Thread: What a month! Blown headgasket & snapped cambelt :-(

I've had a month of having no car so far...

Rewinding a month - the head gasket on my car went. Took the car to the garage and asked them to repair it. As they were doing the work, I asked them to change the cambelt, water pump and tensioner. I purchased a genuine Fiat belt kit from an online reseller using my credit card because I didnt want the garage to use any cheap copy parts.

Unfortunately 3 days after getting the car back, the car stopped running. Got the car recovered and it turned the cam belt had come apart. I initially thought that the belt had got caught and cut somewhere but the garage say its a faulty belt. They have called in an automotive forensic expert who has told me that in his opinion too its definately a faulty belt.

I'm not sure where I go next though. I face a bill that is steadily amounting to near a thousand pounds now . I hear its common place for belt manufacturers to just try passing the blame back to the garage which will make recovering the costs of having to have a new engine a nightmare.

I paid for the belt kit using a credit card (Egg money card). So could I try to recover the costs from the card company, who would in turn recover the costs from the belt manufacturer? Or is my only option to go directly to the belt manufacturer?

You must persue the belt supplier initially, before the CC company.
Was it a company or an individual; That will prbably limit liability to the just cost of the part anyway! Are you sure its a geniune part not a fake! I would of thought only Fiat would sell genuine fiat parts.
You may have to take them to court?
The other thing was the expert independant of the garage and if called in by the garage sounds suspicious so get your own check done to be sure!

Thanks, yes it is a propper company - http://www.shop4parts.co.uk/ many people on the Fiat forums use them and swear by them it seems. I had heard some belt makers tend to just refund the cost of the belt only. But I'm guessing most people this would happen to can't be bothered to try to recover their costs.

I have checked out who the expert independant is and they are not related to the garage. The garage owner went to trading standards for advice and they passed on the details for an automotive forensic services company to them.

If it is definately a genuine belt, sounds like the small claims court is going to be the place to go then. I'm presuming its the manufacturer of the belt that I should be going after rather than shop4parts though? I'm not sure :-S