Car service ****ty

My father in law took his Chevrolet Aveo in for repair at Craighall Car Service City to have a blown head gasket repaired. Late last year he had a massive stroke. he has since died. his daughter, my partner flew up to Joburg to help her mom sort out his affairs. Se needed to use the car while she was there. On driving it she found it making an odd noise, she got the advice of a friend who suspected the wheel bearings. She took it for repairs as it was dangerous to drive. Last week I flew up to Joburg to drive the car back to Cape Town with her. We decided to see about the air conditioning which had been working a year ago, we thought it probably needed gas. The aircon repair shop found that the pipe had been shoved under the radiator and consequently had been torn.

My father in law also always carried water in the car I was told and regularly had to check the water bottle.

I drove towards Cape town on Friday 6 Feb. When we got to Kroonstad 200 ks we decided to top up with fuel and found to our horror that the bottle was nearly empty and the water had boiled over. We panicked. It was leaking badly. I decided to see if I could find a replacement cap in case this was the problem. luckily I found an expansion bottle cap at Goldwagen and this solved the problem. l paid R 60.00 . we luckily made it to Cape Town. on arriving home I looked through the car papers and I found an itemised invoice from the head gasket repair.

On the invoice were the following 1) Front wheel bearing replacement. The bearings that were removed in December were badly worn and clearly not replaced one year previously 2) Expansion bottle cap. For this My father in law was charged R 1437.50 ( I paid R 60) we kept the broken one. 3) The radiator cover was loose and missing a bolt.

The ABS light had been on from the start when my partner first arrived in Joburg. The brakes also pulled badly to the right. The brakes were serviced in January 2020 according to the invoice.