[AEMCougar]

Alright so i get indiglo gauges for my 99 V6 for xmas, the ones with the blue/green color changer. I didnt trust myself installing them so i call up a few local places for prices for install, $200, $150, $100, then i get $75 so naturally, go with the $75.
Bring the car in the next morning, come back a few hours later to pick it up, everything LOOKS fine so far, go back into the place to get my stock ones and they tell me the stock ones stay underneath. ok. on the drive home everything seems ok, later that nite i took it on the highway and this is where it starts to get fun. speedometer gets stuck at 50 mph, tach wont go past 5K, when i brake down to 0 MPH, the speedometer stays at 50, then in one movement goes to 20, then stays at 15. very cool. call up the place and flip, they tell me to bring it back. so i bring it back there, different guy fixes it, come back and take it for a quick ride, everything works. it doesnt seem as tight in there so i think the new guy removed the stock ones but there no where to be found now. happy with the gauges, i turn on my radio and to my delite, it sounds like sh*t considering i have over a grand put into it. no problem though, i figured the genius who took apart the dash rewired everything wrong to the headunit so i fixed everything the right way.
Sounds fun huh? Anyone else with some "fun" stories?

 

[ND4SPD]

...im sorry to say it man, but thats what you get for bringing something that you could easily do yourself... to someone else.


the gauges were one of the first things i ever changed... i knew jackall about cars, the cougar, or how any of it worked
but i found the how-to on here, and off i went... sure, the first time, it took me the better part of an afternoon, but it was definitely NOT something that requires a professional to do.

and in the end YOU had to fix stuff anyway... heh, oh well! i hope it all works perfectly now

 

[Croc]

That sucks, but you chose the cheapest place, and unfortunetly sometimes you get what you pay for, and in this case you learned a valuable lesson: either find a reputable place to do the work or just do it yourself.

 

[ignernt]

i guess i don't have any fun stories because i don't let anybody touch my car.

 

[rista]

i remember putting in my indiglo gauges and the needles kept getting stuck. people in traffic looked at me really wierd when i was slamming my fist on top of the dash :rofl: problem eventually went away after about a week.

 

[Alan]

double sided tape worked wonders for my guages

 

[ZEXCougar]

This is how I learned to not let anyone mess with your car:

When I was 17, I had a 1986 Buick Electra... (Big 4-Door Boat) Well, I had 4 15" Kickers in the trunk so I wanted to get an alarm for it. I worked at a local retail store at the time, and bought the best alarm available at cost. They couldn't get me in for installation for a week, so I called around and found a stereo shop that would do it that day. I drop my car off with the sunroof open since it was a nice day and leave it there. When it comes time to pick it up, everything is fine and the alarm works great. So I get home and get ready to park it for the night. I try to close my sunroof and it doesn't work. After doing some investigating, I found out that the genius that installed my alarm cut the power wire for the sunroof and tapped the power wire for the alarm into it. But the guy didn't hook up the other half of the sunroof wire. So I call them back and they deny touching the wire. Obviously they did because the alarm wire was tapped into the sunroof wire!!! They still denied doing anything to it. So after like 20 minutes of arguing they finally admitted to tapping into the wire. They then told me to just hook the wire back up and everything would be fine. I hooked the wire back up and all of a sudden the alarm goes off. It turns out that this alarm has a voltage sensor on it that will activate the alarm if anything with the electrical system is touched. So here I am with my alarm going off full blast at like 8:30 at night. My remote wont work for some reason - so it is basically stuck on. I call the place back and they tell me in a crappy, snotty voice to bring the car back... Like it was my fault that they screwed up in the first place! Well, my new alarm also had a starter kill on it which stopped me from moving the car anywhere. So I call them back again and they tell me tough luck. So, I popped the hood and cut the speaker out (which continued to go off because of a built in battery) and put it in a shoe box to somewhat muffle the sound. I stuck the shoe box in the trunk and let it go off all night until it finally went dead. I had my car towed back to the place in the morning - only to find out that since I cut the wires they would not help me and it is my fault that the alarm is messed up. Long story short, I got shafted with $100 charge to tow it there, $150 to install the alarm in the first place, and lots of really irritated neighbors. I wired it back up myself and it worked fine. Until two weeks later when my car was broken into and my stereo and alarm were stolen.

 

[AEMCougar]

Dont get me wrong but everything done to my car except tints has been done by me and my father. at least if we screw it up we can only blame ourselves but the gauges seemed like such a biotch and i didnt wanna screw up all that important stuff (even though it got screwed up anyway lol). zex did you do the nitrous yourself?

 

[topgunz1]

I never let anyone else work on my car unless its body/paint work, or tint. I do all my maintenance and repairs and performance myself, I wouldnt have it any other way. I ESPECIALLY dont let anyone else change the oil...it'd end up with the plug rounded off, fused to the pan, no oil in it, no cap on it, or maybe just the cap on upside down (I'm not happy unless my oil cap is rightside up, call me wierd)

 

[RyDwy]

Originally posted by: ZEXCougar
This is how I learned to not let anyone mess with your car:

When I was 17, I had a 1986 Buick Electra... (Big 4-Door Boat) Well, I had 4 15" Kickers in the trunk so I wanted to get an alarm for it. I worked at a local retail store at the time, and bought the best alarm available at cost. They couldn't get me in for installation for a week, so I called around and found a stereo shop that would do it that day. I drop my car off with the sunroof open since it was a nice day and leave it there. When it comes time to pick it up, everything is fine and the alarm works great. So I get home and get ready to park it for the night. I try to close my sunroof and it doesn't work. After doing some investigating, I found out that the genius that installed my alarm cut the power wire for the sunroof and tapped the power wire for the alarm into it. But the guy didn't hook up the other half of the sunroof wire. So I call them back and they deny touching the wire. Obviously they did because the alarm wire was tapped into the sunroof wire!!! They still denied doing anything to it. So after like 20 minutes of arguing they finally admitted to tapping into the wire. They then told me to just hook the wire back up and everything would be fine. I hooked the wire back up and all of a sudden the alarm goes off. It turns out that this alarm has a voltage sensor on it that will activate the alarm if anything with the electrical system is touched. So here I am with my alarm going off full blast at like 8:30 at night. My remote wont work for some reason - so it is basically stuck on. I call the place back and they tell me in a crappy, snotty voice to bring the car back... Like it was my fault that they screwed up in the first place! Well, my new alarm also had a starter kill on it which stopped me from moving the car anywhere. So I call them back again and they tell me tough luck. So, I popped the hood and cut the speaker out (which continued to go off because of a built in battery) and put it in a shoe box to somewhat muffle the sound. I stuck the shoe box in the trunk and let it go off all night until it finally went dead. I had my car towed back to the place in the morning - only to find out that since I cut the wires they would not help me and it is my fault that the alarm is messed up. Long story short, I got shafted with $100 charge to tow it there, $150 to install the alarm in the first place, and lots of really irritated neighbors. I wired it back up myself and it worked fine. Until two weeks later when my car was broken into and my stereo and alarm were stolen.

now that is a great story hehehe

but i have been watching alot of "the peoples court" and i would take thos jackasses to court for that 250...it only cost 10 bucks to go to court

 

[mercurycougar]

I just loved it when I took my car to the shop and I found I dent in the right side back panel ( the huge panel ) and I spotted it out when I picked my car up, Everyone denied it. Good thing that I was in a very obsessive stage b4 I dropped my cougar off at the shop and I took a whole bunch of pictures of it because I just washed it. To their suprise, there was no dent in the pictures. They still denied it. After a week of calling them and pestering them, the guy admits to it. I just don't understand people sometimes. And btw: they tried to get the dent out but it is too small to pop out. Grrrr

That sucks about your gauges though. I hate it when people don't know what they are doing.