they can be acquired much cheaper online. Then, as I was checking out, I asked one of the techs about how hard it was to replace the knock sensors, since I was getting a CEL for knock sensor #2. He said "No car has 2 knock sensors, including the SVX." I insisted that the SVX did have 2 knock sensors, but he insisted it didnt. We all know it has 2, so this guy was plain wrong. I asked for an estimate, and was quoted around $500. I found the how-to's on this site, and did it myslef for $45 and 3 hours of my time. So I was already skeptical about them after this experience. This all happened back in august.
Everything was ok for awhile, but in early November, I noticed I was leaking engine oil and coolant. After trying in vain to find the source of these leaks and failing, I finally relented and took it to this shop again. They had it for 4 days trying to figure out where it was leaking from, and finally called me up to tell me that I needed a new water pump, cam and crank seals, valve cover gaskets, thermostat gasket and timing belt. The quoted me the MSRP for all of these parts, which came to a total of about $400. They also quoted me a labor estimate of $500, and told me "That can only go down, we put down 5 hours to do the water pump, so if anything, that estimate is high." I told them I would provide the parts myself, and they could put them in. I got all the parts I needed shipped for about $300. I brought the parts to them on November 20th, hoping it would be ready in time for Thanksgiving, but they told me that they had scheduled other work in front of mine (which I understood), and it would be ready around the 30th or so. I had also found some paperwork from the previous owner that showed that the thermostat and the timing belt had been replaced within the last 15,000 miles, so I took those back from them, and said not to replace those.
They called me on December 1st to tell me they had finally gotten to opening it up to start working on it, and noticed that all of my underdrive pulleys were bad. They quoted me another $500 for 2 camshaft ilders, a camshaft idler pulley, and a camshaft tensioner. So again I decided to order the parts myself, and got them all for about $300. They told me to get them quickly so that they could get it all fixed up and ready to go. So I got my parts shipped overnight, and had them to the shop the next day. While there, they told me "The timing belt looks good, but you might want to think about replacing it." I told them (again) not to. So now they had all of the parts that they could need, and told me it would be done soon. I waited a week, and finally called, and they said "It should be up on the lift this friday morning, and ready by monday." I called again the next Teusday, and they said "We should have it ready by thursday." I called saturday, and they said "We really dont know, we will have to call you to tell you when we are done." Needless to say, I was incredibly pissed off. sO I waited and waited, and one night decided to drive by their shop to see what was going on with it. They were closed becasue it was late, but my car was still sitting outside. I thought "maybe its finished, and they havent called me yet." so I went over to it, and noticed they they hadnt latched the hood down all of the way, so I peeked under, and lo and behold, THEY HADNT DONE ANYTHING! I freaked out, and the next day I called them and told them I wanted it done NOW. They told me they would have it done ASAP. This was about December 16th now. So I gave them 2 days, and was goign to go down there in person to freak out on them, but then ended up working about 105 hours in 2 weeks, and was never able to make it down there, and I knew calling them again wouldnt do anything. Finally, on the 21st, I got off of work early enough to go down there and yell, and as I was about to turn onto their street, they called me to tell me it was ready. Man was I happy! So I arranged to get it the next morning, and when I got down there, they handed me my bill, and 2 things were wrong with it. First, they had put on a new timing belt and thermostat gasket anywyas, eve n though I had told them not to. Second, they had kept the labor time on the water pump at 5 hours. I argued both of these points, but they didnt care. I finally just gave up, and paid the $715 they charged me for everything, and left. I drove home to my parents house for christmas on the night of the 23rd, and this morning, we noticed it leaking coolant again. So they sure as hell didnt fix whatever it was that was leaking, and now im 100 miles from there shop, and have no real way of getting it back there. I got royally screwed by this place, they took forever, had the worst communication and customer service, did things I told them specifically not to do, didnt have much knowledge about what they were doing, and charged way too much. So this is a warning to anyone in Colorado who has SVX problems, DONT TAKE IT HERE!!! Sorry for the ridiculously long post.

[kuoh]

Thanks for the warning, but I would've turned around and walked out the door right at the start when they said that it took 2 hours to replace an SVX alternator. It's more like 10 minutes when you know what you're doing and maybe 30 minutes for a first timer being extra careful.

KuoH

[Electrophil]

I thought the same thing on the alternator when I first started reading the post. The alternator is simple. A trained Monkey in a blindfold could pull it off in 30 minutes.

This place sounds terrible!

[Zeppelin]

That sucks! If you're close to Longmont, there's a Subaru dealer there. Not sure if they're good with SVX's or not, but there's a few driving around here. They'd be worth a shot.