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On 04-12-06, I, Peter Morales took my car to 7 different auto shops because I heard a banging sound coming from my motor. Since I knew some of the guys from Performance Tire and Rim on Main Street in downtown Suffolk. I went up to Joe the manager because he helped me before so I asked him if he could tell me what the sound was. He said that I needed a new motor. Then he went to a mechanic named Ron who told me he had a motor for me. I asked him if it was a V-Tech, he said yes, so I asked him how much and he said $175. I said sold but I am not a mechanic, he walked back into the shop to talk to Joe and another mechanic named Mark. Mark and Ron came out after talking to Joe and said they can do it all for $500. I told him that I was going to get the money and he said to drop it off on Saturday at 5 pm.

I went and got the money and asked how long it would take and he said it will be ready the next day. I confirmed that they knew what they were doing and they replied that they had done it before without any problems. I dropped it off on Saturday and on Sunday I went to see if it was ready. Joe, Ron and Mark were still working on my car, I asked how much longer and they said soon. I left and called a couple hours later asking if it was done yet. They said it would be done on Monday. Monday came and I called checking on the status. They said it was not done yet but will be done shortly. The next day Ron called me saying that the owner found out and didn’t want the car up there. Confused, I questioned what that meant and he said this was a personal deal (that’s when I found out, I thought that only the motor was). Ron called me on Tuesday (4/18) and told me he was sending it to a place down the road, I said I have no more money and he said he would pay for everything since I already paid him.

Well I went to Suffolk Automotive Specialty, where he sent my car and asked how long it would take. They were confused and said that they needed to talk to Ron about what he wanted them to do, however they didn’t have his number so I gave it to them. Jeff, the owner, told me he could not get in contact with either Ron or Mark, so I tried. He also said that there was a lot of work that need to be done to the engine and there was a lot of water in the block like it had been sitting in water. He also said that the engine was in very poor shape and that it would cost and additional $500 to get the car in satisfied condition. Ron never called me back so I went to Performance looking for them. I saw Mark and he said he called Ron and told him to call me but he didn’t for a few days. At this point in time it had been a week since I dropped off the car. When I finally talked to him he called Jeff and told Jeff just to get the car started. I went to Jeff and he told me that my car was stuck in gear but he had fixed it and it was $100. Ron then wanted to tow the car back to Performance but didn’t have the money to pay for the tow truck and the bill at Suffolk Automotive Specialty. Ashlee, my girlfriend, gave him the money for the tow truck and he gave her the $100 to pay for the bill. The car was towed back to Performance on Thursday, April 27th and they said it would be done by Monday at 3:30 pm.

On Monday, I went to pick up my car with a friend of mine. Mark told me it needed an oil change so I got in and tried to start her up but nothing happened so I went to Mark in question. He hooked up some cables to the battery and the car started up. That’s when I noticed black smoke coming from the tail pipe. When I asked about it he said it was ok that it was because of the new motor. When I pulled out of the parking lot and onto Main Street the car started to shudder and then shut off as I was pulling into the parking lot of the Quick Lube next door. The employees from the Quick Lube came over and looked at the car. They asked what happened and I told them that I just had an engine swap at Performance. They further examined my engine and told me that it wasn’t completely installed and that the transmission was separated from the engine and there was oil in the transmission. I called and talked to Mark and he said that he would look at it as soon as he got a chance. I pushed my car onto the empty lot between Performance and the Quick Lube. Mark called and said that he tightened up some screws that had came loose from pulling out of Performance’s drive way (to me that didn’t sound right if the screws were tight previously) and that he couldn’t get it started because the car alarm had also activated when pulling out. A couple of days later I came up with my alarm remote. I turned off the alarm and tried starting the car. The battery was completely dead so I took it to Auto Zone to have it charged. When I got the battery back in my car it still wouldn’t start. Dallas, a mechanic at Performance, came out and assisted me. We then realized that there was about 8 quarts of oil in the engine (far too much). We drained out some of the oil and he retrieved some new spark plugs to try and start it. The engine started briefly but there was a terrible knocking and smoke coming from it along with the black smoke out of the tail pipe. The car shut off and Dallas said that the engine was destroyed due to the excess of oil and that my transmission was in a questionable state as to whether it was destroyed. We then noticed that the engine he installed in my car was not a V-Tech but a standard Honda engine.

I told Mark about the discrepancy with my engine and he claimed that I had pulled out of the driveway rough and that is what caused all the problems. The employees at the Quick Lube and my friend Matt agreed that I was driving very cautiously and I couldn’t drive rough because my car wasn’t on for very long. I talked to Ron and he said that he was driving my car on the Friday before I picked it up and everything was fine, if this is true then why did I have to wait until Monday to pick it up? When I approached the owner about my car he said that he had no knowledge of my car even being worked on which is contrary to what Ron had said. Suddenly I was being given the run-around about fixing my car. Both Ron and Mark stopped answering my calls and when Ashlee approached Joe he told her that it wasn’t the responsibility of Performance to fix it since it was a “back-door deal.” He also said that it was a cheap job with a cheap engine. I found this very interesting since he was the one promoting this job. After talking to lawyers I found out that it was Performance’s responsibility since it was done on their property.



Please help.

Thank you Peter Morales.