So the other night whilst driving my PT Cruiser north on 100–I smelled burning.
I thought, “Must be a car with a severe problem ahead of me.” The scent increased. I started to wonder if my car was burning. So I rolled down the window and stuck my head out. The smell went away. “Oh crap.”, I thought. The smell eventually dissapated and I continued on my merry way–thinking somehow it was a car in front of me.
Then it came back.
Not two miles north of where I originally smelled the paper-like fire smell, I picked up the scent again. Now I was worried. When I arrived home I popped the hood. The smell was there but quickly went away.
The next morning I called Larry Reid’s Bloomington Chrysler Jeep and ended up driving it in to be looked at. They agreed to try and squeeze me in even though they had a full schedule. I told them I’d rather take the chance they could look at it today if it was something serious.
Kevin Anderson, my service advisor, called me around 3pm later that day. He explained that they would need to replace the Valve Cover as there was oil leaking into the air filtration system and possibly onto the exhaust–which is where the burning smell was coming from.
Here is a link that might shed better light on the explanation.
So far the mechanics claim that the car had no fire. However, the scent I smelled was more like paper burning so I’m rather worried. I know what oil burning smells like–and I don’t think that was what I was smelling. I may not be a mechanic but I’ve been driving for more than 15 years and owned several vehicles. This doesn’t include the years I spent watching my dad fixing cars in the garage (including my 1979 Doge Omni.) In fact my friend Matt had an old Caddy that burned oil almost as bad as John Candy’s Pontiac in Uncle Buck. I’ve smelled everything from when an air-conditioning unit breaks to rubber burning up the pavement. It just seemed like the car was burning something other than oil.
So now they’re ordering a part. The part is the whole valve cover (and I suppose the hoses). I imagine they’ll have to replace the air filter too. The service representative said it would take 4 days to get the part in and that the car was “undriveable” right now. So I conceded, “Great. No car for 4 days?”. Now here is the annoying part. They didn’t bother to check my status as a customer, look at my warranty policy or offer me a car. Rather they just left it up to me to complain. The last time I had major work requiring more than a day or two they said they “don’t give out loaner cars” and left it at that. They never bothered to say, “If your warranty covers a rental we arrange that for you.” So I ended up calling the General Manager to inquire about this. Because the last time I had major work nothing was arranged for me so why should it be this time, right? The General Manager, Dan Dunn, never returned my call. Arrogant son of a—. So my next thought was to call Larry Reid. I was told not to bother by someone who knew him. Ultimately, I ended up calling Chrysler. I inquired about my warranty. I warranty that I had upgraded at the time of purchase. A 60,000 Mile 5 year warranty in fact. I learned that Chrysler will cover up to $30/day for 5 Days on a rental car for warranty repairs. Do you think anyone at the dealership bothered to tell me that? Nope. Not a peep. They don’t want to have to eat the cost–so why bother. The sad things is… I’m sure they get reimbursed from Chrysler when they have warranty rentals so why not just do it in the first place? When the rack-and-pinion was replaced I had to find other means of transportation. Not cool. Not good customer service.
After calling the GM, Chrysler Warranty and the Service Manager I was able to get a rental at no charge. I got a Dodge RAM 1550–which was all they had left. They had to get it from Enterprise because they were all out of rentals at the Dealership. It smells of smoke in the cab and is quite large but at least it’s a running vehicle! I actually kind of like it. Heh. It’s beefy. Although it took Enterprise 40 Minutes to deliver the rental to me.
I have had my 2003 PT Cruiser GT into their dealership for numerous small mechanical issues including vibration, an annoying driver-side windo whistle (which still has not totally been fixed), rack-and-pinion (first few months) and now this.
Needless to say, I will not be purchasing another car from this dealership. Most likely I will not be purchasing a Chrysler either–which is sad because they do have some good products. My first Cruiser I owned for 2-and-some-odd-years before I traded it in for the Turbo. I had no problems with that car. So what has changed? Well they’ve cheapened the vehicles for mass production. Including lowering standards for interior dings and whistles, dropping out interior door and dash courtesy lights, standardizing dash colors to a single dash color, dropping heated mirrors from most models and now some major parts are apparently being cheapend as well including redesiging the Valve Cover (according to the service manager) 8 times.