I took my car in to have some suspension fixing done (hit a ditch, bent a strut) and they not only told me that the estimate was going to cost $72/hr (my Mazda always got free estimates so this was a surprise), but they also told me typical road hazards like potholes are not covered under warranty. Oh well no biggie.

When i picked up the car I saw that they had washed it and I was happy until I got in and saw that they also reset my ECU.

Now the car ran like crap for the first 20 minutes. Evil bastards.

At any rate, I tried a new way to teach the ECU to run properly after a reset. I put it in 5th gear at about 1500rpms and cycled slowly through the throttle position as the speed gradually increased (cycled the throttle smoothly several times from 25mph to about 75mph) and then repeated. I've never had the ECU recover from a reset so quickly. It took like maybe 10 minutes whereas previously it took as much as 100 miles to be running smooth at all throttle/rpm combinations.

What the heck are you talking about?

They did not reset your ECU on purpose. Garages usually disconnect the batter to do major work on a car. If it took them more than an hour, your ECU got reset.

If I don't miss my guess, most places don't disconnect the battery to take off a tire and look at a strut. Knowing nhluhr's car I can tell you from experience that after the CAI was added his CEL stays on constantly. So I'm sure they saw that, read the code which will come back with "running lean" and reset it. Of course it's going to run "lean" with a CAI. Not that they knew that so they just reset it and sent him on about his merry way. One way we can find out for sure if they disconnected the battery is to ask nhluhr if his radio presets were still there when he got back in the car (I hate how those always get lost).

true, but some shops disconnect the battery as step#1 in all cases just so that they don't overlook it when it is important. (painting, etc.)

most dealerships are indeed thinly veiled evil, but I don't see anything weird about this particular incident.

I dunno, dealerships are doing the same thing that we're doing--trying to make/save a buck. Ideally, both sides come out okay and nobody feels too hammered. Knowledge is power. What also helps is to find a good garage, that won't charge the generally horrific shop rates of a dealership. Service areas are the principal profit makers for auto dealerships.

No, I'm not a dealer or affiliated with one. :lol: Just wanted to bring a little perspective to the whole deal.

Kevin

well it just really tweaked me.

Come to find out they gave me my car back with the camber worse than when it went in. The part, of course, is not in stock (front left strut) so they told me 5-7 days. No biggie...

But when i saw that my tire was now rubbing the strut, i see that when they put it all back together the just paid no attention to the camber bolt and slapped it on any which way.

The guy didn't give me a copy of the quote either, so i called them asking for the info and he put me on hold for 5 minutes then told me he would call me back with it. It's been an hour. Again, no biggie. I'll buy the strut somewhere else (cheaper) and install it myself.

Dealerships are all thinly veiled evil ! !