My car broke down on the highway the other day and when I finally got the car towed to a mechanic, it was discovered that the engine had failed when the timing belt slipped. The hydraulic tensioner for the timing belt had worn out and allowed the belt to become loose. This came as quite a surprise, since I had paid a different mechanic to have the timing belt and its tensioner replaced a short time earlier. The new mechanic showed me the failed parts and it was clear that the tensioner (and several other parts that should have been replaced with the timing belt) had never been replaced.
Of course, it would be easy to focus the blame on the previous mechanic, who at best was grossly negligent and at worst was committing outright fraud. But what interests me more than fixing the blame is preventing a similar breakdown from happening again. I certainly won’t use that particular mechanic again, but what prevents the same problem from occurring with a different mechanic? Even the best mechanic could forget to do part of a job on a particularly bad day.
What I would like is to verify that the work was done, but that is difficult in the case of a timing belt change, since the affected parts are behind a cover and not visible. Besides, I probably don’t have the experience to tell by sight whether the job was done. I have a lot more confidence that the second mechanic replaced all of the parts, because he showed me the old parts. An effective solution for future repairs might be to always ask for the old parts, just so that I can know whether they remembered to perform the entire job.
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