Around the end of September I took my car, a 1996 Mazda Miata, to this Transmission facility in Camp Hill for service. I had many negative issues with this experience, but that is not relevant to this particular issue. They did the final check on the car around December 20 and I drove the car home (to Ohio). I made it 200 miles to around Wheeling West Virginia when the engine started spontaneously quitting. It was 6 pm and too late to take it anywhere, so I had to check into a motel (something I never do on this trip).
The next morning, I had the car towed to a local Nissan dealership (it used to be Mazda also according to the tow truck driver). I had no appointment but they took pity on me and looked at the car first thing. They immediately found that the battery cable/wiring harness (the battery on a Miata is in the trunk - the engine is in the front), had been misrouted and had been worn away by the drive shaft. They said that the car was actually sparking and arcing as it was lifted on the hoist. They also said I was lucky that the car had not caught on fire - especially frightening since I had gassed up twice during the trip. They said they could patch it so I could make it the rest of the way home. But then they later came out and said they found additional problems.
In order to work on a transmission on this car, you must loosen or remove a chassis structural component called a Power Plant Frame. It is sort of an I-beam that connects the transmission to the differential so that the car will be structurally solid. It is held on by 4 large bolts. On my car, the Nissan technicians discovered that two of these bolts had had the threads stripped and a third had been altered or replaced in some way. Apparently this PPF was being held on by only one of the original bolts as designed by the manufacturer. I can only assume that the Transmission technicians did this damage, since no "under car" work had ever been performed before they worked on it. And even if they did not do the damage, they certainly had a professional and moral obligation to tell the owner about the damage - which they did not. The Nissan technicians patched both problems so that I could drive it the remaining 200 miles home which I did. Here is link to a picture of what the PPF looks like so that you can see it is a "non-trivial" component of the car.
(ROR redacted website for security purposes)
Picture of the stripped bolts are at:
(ROR redacted website for security purposes)
I informed the president of the Transmission Franchise in Camp Hill, about the problems and after a month of calling him, he finally agreed to pay for the repair at the Nissan Facility (about $157) which he did, but he refused to pay for the towing or motel - his excuse for not paying was unclear. Furthermore, he said he would not pay for the repair of the Power Plant Frame but would look at it and evaluate it in his own facility in Camp Hill. Of course the car was still in Ohio. I called the Nissan dealership, and they remembered me and my plight and I asked them if they thought I could drive the car 430 miles to Mechanicsburg. They said I should definitely not drive the car any if at all. The president said that any work on the car would have to be done by his facility. He said he would tow the car to his shop if it broke down while I was driving here. So, apparently, he expected me to drive an unsafe vehicle, 430 miles, and if it were to break down, I would sit along the interstate for hours waiting for his tow truck in January weather. Of course, in the event I had an accident on the way, any damage would have been worse because of the imperfect condition of the car. I heard nothing further from him, but I was now a month without the use of this car, so I took it to my local Mazda dealer who repaired the PPF at a cost approaching $900. I had decided not to put a "proper" fix on the wiring harness yet since I was thinking of getting rid of the car. I now realize I would have to disclose any problems to a potential buyer, so I will also have to have that wiring harness completely replaced - otherwise no one will want to give full value for the car. I need to sell the car to repay the transmission repair costs (over $3,000) and this PPF repair bill. As I said, he (the president) has refused to pay for these repairs, saying that I was obligated to bring it to him. While it might be true that I was obligated to bring it to him for WARRANTY TRANSMISSION work, these are not WARRANTY TRANSMISSION problems. They are damages done to other components during fixing the transmission.
I will refuse to allow this Transmission facility to work on the car for reasons not iterated in this document, but alluded to in the second sentence of paragraph two.
I am working with the local Chamber of Commerce to mediate a settlement of this matter and failing that I will go to the Better Business Bureau and the PA Attorney Generals office of Consumer Affairs, but in the mean time, I think it is prudent to make it public that this facility released a vehicle back to the owner in a damaged and unsafe condition without notifying the owner that any damage had taken place. It is especially unsettling to note that this damage to the Power Plant Frame would never have been known or discovered if they had not misrouted the battery cable. Any subsequent accident caused by the loose PPF or any additional damage, injury or deaths caused by this would never have been known
.
I have also files reports with the NTSB and the FTC, although, since these are large government organizations, I do not expect any real action from them.
Roger
Enon, Ohio
U.S.A.
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