Should the garage have picked up on my car with head gasket failure

adamtbray

adamtbray

adamtbray

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Hi all :),

I'm in a bit of a dilemma regarding a car that I bought which has turned out to have a failed head gasket.

I sent it to the garage to have work done on it (full service inc. change of air filters, spark plugs etc.), and also to have a timing belt fitted. The garage also fixed a leaky rocker gasket. All of the work totalled £670.

My question is, are the garage responsible for carrying out unnecessary work, as surely they would have picked up on the head gasket when lifting the top of the engine to fix the rocker and replace the timing belt. I've only driven another 100 miles since the work was done, and now my head gasket and cylinder head/block has completely failed with full loss of compression etc.

What are your thoughts on the matter, do I have a case to bring against the garage or may they genuinely not have picked up on this.

I just wouldn't want to have paid for work done on a car which the garage genuinely know is knackered.

Cheers
 
"Full" and sudden loss of compression is an unusual failure mode for a head gasket failure. It is usually a more gradual process. (I haven't seen sudden/full loss of compression as a result of HG failure in over 10 years, and even then it was as a result of loss of coolant and severe overheating)

Most HG failure these days are gradual and result in oil in the cooling system.

Short answer, If it was fine when it went in for the service, then there would have been nothing for the garage to spot. It is not reasonable to expect somebody to spot something that isn't there.

However, the description of the breakdown sounds a bit odd.

What exactly happened? and what is the car and its milage?
 
nas - don't think he's talking of where he purchased it from, rather the garage that he took it to for it to be serviced?

How could a garage diagnose a head gasket about to fail by the rocker cover being removed?

What car is it ooi?

Edit: Orionaut worded it much better :p
 
You would not notice a blown head gasket when removing the rocker cover.
They may or may not have noticed some gunky white oil in the head which could be a indicator of a blown head gasket and for any garage worth its salt would give you a ring before completing all the other works to say "it looks like the head gasket may have failed do you want us to investigate?"
That being said there may not have been any evidence to suggest this.

You normally get overheating problems with a blown gasket or have to keep topping up the coolant levels, either of which if reported to them they would hopefully have checked the head gasket, but if you didn't report anything like that I dont see how they could reasonably be expected to look for it and thus be liable for not spotting it
 
Did the engine suddenly die whilst driving? If so it's far more likely the freshly installed timing belt or tensioners have failed and you now have a large collection of bent valves. This generally only happens due to poor installation.
 
Full loss of compression sounds like failed cambelt / tensioner - all your valves are now smashed so the cylinders don't seal. I've not seen a head gasket blow on all cylinders at the same time, it normally just goes between one cylinder and/or an oil/water line.

But, no - you wouldn't spot a blown head gasket when lifting the cam cover off. You're exposing the cam cover gasket, a layer above the head gasket.
 
Dogbreath said:
Did the engine suddenly die whilst driving? If so it's far more likely the freshly installed timing belt or tensioners have failed and you now have a large collection of bent valves. This generally only happens due to poor installation.
Click to expand...

Indeed, need to know exactly what happened, did it conk out, overheat - far too many questions before knowing who is potentially at fault.
 
Hi all,

Thanks for your comments. To go into more detail, this is partly my own fault as I should have stopped driving the car when I noticed there were failed head gasket symptoms. Basically the first time I noticed there was a problem was I was driving the car and coolant sprayed all over the engine due to a sudden release of pressure (I'm not greatly knowledgable but the recovery guy diagnosed HG failure as being the cause due to the white gunk under the oil cap, as mentioned by Renton). There has, however been a bubbling noise after turning the engine off, and I'm sure this was present straight after the work done by the garage. I'm led to believe this is another classic head gasket symptom due to mixture of gases with coolant? Surely they would also have picked up on this.

I put some k-seal in the header tank and took it out for a spin to hopefully try and fix or at least slow the problem. Once I got out on the road, the car was driving really well until I got it up to about 70mph, and then my temperature guage went right into the red and I had loss of power/smoke. My car won't start now as a consequence. Ideally I should have waited to try and solve the gasket problem without putting the sealer in but I didn't think at the time that the garage may have potentially spotted this.

The issue is, surely the white gunk would not have accumulated within the 100 miles since driving it after leaving the garage would it? Not being mechanically knowledgeable about this sort of stuff when I left the car with the garage, I feel they should share some responsibility if this gunk was accumulating within the rocker cover and they failed to tell me, particularly this, along with the bubbling sounds my car was making after turning the engine off.

I can't see the timing belt being an issue here, but then again I'm not very knowledgable on mechanics!
 
The car has done 145000 miles and didn't have a service for 70000 miles! I guess it serves me right for buying a lemon in the first place. Lessons learned though!
 
I'm not sure why you think you'd have comeback on the garage either way, you didn't ask them to check for HG problems whether they spotted it or not is irrelevant in terms of actually being able to get anything out of them.
 
Yes, but surely they have a professional responsibility to report problems if they spot them even if I hadn't spotted them/asked them to check (I'm not the mechanic here). It would be unacceptable for them to charge me for a new timing belt if they knew my car was knackered!
 
adamtbray said:
I put some k-seal in the header tank and took it out for a spin to hopefully try and fix or at least slow the problem. Once I got out on the road, the car was driving really well until I got it up to about 70mph, and then my temperature guage went right into the red and I had loss of power/smoke. My car won't start now as a consequence. Ideally I should have waited to try and solve the gasket problem without putting the sealer in but I didn't think at the time that the garage may have potentially spotted this.
Click to expand...

If you have gunk in your oil then HG failed between oil and water however if you temperature went up that high then it suggest the HG has also failed between a cylinder and water. Was it actually smoke? or was is an excess of water vapour (think how a car looks when you start it on a cold day but about 10 times worse). Also how long passed between the 70mph and it not starting? and how doesn't it start? does it crank or do you just get the 'click click click' noise when you turn the key? If it cranks but dosn't start it could be a number of things, if you just get the clicking then my first guess would be the HG failed between a cylinder and your coolant jacket and as the car stood the cylinder filled with water and you have hydrolocked your engine.
 
adamtbray said:
Yes, but surely they have a professional responsibility to report problems if they spot them even if I hadn't spotted them/asked them to check (I'm not the mechanic here). It would be unacceptable for them to charge me for a new timing belt if they knew my car was knackered!
Click to expand...

Mechanics are (thankfully) not Drs they're not held by any code of ethics or legal standards that would cover them having to spot something they hadn't been asked to look for.

Some are good and will, for example I dropped my bike in to have a new set of tyres put on the other week and they spotted my bearings were shagged and replaced them for me even though I'd not mentioned anything about them checking them.
A large percentage will not, they'll do what you've asked and paid for and no more.
 
White gunk under the oil filler gap does not mean that the head gasket has gone, just there is moisture in the oil. My wife's Clio always has white gunk under the filler cap, and that's been fine for 40k miles.

The rest of the stuff, yeah - that's not sounding great. A bubbling sound after turning the engine off.. that's just air in the system, and not really something that indicates a fault. It doesn't sound like the garage could've known there as a problem about to occur with the head gasket.
 
Car arrives for a service, car gets driven in the workshop, the engine switched off and all the fluids necessary for that service get drained, cambelt is changed along with all the other filters, everything is topped back up, the rest of the service items are checked, wheels off and on, brakes, tryres, pressures, lights. Start it up, check over for leaks, put the undertray back on and it's parked back in the carpark. Paperwork done, book stamped FINISH..
At what point are they have supposed to have noticed a headgasket problem if you didn't mention it had one? And you can't use the goo under the rocker cover as an excuse, as a lot of short journey cars look like this.

I'm really going to have to bite my tongue when I get customers like this.. Grrrr
 
Head gasket failure can have many symptoms if it was just exhaust fumes getting in to the coolant then they may not notice unless they took it for a drive up to working temp then looked to see if there was air getting in but even that is not conclusive and you can't expect then to look for it unless they have reason to. Even if there was exhaust fumes getting in to the coolant they would need to do a sniff test to see.

That's just one example.

The last thing a mechanic wants to do is strip down an engine that has no fault, if they thought it was a blown HG they may advise you just to drive it if the repair cost is more than the value of the car.
 
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