ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!

Tonight, when I came home, my dad told me of an unknown sound coming from under the car. He had noticed it today while commuting to and from work. In fact, it had gotten louder and louder as time went on. On top of that, my dad said that he felt that the suspension wasn't as tight as it used to feel. Because of that, I went to Autozone this past weekend and bought a pair of struts and strut mounts that I was going to change out this upcoming weekend.

But my dad was a pretty concerned about this ever-increasing sound, and so we went out and drove the car in order to check it out. As I was backing out of the driveway, I heard it: a loud "thunk-ing" noise coming from the front of the car. It usually happened when we ran over bumps, or made sharp turns. We headed over to the local highschool parking lot in order to drive it around in circles. It must have been quite a scene as my dad and I would take turns standing in the lot, while the other one drove the car in circles around the other person! I had noticed that the sound would occur when it seemed like the suspension was unloading... as in raising up when going around a sharp turn. So we headed back home and jacked up the car to see what was going on with the suspension.

When we had the drivers side tire off the car, I was greeted with quite a surprise...

The upper endlink nut was completely missing and the endlink itself was disconnected from the suspension! The "thunk-ing" sound we kept hearing was the endlink hitting against the sway bar everytime the car suspension would shake.


So what does this have to do with Lamb's??? First of all, let me say, those nuts don't disappear on their own. You actually have to physically unscrew the nut. Second of all, we haven't done any suspension work in the last couple months on this car. Third, and most importantly, this problem never manifested itself until after all that drama with Lamb's Tire and Auto. Not surprisingly, the damage was done to the driver's side of the car, which is the side of the car that was facing away from the customer lounge area in their lobby. Therefore, we wouldn't have been able to see anything that they were doing to the car at the time. The bolt is reachable without removing the tire, so it would have been easy to simply disconnect it with a 14mm wrench.

Granted, this is just circumstantial evidence, but my question is, "Who else would have any reason to sabotage a 10 year old car?" Only a mechanic who was still trying to make money off of us.

Either way, it's not a good sign when your car starts having problems after just visiting an auto repair center. Moreover, not only will I never go to Lamb's Tire and Auto anymore, I will never recommend them to anyone ever again. In fact, I will discourage anyone from going to them because of all of this. Go somewhere else that doesn't try to rip off their customer base.